Preface
I am an advocate of static blogs and serverless support. My personal blog and some knowledge base projects are generated using hugo and hosted on GitHub Pages. This approach is convenient for version control and deployment maintenance, but for non-technical individuals, using command-line git operations can be overly complex, and it’s not particularly convenient for scenarios involving multiple collaborators.
Last week, a former colleague (non-technical) asked me to help set up a portal website, mainly to showcase company information and publish news, features, tools, etc. Considering ease of use and other factors, and having just seen the official release of Ghost version 5.0, which supports many powerful features such as email subscriptions and data analysis, and can be self-hosted, I considered this solution. The following text records the installation and deployment process.
Ghost 5.0
Ghost is a rather old-school blogging tool that has been developing and improving for 9 years since its prototype was released in 2013. The recently launched version 5.0 is very suitable for individuals and independent publishing platforms. The 5.0 version includes the following feature updates:
- Support for more powerful subscription functions, such as tiered subscriptions
- Support for multiple email subscriptions, making design modifications more convenient
- Support for publishing promotional activities, with a more powerful user analysis dashboard
- Native support for videos, blogs, GIFs, e-commerce products, NFTs, etc.
- Release of more new themes
- Performance optimization of 20%+
- …
Ghost officially supports various deployment methods, such as Ghost(Pro) hosting, Docker images, server installation, etc. However, because Ghost’s production environment depends on Ubuntu, Node, MySQL, and other environments, it can be quite troublesome to set up independently, and the maintenance cost is also relatively high. After some research, according to the installation instructions in the official documentation, Digital Ocean is Ghost’s official cloud hosting partner, providing a one-click deployment and installation method, which is simple and convenient.
Installation and Deployment Instructions
Domain Purchase
As a publicly accessible website, we need to purchase a domain name and configure DNS resolution to point to the server where our website is located, allowing the public to access it conveniently. There are many domain purchase platforms; I have used Cloudflare, NameSilo, GoDaddy, etc. I ended up regularly using Cloudflare because it also provides powerful features such as CDN, website data analysis, and custom rules.
First, we need to register a Cloudflare account. After completing and logging in, select “Register Domain” from the left sidebar and search for the domain name you want to register.
After selecting your desired domain name, click and choose the purchase duration and fill in your personal information.
Choose the payment method. It’s advisable to select auto-renewal to avoid forgetting to renew.
Select ‘Personal’ for the type and click to complete the purchase.
Wait for Cloudflare to process, and then you can view the information.
Digital Ocean SSH Configuration
As we will need to access the Digital Ocean host later, we first need to register an account and configure our SSH key for password-free login.
Enter our SSH key and click add.
One-Click Creation of Ghost Droplet
As mentioned above, Ghost provides support for one-click Droplet creation on Digital Ocean. We can visit the installation instructions document and click on the Digital Ocean icon to jump.
We can also search and select in the Digital Ocean image marketplace, then click Create in the upper right corner.
According to the official instructions, the $5/month plan configuration is already sufficient. You can also expand with one click if you have higher requirements later (Note: If you choose a high configuration first, you cannot downgrade).
Choose the host instance region. I chose the US region, but you can choose according to your needs. Also, select the SSH configuration we added earlier for convenient access later.
After completing the configuration selection, we choose the quantity, name, and click Create Droplet.
Wait for Digital Ocean to prepare the host, which takes about a few minutes to complete.
Configure Domain Name Resolution
Because Ghost needs to configure HTTPS, and for the convenience of users to access, we need to set up DNS resolution for the newly created server.
Log in to Cloudflare, select the domain we just registered, select the DNS tab on the left, and configure A record resolution (generally need to configure root resolution and www resolution). The operation is similar for other domain hosting websites.
Domain SSL/TLS Configuration (Optional)
If using Cloudflare for hosting, you can choose to configure the SSL/TLS encryption mode to Full for enhanced security.
One-Click Installation of Ghost Service
After completing the domain resolution, we can connect to the host through the Digital Ocean console or other terminal tools to perform one-click installation.
After pressing Enter, the script will automatically start installing the service and various dependencies.
The installation is command-line interactive. We only need to input two custom configurations:
- Enter your blog URL
- Enter your email (For SSL Certificate)
Enter your domain name and email at these two points, then wait for the installation to complete.
Accessing the Website
After the script execution is complete, we can access the Ghost website.
- https://
{your domain}/ghost, admin interface - https://
{your domain}, website address
The first login will require registering an admin account. Log in after registration.
After logging in, you can see the very attractive Ghost admin page.
Ghost provides many customizable configuration options that can be adjusted according to your website’s needs.
Conclusion
The above is my experience using Ghost’s officially recommended Digital Ocean hosting method to deploy my own Ghost website. After upgrading to 5.0, Ghost can meet the needs of most websites and has better support for commercialization and data processing. It’s a good choice for personal blogs and small teams. I hope this helps everyone.
References
- Ghost Official Website
- Digital Ocean Official Website
- Free Personal Blog System Setup and Deployment Solution (Hugo + GitHub Pages + Cusdis)
- Building a Free Personal Blog Data Statistics System from Scratch (umami + Vercel + Heroku)
- Lightweight Open Source Free Blog Comment System Solution (Cusdis + Railway)
Related Posts
