Every conversation starts again
Comments capture the moment, but each new story starts another isolated conversation.
From publishing to participation
A publication can have thousands of members and still have nowhere they meet.
Membership mostly opens content
A paid tier opens articles and newsletters, but offers members few ways to contribute or connect.
Community lives somewhere else
A chat server or commercial platform adds another account, interface and organisation to the relationship.
The archive is rich but solitary
Years of reporting remain readable, but rarely become living places where old and new conversations meet.
A living publication
What if every article opened a room?
Ghost remains the publishing home. Bonfire gives the people around it somewhere to stay.
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The discussion remains attached to the story.
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The subject becomes a place readers can return to.
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Membership grows into participation.
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The community remains under your identity.
In the wild
Jacobin wanted more than a comment section.
Readers of Jacobin's German edition backed a publication they could not only read, but use to debate, organise and build solidarity together. Jacobin kept its Ghost workflow; Bonfire gave the community a home under Jacobin's identity.
From audience to community
“Choosing Bonfire wasn't just a technical decision, it was a fundamentally political one. We wanted a platform that couldn't be switched off by a foreign government or bought out by a billionaire.”
Magdalena Berger · Jacobin DE
One integrated experience
Ghost publishes. Bonfire gives the publication a place to gather.
Your editorial team keeps one publishing system and one member relationship. Ghost remains the source of truth; Bonfire turns that foundation into a persistent community.
Ghost continues to handle
- Writing, editing, publishing and newsletters
- Members, payments and membership tiers
- Article visibility and the publication website
Bonfire adds
- Persistent discussions connected to articles
- Groups, topics, profiles and community relationships
- Participation and private spaces opened by membership
Is this the right fit?
Do you need more than Ghost comments?
Ghost comments may be enough when
- Conversation only needs to happen underneath individual articles.
- Membership is mainly about access to content and newsletters.
- Readers do not need persistent profiles, groups or topic spaces.
Bonfire becomes useful when
- Discussions should continue across articles and publishing cycles.
- Membership should open participation, groups or private spaces.
- Readers, writers and the publication need lasting relationships.
For your technical team
A deep integration, available for scrutiny.
Nothing depends on maintaining duplicate editorial or member data by hand. Open an area to inspect what ships today.
Articles
Full archive backfill
A background job pages through every published article in your Ghost site.
Continuous import
New articles arrive automatically as they're published.
Live updates
Edits, visibility changes, unpublishing, deletion and republishing all follow through.
Faithful rendering
Title, excerpt, HTML body, feature image, image metadata, original date and canonical URL.
Native article objects
Real Bonfire Articles when the Articles extension is on, not posts pretending to be articles.
Duplicate-safe re-runs
Canonical URLs match existing articles, so repeat imports update rather than multiply.
Tag filtering
Import everything, or only articles carrying chosen primary or secondary Ghost tags.
Article browser
Recent Ghost articles at /ghost, with images, excerpts, tags, dates and reading times.
Where discussion happens
A chosen destination
Pick one group or topic, and every imported article lands there.
Destination checks
The importing identity is verified as able to contribute to the destination you chose.
On-site comments embed
One script tag in your Ghost theme renders the discussion under the article.
Fediverse participation
With remote interaction enabled, people take part from another compatible server.
Durable discussions
Conversations survive the source article being unpublished or deleted.
Author profiles
Bylines become real profiles, with attribution that stays attached to them.
Embed can't be forged
Author, destination and audience come from trusted settings, never from the embedding page.
Access & tiers
Visibility translation
Public, members, specific tiers and paid each map onto Bonfire boundaries.
Tier circles
Every Ghost tier mirrored as an instance-level circle named ghost_tier:<slug>.
Automatic protection
Imported paid articles are gated by the matching tier with no extra setup.
Stale-grant removal
Changing visibility or allowed tiers replaces old grants and clears dead permissions.
Archive, don't delete
Retired Ghost tiers keep their circle and its history, marked archived.
Reusable anywhere
Tier circles work throughout Bonfire's boundaries system, like any circle you'd make by hand.
Accounts & identity
Email-only sign-in
A one-time link replaces password and local signup forms.
Ghost-gated eligibility
An unknown address is checked against Ghost before any link is sent.
Tier gating
Allow every member, or restrict new accounts to selected tiers. Any one match is enough.
Staff admission
Active owners, admins, editors, authors and contributors get in without a tier.
Enumeration-proof
Valid, unknown and ineligible addresses all receive the same neutral response.
Identity linking
Member and staff records converge on one account, matched by Ghost ID first, email second.
Email-change tracking
Ghost email changes are followed, unless the address was deliberately changed here.
No silent merges
Conflicting identity or email records stay an administrator's decision, never an automatic one.
Operations & security
Admin dashboard
Connection status, article counts, import rules, tier, member and staff lists in one screen.
Live sync reporting
Progress counters, current stage, recent per-item errors, timestamps and stalled-job detection.
Resumable backfills
Completed pages are checkpointed, so a retry picks up from durable progress.
Gated content support
The Admin API supplies complete HTML for paid articles; the Content API covers public ones.
Idempotent syncs
Re-running article, tier or member synchronisation is safe by design.
Signed webhooks
HMAC-SHA256 over the original body and timestamp, with a five-minute replay window.
Fail closed
No shared secret configured means no webhook is accepted, and invalid ones die before queueing.
Permission-gated data
Member information and sync actions require instance-administration permissions.
Getting started
Build it with us or run it yourself.
It is the same AGPL-licensed software in both cases. The difference is how much implementation, hosting and co-design support your publication wants.
Bonfire Mosaic
Most publishers start here
Build it with us
We shape the community around your publication, readers and rules, then connect Ghost, import the archive and prepare it for launch.
Community research, structure and governance.
Ghost connection, tier sync and archive import.
Your branding, language, onboarding and training.
Self-hosted
AGPL · free forever
Or do it yourself
A technically comfortable team can install the same open-source integration directly or work with a managed host.
No licence fee, seat pricing or gated features.
Public source and documentation.
Self-hosted, managed, forkable and portable.
Your readers are already here. Give them a place to belong.
Tell us what you publish, how readers participate today and what you would want them to do together. We will tell you honestly whether Bonfire fits.
