Self-host Ghost® on a managed VPS: your publication, on your own server

What Ghost does

Ghost is a professional, open source publishing platform built on Node.js. It brings together in one place what an independent publication often assembles from several tools.

• Publishing: articles, pages, customizable themes, built-in SEO features and a domain in your own name.
• Members: signup and login through a link sent by email, with no password, and content restricted by each member’s tier.
• Paid subscriptions: a Stripe account connected to your site to sell your plans.
• Newsletters: any article can go out by email to your free or paid members, or to a segment, across one or several newsletters.
• APIs: a native REST API, to connect a custom site or your own tools.

According to the documentation, the product has the same features when self-hosted. What surrounds it is yours to arrange: newsletter delivery, web analytics, a CDN and full site backups.

The MIT license and the trademark

Ghost is released under the MIT license. It allows you to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense and sell the software, on one condition: keep the copyright notice and the license text in every copy. You can therefore run Ghost in your company, adapt it and publish for your clients, with no license to buy.

The license covers the code. The name and logo belong to Ghost Foundation and fall under its trademark policy: read it if you are building an offer around the software. Ghost is a registered trademark of Ghost Foundation.

This publication is independent of and not affiliated with, authorized, sponsored, or approved by Ghost Foundation.

Ghost-CLI or Docker Compose: two official methods

The project documents two paths for production. Ghost-CLI is the install it officially recommends, and Docker Compose is a “preview” that it describes as brand new. It also says it is moving toward this Docker tooling instead of updating Ghost-CLI, and it provides an assistant to go from one to the other.

Before you start: domain and server

Point the domain at the server before installing, because the certificate is issued during setup. On a Simafri VPS, visitors arrive on ports 80 and 443, under the server’s domain name, with A and AAAA records. The site address is written in full, with its protocol, such as https://example.com: an IP address causes errors.

Beyond the memory shown above, the project gives no figure for disk or load: the right size depends on your traffic, your images and your media. On a managed VPS, describe your publication to us and we will recommend the size that fits.

Install Ghost with Ghost-CLI on Ubuntu

Ghost-CLI runs under a user other than root, whose name is not ghost, since that name conflicts with the tool. Create it from the root account, replacing user with the name you choose:

adduser <user>
usermod -aG sudo <user>
su - <user>

Nginx and MySQL

Update the system, then install Nginx (1.9.5 at minimum for SSL) and MySQL. The ufw line opens HTTP and HTTPS if that firewall is active:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install nginx
sudo ufw allow 'Nginx Full'
sudo apt-get install mysql-server

On newer versions of Ubuntu, the MySQL root account authenticates through a socket, which Ghost does not support. Give it a password:

sudo mysql
ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH 'caching_sha2_password' BY '<your-new-root-password>';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit

Node.js and Ghost-CLI

Ghost requires Node.js 22: versions 20, 21, 23 and above are not supported. The project asks you to install it system-wide, this way:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y ca-certificates curl gnupg
sudo mkdir -p /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/gpgkey/nodesource-repo.gpg.key | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/nodesource.gpg
NODE_MAJOR=22
echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/nodesource.gpg] https://deb.nodesource.com/node_$NODE_MAJOR.x nodistro main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nodesource.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nodejs -y
sudo npm install ghost-cli@latest -g

Run the install

Ghost installs in its own directory, with a specific owner and permissions. Replace sitename with the name of your choice:

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/sitename
sudo chown <user>:<user> /var/www/sitename
sudo chmod 775 /var/www/sitename
cd /var/www/sitename
ghost install

The command then asks its questions, and the project recommends answering yes to each step it offers:

• Blog URL: the exact site address, with https://.
• MySQL: localhost for the host, root and the password you set above, then the database name, which Ghost-CLI creates.
• Set up a ghost MySQL user: a MySQL account limited to the Ghost database.
• Set up NGINX and Set up SSL: the Nginx configuration and the Let’s Encrypt certificate, which asks for an email address.
• Set up systemd and Start Ghost: the service that keeps Ghost running, then its startup.

