{"id":498,"date":"2022-09-18T07:00:49","date_gmt":"2022-09-18T13:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rewaant.com\/blog\/?p=498"},"modified":"2022-12-19T15:06:52","modified_gmt":"2022-12-19T22:06:52","slug":"hosting-ghost-on-ubuntu-or-debian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rewaant.com\/blog\/hosting-ghost-on-ubuntu-or-debian\/","title":{"rendered":"Complete guide to hosting Ghost CMS on Ubuntu or Debian"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Table of Contents<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
    \n
  1. Overview<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Setting up your VPS<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Updating DNS records to point the domain<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  4. Setting up your server for serving Ghost<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  5. Setting up the publication and going live<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Overview<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Ghost.org<\/a> is a modern, open-source CMS and a full-fledged publishing platform used by content creators, news outlets, businesses, bloggers, and professional publishers. There are many CMS options to choose from but one thing that differentiates Ghost from all the other solutions is an exceptional focus on being the most approachable publishing solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    While you can build almost anything with WordPress, Ghost\u2019s competency as a CMS which is primarily focused on content creation, publishing, and building your audience sets it apart in an ocean of platforms. Other attributes like embracing minimalism while also providing common tools for publishing such as newsletters and membership features out of the box and on top of it being open source gives it a serious edge and we suggest you give them serious consideration if those are your goals. Not to mention, these features may require plugins\/extensions and third-party solutions with alternatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Another thing to mention is that Ghost is built on top of a modern tech stack using Node.js which makes it fast and snappy as compared to many alternatives. Safe to say your content will be in good hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Ghost comes in two flavors:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      \n
    1. Ghost Pro: Think of this as being similar to WordPress.com<\/a>. We recommend visiting the official pricing page<\/a>, analyzing your requirements, calculating estimated costs, and reading the FAQs to see if this will be a good option. They don\u2019t offer a free plan but you can sign up with a 14-day free trial. However, we\u2019ll NOT be focusing on this offering in this guide.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    2. Self-hosting Ghost: Ghost is open source software which means you can use it as a self-hosted publishing platform (just like WordPress.org<\/a>) on your own server if you want complete control over your publication, have some cost constraints and you plan on using a cost-effective VPS or for any other reason. You lose official support and bear additional responsibilities of managing everything on your own with this option but the official community forums are generally helpful in case you need some help. This also gives you complete control.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

      In this comprehensive guide, we\u2019ll try to help you set up an Ubuntu production server from scratch, configure an ideal production environment, set things up with your domain, and install Ghost to get started on serving your audience. You can also use DigitalOcean, AWS, GCP, or other cloud platforms as per your preference but the process varies from platform to platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Let\u2019s get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Setting up your VPS<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

      If you already have a VPS up and running, you can skip to the next section. For simplicity, we\u2019ll be using Linode in our reference material but the principles should apply to other cloud providers as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Once you have signed in\/up on Linode, you\u2019ll see a screen similar to the one below:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

      Click on the “Create Linode”. This should take you to a detailed screen where you can customize an instance. We\u2019re using Ubuntu 22.04 LTS as our distribution, for most use cases we recommend you choose Ubuntu\u2019s latest LTS release. The region of choice should be closest to your or your ideal traffic location geographically. We\u2019re setting up a test server so we\u2019ll choose London.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

      For the plan, we\u2019re selecting “Shared CPU, Linode (4GB)” which goes for $20\/month. This should be more than enough for most individual publishers starting out with not much traffic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      The label is just for your reference, set it as per your preference. You can skip the tags for now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Set a strong root password that you can remember or write it down somewhere. This is very important!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      SSH Keys are the recommended way to authenticate and administer your remote servers for multiple reasons. More on this later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Skip the VLAN section.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      We highly recommend choosing a backup plan, can\u2019t count how many times clients have reached out with bad news that their site\u2019s gone (wiped out) and they\u2019re looking for options to somehow retrieve all their lost efforts. Bad for them they didn\u2019t have backups in place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Backups in Linode are priced according to the plan you choose. In our case, it\u2019s $5\/month, for the $5\/month instance they go for $2\/month. Keep in mind the pricing included here is just for reference and as of the day, it\u2019s last updated. Please check the updated pricing on Linode\u2019s official pricing pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      You can skip the Private IP section for now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Review the summary, check the required checkboxes and hit “Create Linode”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      You should get a notification that your Linode is being created. Soon, the status should be changed to running and you should see a similar screen. Please note your instance\u2019s IP address and the ssh command as we\u2019ll need them in the next steps to set things up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

      Updating DNS records to point the domain<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

      Before setting up the instance, we\u2019ll get the domain part out of the way. In our case, we\u2019ll be using this server for a Ghost publication reachable on a subdomain https:\/\/ghost.rewaant.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

      We use Cloudflare, adding\/updating records for your domain might vary depending on the platform you use for managing the domain\u2019s nameservers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      For the most part, you just need to add an A and a CNAME record for your Ghost publication to be accessible publicly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

