John O'Nolan's Avatar

John O'Nolan

@johnonolan.bsky.social

Founder/CEO at @Ghost.org - Geographically restless. Mostly posting about publishing, media, open source, JavaScript, Laravel, bootstrapping, SaaS, activitypub, and design.

11,065 Followers  |  454 Following  |  242 Posts  |  Joined: 19.10.2023
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Posts by John O'Nolan (@johnonolan.bsky.social)

Enjoyed this framing 🙏

28.02.2026 09:34 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

We've all heard "SaaS is dead" enough times.

Recently I read multiple people developing something more specific: Nicolas Bustamante from the software side, Ben Thompson from the hardware side, @johnonolan.bsky.social about open source.

Different starting points. Same direction.

27.02.2026 17:53 — 👍 2    🔁 1    💬 1    📌 0

it was pretty wild - even wilder that they later tried to play it off as "misunderstanding"

26.02.2026 17:57 — 👍 3    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

This week Cloudflare shamelessly cloned and released the product of one of their primary competitors.

I'm beginning to wonder - if AI can rewrite software from scratch, without using any of the original code, do software licenses actually mean anything anymore?

john.onolan.org/open-source-...

26.02.2026 17:33 — 👍 9    🔁 7    💬 5    📌 1

Goin' live with the Laravel team here in a couple mins 🔊

$PHP

24.02.2026 16:26 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

would love to see video about this :)

02.02.2026 12:48 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

I've seen some of what Aaron's working on here, and it's so far ahead of anything I've managed to figure out for myself.

(I told him to price this 10x higher but he refused listen to me, so it's your lucky day.)

14.01.2026 20:44 — 👍 11    🔁 1    💬 1    📌 0

it's so much calmer 🧘‍♂️

07.01.2026 12:25 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 2    📌 0
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Alcove - A peaceful RSS Reader A quiet place to see what's new

one thing I didn't expect while building alcove.news is the unbridled joy of removing newsletters from my email inbox

feels *so* much better having communication/reading in two different places

(you can follow @alcove.blog.alcove.news.ap.brid.gy if you want updates on progress)

07.01.2026 12:18 — 👍 18    🔁 1    💬 2    📌 1

so far they're claiming nothing has changed and it's all imaginary

18.12.2025 18:27 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Back on GPT 5.2 Max fulltime now, Claude 4.5 has been nerfed so hard it's actually unusable this week

18.12.2025 12:27 — 👍 4    🔁 0    💬 3    📌 0

all of the above

05.12.2025 16:37 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

because it's what I feel like using - you don't have to use it if you don't want to

05.12.2025 16:24 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0
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I'm making an RSS reader Why am I making an RSS reader? I don't know. There are a thousand RSS readers out there already, and they all read RSS feeds, but none of them work the way I'd like them to. So I'm making my own. It'...

I've decided to pursue a very bad idea and see where it goes.

I'm making an RSS reader.

john.onolan.org/making-an-rs...

05.12.2025 16:12 — 👍 45    🔁 7    💬 4    📌 1
Post image Post image

Our first billboard! Live from Stripe City

bfcm.stripe.com

28.11.2025 17:39 — 👍 29    🔁 3    💬 1    📌 0

it's an open source platform, used by people on the open web, built on top of open standards -- if you think that's "platform lock in" then I don't know what to tell you

our job is to promote Ghost, if you want to make an agnostic directory for indie websites on the internet, you should!

27.11.2025 15:48 — 👍 7    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Is this being recorded? Would love to see

26.11.2025 19:52 — 👍 3    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

If you're curious about the build of Ghost Explore — and some of the details of my ... *checks notes* ... 1,256 commits on this project over the past few months

The @laravelphp.bsky.social team just published a nice lil piece about Ghost + Laravel Cloud:
laravel.com/blog/14m-req...

26.11.2025 18:30 — 👍 12    🔁 3    💬 0    📌 0

Stoked to share some of the details behind a project I've been working on for a long time, in partnership with
@ahrefs.bsky.social — and built on top of @laravelphp.bsky.social

Spent YEARS wanting this to exist, so I finally just built it.

26.11.2025 13:08 — 👍 25    🔁 2    💬 1    📌 0
Post image 25.11.2025 21:00 — 👍 13    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

you open a link in [some app] - it loads an in-app browser, you login, receive magic link - that link can't be opened in the in-app browser, so you can't sign in there

other: PWA doesn't work (same reason)

other: people have a locked down device for work, can only receive email on other device

25.11.2025 18:41 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

I recommend including both a code and a login link right from the start - you will discover (as we did) many edge issues with login links, particularly on mobile / in-app browsers

25.11.2025 08:49 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0
Screenshot of a color palette tool showing a palette called Lightning Bug with color sliders, LAB values, color grid, and palette type controls like complementary and triadic, in some old school neumorphic  gray buttons style

Screenshot of a color palette tool showing a palette called Lightning Bug with color sliders, LAB values, color grid, and palette type controls like complementary and triadic, in some old school neumorphic gray buttons style

Okay, this is fun, and brings me back to some neumorphism nostalgia: a fun color palette generator, that lets you play with different color spaces, and build different palettes type

colorpalette.pro/?color=lab%2...

25.11.2025 08:30 — 👍 40    🔁 8    💬 2    📌 0

Cheers 🎉 we should catch up again soon!

25.11.2025 08:46 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Thanks Dann!

24.11.2025 15:07 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0
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Today @ghost.org passed $9M ARR — the first time we've ever crossed a $1M milestone 2x in a calendar year 🎉

Publisher revenue is growing even faster!

Now more than $120M GMV earned by writers and journalists using the product to fund their work

24.11.2025 14:57 — 👍 73    🔁 5    💬 3    📌 0
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This week @johnonolan.bsky.social joined us for a Sweet Hang and he's got big news for @ianlandsman.com & @aaronfrancis.com:

This week he Laravel New'd....twice! 🚀

20.11.2025 17:44 — 👍 10    🔁 2    💬 1    📌 0

We don't atm, no — it would be very challenging to build/manage something like this from a payments infrastructure PoV

20.11.2025 09:18 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

development DB dropped again

me: what did you do

ai: nothing guv, swear down, I ain't touched it, if anything happened to the DB it wasn't cause of me

19.11.2025 09:57 — 👍 7    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

so many cascading knock-on effects 🫠

18.11.2025 13:29 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0