Last month we covered the soft launch of Ghost, a Node.js-based minimalist blogging platform. The application blew through a Kickstarter goal and has been under heavy development; last month, Kickstarter backers were granted early access to the application to get started with it (my own Ghost-based blog, for example, is here).

Today, the Ghost team is opening the platform up to everyone. You can download the Ghost application and get it going on your own server immediately, and users interested in assisting with the development can hit up the project's GitHub repo and start poking around.

There are two major features still lacking from the platform: the fancy graphical management console and the hosted service. The graphical console with all of its fancy charts and graphs has been set aside temporarily while the core team focuses on making Ghost stable and functional enough for launch, but it should be making an appearance in an upcoming release.

The hosted option is also coming soon. Instead of needing to set up your own Web server, you'll be able to sign up and create a working Ghost blog with only a couple of clicks. Custom domains will also be supported. The end result should be a service similar in scope to hosted WordPress.

We've had a great time playing with Ghost's fast Markup-based live preview editor, and the platform shows a lot of promise. Most gratifying of all, the developers regularly answer community feedback on the official forum, and several features have already been added as a direct result of that feedback.

If you're comfortable hosting your own Web applications, there's nothing stopping you from getting started with Ghost right now. If you're not quite so comfy, we have a whole series of articles on getting your own server spun up and ready to go.