      Add an A<\/strong> record with the following configuration:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

        \n
      1. We\u2019re putting “ghost<\/code>“in the Name field. If you\u2019re pointing the apex\/root domain to the server, use “@”. If your domain is example.com<\/code>, use “@” in the Name field so https:\/\/example.com<\/code> points to your publication.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
      2. Put in the IPv4 address of your Ubuntu server. This is the IP address you noted down while creating the Linode instance. This will be your server\u2019s IP address if you already had a server setup and didn\u2019t follow the previous section.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
      3. TTL field should be set to Auto, and hit “Save”.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n
        \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

        Add a CNAME<\/strong> record with the following configuration:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          \n
        1. We\u2019re putting in \"www.ghost<\/code>” in the Name field. If you\u2019re pointing the apex\/root domain, use “www<\/code>“. If your domain is example.com<\/code>, use “www<\/code>” in the Name field so https:\/\/www.example.com<\/code> points to your publication.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
        2. We\u2019re putting “ghost.rewaant.com<\/code>” in the Target field. We\u2019re doing this because we want all requests for “www.ghost.rewaant.com<\/code><\/a>” to be resolved to ghost.rewaant.com<\/code>. If your domain is example.com<\/code><\/a> use “example.com<\/code>” in the Target field so all requests to “www.example.com<\/code><\/a>” will be resolved to “example.com<\/code><\/a>“.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
        3. Hit “Save”.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n
          \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

          If this doesn\u2019t work as expected, or you\u2019re trying to set up a different structure, we recommend you follow a domain-specific guide or post your detailed issue directly in the comments section below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          You can now ping your domain to check connectivity. That\u2019s it, we\u2019re good to go to the next step.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          Setting up your server for serving Ghost<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

          To connect to your VPS, you can either use a web console provided by most cloud providers or a terminal window on your computer. If you\u2019re using Linode, the web console is called LISH console (click \u201cLaunch LISH Console\u201d). You can also connect via a local terminal session using the ssh command directly on a terminal window. Important: If you\u2019re using Windows, you\u2019ll need to use a third-party software called Putty to connect to your instance. We\u2019ll post a guide on how to connect to an instance via SSH on Windows using Putty and PuttyGen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          Once connected, you should see a window similar to the one below. Type in \u201cyes\u201d to continue, it\u2019ll then ask for the root password. Type in the root password you set while creating the instance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
          \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

          We\u2019ll start with performing system updates and securing our server. If you\u2019re setting up a production server, we highly recommend you set up key-based authentication and disable password-based authentication. We also recommend you do this before following the remaining steps of this guide. You can learn more about how to do this by following our concise guide: How to setup SSH keys on your Linux server<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

          To perform updates, type in the following commands:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          apt update && apt upgrade \u2192 Once you run this command, you\u2019ll see a somewhat similar output. Type in Y to continue. This should take a little while to complete but should upgrade all the packages and libraries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

          reboot \u2192 It\u2019s recommended to reboot after processing updates. Allow a minute or two and reconnect via SSH following steps 1 and 2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          To set up the timezone, type in the following commands:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          dpkg-reconfigure tzdata \u2192 This should take you to the following screen, Choose the timezone with the up\/down arrow & enter keys then use the tab key to navigate and hit \u201cOk\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
          \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

          You should now get back to the console.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

          Before proceeding further, we recommend not using root for system administration. It\u2019s highly recommended to set up a new (less privileged) user for server administration. Type in the following commands to add a less privileged user:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          adduser *preferred_username*<\/code> \u2192 Type in your username in place of *\u201cpreferred_username\u201d*<\/code>, we\u2019ll be using \u201crewaant<\/code>\u201d so the command becomes adduser rewaant<\/code>. This will now ask for a new password, set a strong password. Type in the Full Name and skip the info for defaults that you don\u2019t want to populate. Type in Y<\/code> to continue and your new user should be created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          Type in adduser *preferred_username* sudo<\/code> \u2192 Replace *\u201cpreferred_username\u201d*<\/code> with your username. In our case, the command becomes adduser rewaant sudo<\/code>. This command adds the new user to the sudo group which grants root privileges to the user when prefixed with sudo<\/code>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

          Disconnect and reconnect using the ssh command replacing \u201croot\u201d with the new user. The updated ssh command becomes ssh preferred_username<\/em>@server_ip_address<\/em>. In our case, this becomes ssh rewaant@176.58.98.58. You should now be able to authenticate with the newly created user.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

          \"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

          Next, we\u2019ll harden access through SSH and set up a firewall. Please follow our guide that explains how to do both here: Hardening SSH on your Linux server<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

          Now that we have a server setup, domain pointed, and our server secured, we can proceed to set up the stack and install ghost itself on the server. According to the official Ghost docs, we have the following prerequisites:<\/p>\n\n\n\n