Tools for Ghost updates, August '26 edition

What's new

URLs and websites

• I rolled out a new marketing site for the toolbox. You can find it at https://toolbox.spectralwebservices.com . Copy improvements are ongoing, but at least there's somewhere to land.
• I decided that the community calendar offering should be called "Haunts". 👻 [Haunts = places you hang out.] Because Haunts works on any platform where you can drop an embed, it kept the cute ghost (lowercase) theming, while reducing the emphasis on Ghost (uppercase). Haunts has a separate landing page (and standalone pricing) at https://gethaunts.com , if you'd like to tell your friends on other platforms about it.

Haunts calendar updates

• I finally admitted that having to re-paste the embed was annoying. If you paste a fresh copy of the embed once more, it'll now update automatically when you make dashboard changes.
• Fixed a bug where the dark overlay on the image in magazine mode was missing on some browsers, making it hard to read the white text. I still think "image focused" is a better choice for many images.
• Added an RSS feed, CSV export, and some copy-pasteable text (all under the "Export tab", to help you jump start a weekly newsletter roundup if you send one.
• Several new scrapers and adjustments to old scrapers, and the wizard got a little smarter. If you're looking at a calendar on a webpage, try pasting the url into the wizard. It doesn't always work, but when it does, it's magic!
• If you haven't looked in a while, there are MOAR CARDS. You can set a default card but also let visitors pick which way they want events shown. Thanks to Mike for sharing the image below of Haunts in a XenForo instance.

• I tucked the category pills behind a filter button by default. Especially on small screens, the top section was getting too busy.
• I added geolocation filtering, in case you have a mixed-location feed. Having said that, if there's one item in 1000 that you want, maybe just add that item manually instead. Useful for getting only the home games for your local sports team in the feed, but not appropriate for tracking a nationwide pub trivia organizer if you only want one bar's events.
• Added a feed health indicator. ✅⌛⚠️ If a feed is persistently erroring and not getting new events, please hit pause on it and ask me to take a look. (A feed may occasionally error during one crawl and be fine the next, so maybe give it a few days to self-correct first.)
• Lots of bug fixes. 🐛
• ⏰Tip: If you are seeing events showing up with the wrong time (particularly if they're off by however many hours you are from UTC, in either direction), you should check your site's timezone under "site settings", and then also check the source of the wrong times (click the pencil) and explicitly set its time zone. [Some source types also have a checkbox for "this source is lying about being UTC" which you might need to turn on/off.]

Popups

• Fixed it so that you can configure and change everything in the toolbox dashboard. No more repasting. (You'll need to re-paste just once to set this up.)

Editorial Board/Calendar

• Editorial Calendar got a Kanban board view to go along with the existing calendar and list views.
• Changed editing settings for items to open a modal overlay instead of a new page, and now everything is much faster!

As a solo blogger without any real planned newsletter cadence, I have no idea if what I've built is useful. Feedback welcome. What's it missing? Did I just build a pretty but useless thing? 🤷‍♀️

Search

• Fixed a bug that could interfere with sync for some sites. If you aren't seeing post edits (including deletions & unpublishes) reflected in your search results, please let me know.
• One exception/not a bug, just a quirk: Bulk actions from the post editor or from my bulk action tool, or any creation flow that uses the API (i.e. using Obsidian) will not trigger a search update. In this case, you'd need to go to the toolbox, click "clear", wait a moment, and then click "index". That'll remove everything (dealing with undetected deletions) and then refill the search database with fresh content.

Apple News

• Added user-editable (it's a Ghost page) boilerplate you can use to start/end each post in Apple News, plus a sign-up card replacement.

Sharing Buttons

Added a third style, below! (Feel free to click them, too!)

Share this post

I think there were some other things, but that's probably enough!

Users

The current count of 'sites' in the Toolbox is 83! Only a couple of them are my demo site, or obviously logged in once looked around and left. So maybe 60-70 real sites? That's a good start!

I'm actually a little surprised it isn't higher. I mean, who doesn't want a no-cost upgrade to their Ghost search?

Money

What does it cost to run a whole toolbox full of useful tools?

Here's the current breakdown:

• Function hosting: $20/month (headroom is still reasonable)
• Database: $25/month (lots of headroom) - that's new this month. I started getting too close to the edge of the free tier for comfort, driven mostly by Haunts events.
• CDN and workers: Currently lots of head room (at about 10%) but will eventually need a paid plan, starting at $5.
• AI deduplication and categorization for Haunts: pennies per site per day, but jumping multiple dollars per site when new feeds are being added, due to the need to process and categorize thousands of new events. Fortunately, much of that is one-time or almost one-time. I expect it to settle, but everything right now is new enough that nothing has settled. I spent $19 on tokens in the last month, but most of that was three new sites.

TL;DR: I spent $64 (and way too many hours) on the toolbox last month.

• What didn't I count? Coding agent subscription, domains, publisher-tier Ghost Pro site specifically for testing, laptop, internet, power, tea ☕.

What'd I make in subscriptions?

TL;DR: $102. So I covered my most direct costs, thank you!

Er... Unless I was going to pay myself. I definitely did not pay myself last month, and that's OK. Other work is buying the groceries for now.

My premise for the last couple months has been that I need users more than money. And that was and is true. Users have been the best source of bug reports and feature requests, and the tools are much better because YOU used them, so THANK YOU.

The Asks

Ask #1: Keep the requests and reports coming! 💐🐛

Thank you to everyone who has sent feedback (good or bad), feature requests, and bug reports. I'm excited to hear what's working, what's not.

Ask #2: Please tell a friend or 2000. 📣

If you know someone who might find something in the toolbox useful, please send them to https://toolbox.spectralwebservices.com . Shout-outs on social media and shares wherever you talk to other creators and publishers would help me get the word out.

And I'd love to have some testimonials to share on my new marketing site, if you have a moment to tell the world which tool is awesome and why.

Ask #3: Are you ready for a paid plan 💰?

It's still true that I need users more than money, but that's not going to stay true forever.

If you've been using my tools for a couple months and you're already getting obvious value from one or more of the paid tools, please consider subscribing. You don't have to do it yet, but when you get to the point where it's obvious that you're going to stick around and aren't just evaluating, that'd be a good time to subscribe. 👉You can subscribe here👈

For that matter, if you're running a huge site, funding is going well, and the free tools are saving you a ton of time, please consider subscribing. I made the call on what was free based on cost to host it, not value it brings you.

So when does the paywall start?

• Tools that say 'free' on them will stay free. Seriously. That includes the free tier of Haunts, which is enough to hook up a couple of your own calendars, if you're just using it to embed your own events, not building a big community calendar.
• I will be reaching out in late September to ask users of paid tools about their plans and needs. No surprises. 😄

Wait! You have tools?
--Uh... where you been?