[3] The concept of the Ghost platform was first floated publicly in November 2012 in a blog post by project founder John O'Nolan,[4] which generated enough response to justify coding a prototype version with collaborator Hannah Wolfe.

[5] The initial concept for the Ghost platform was presented in a November 2012 blog post by project founder John O'Nolan, who was also the former deputy lead of the WordPress user interface team.

[6] O'Nolan presented Ghost as an "idealistic and fictional" solution to the increasing difficulty of using WordPress to build blogs, its original purpose, rather than as a more complex content management system.

[7] Following considerable demand and positive feedback on the post from the community[8][9][10] O'Nolan recruited long-time friend Hannah Wolfe to help him create an initial prototype of the platform.

Notable backers included Seth Godin, Leo Babauta, Darren Rowse, Tucker Max, major companies such as Woo-Themes, Envato, and Microsoft.