The site is now live, and https://example.com/ghost invites you to create the owner account. If the install is interrupted, ghost setup restarts the configuration; if it fails, ghost uninstall cleans up better than deleting the folder. ghost doctor checks the system at any time.

Install Ghost with Docker Compose (preview)

The project presents this method as a “preview”: to its eyes, it is brand new. It is the method that lets you self-host web analytics and ActivityPub.

On a server with Docker installed, fetch the official tooling into /opt/ghost and copy its two example files:

git clone https://github.com/TryGhost/ghost-docker.git /opt/ghost && cd /opt/ghost
cp .env.example .env
cp caddy/Caddyfile.example caddy/Caddyfile

In the .env file, fill in these values:

• DOMAIN: the site’s domain, for example example.com.
• ADMIN_DOMAIN: a separate domain for the admin area, if you want one.
• DATABASE_ROOT_PASSWORD and DATABASE_PASSWORD: two passwords generated with openssl rand -hex 32. They are set once and for all: once the database is initialized, changing them breaks the connection.
• The SMTP Email section: your relay, detailed below.

In caddy/Caddyfile, uncomment the block for your case: redirecting www to the root domain, or the reverse, or a separate admin domain. Then start Ghost and finish the setup at /ghost:

docker compose pull
docker compose up -d

• Ports: only Caddy publishes ports, 80 and 443, which can be changed with HTTP_PORT and HTTPS_PORT if Ghost sits behind another reverse proxy. MySQL stays on the containers’ internal network.
• Data: uploaded files live in data/ghost and the database in data/mysql, two locations you can set in .env.
• IPv6: the repository makes it opt-in, as it requires newer versions of Docker and Compose. In that case, add -f compose.yml -f compose.ipv6.yml to your docker compose up commands.

Web analytics and ActivityPub

Analytics requires a Tinybird account, an external service. From /opt/ghost, log in, deploy its configuration and get the tokens to paste into .env, in the “Tinybird configuration” section:

docker compose run --rm tinybird-login
docker compose run --rm tinybird-sync
docker compose run --rm tinybird-deploy
docker compose run --rm tinybird-login get-tokens

ActivityPub works right away with the service hosted by the project, free within usage limits published in its documentation. To self-host your own, uncomment ACTIVITYPUB_TARGET=activitypub:8080. Then enable the profile or profiles you want in .env, and restart the containers:

COMPOSE_PROFILES=analytics,activitypub

docker compose pull
docker compose up -d

For ActivityPub, the project also asks you to recreate Ghost and Caddy, with docker compose up -d --force-recreate ghost caddy.

Move from Ghost-CLI to Docker Compose

After the clone and the configuration, bash scripts/migrate.sh copies the content folder, imports the database into the MySQL container and starts Caddy in place of Nginx. It offers to stop Nginx, which takes the site offline: answer no if other sites run on the server. It deletes no data. bash recovery_instructions.sh restores the original site if you interrupt the migration.

HTTPS and the admin domain

The Ghost admin must run over HTTPS, and the project recommends HTTPS for the whole site: without it, usernames and passwords travel in plain text. With Docker Compose, Caddy handles it. With Ghost-CLI, the install sets up the certificate, and one command does it later:

ghost setup ssl

To change the address of a site installed with Ghost-CLI, ghost config url https://example.com updates the configuration, and ghost restart applies it.

The project also advises a separate admin domain, which reduces the attack surface. The path remains /ghost/. With Ghost-CLI, you declare it in config.production.json:

"admin": {
  "url": "https://admin.example.com"
}

With Docker Compose, fill in ADMIN_DOMAIN, uncomment its block in the Caddyfile and run docker compose up -d --force-recreate ghost caddy. This domain also needs its own A and AAAA records.

MySQL 8, the production database

MySQL 8 is the only database the project supports in production. Ghost-CLI installs with MySQL 8.0 or 8.4, and the Compose file provides a MySQL 8.0 image.

• Coming from SQLite: the project recommends a full reinstall on MySQL 8.
• Coming from MariaDB: it strongly recommends migrating to MySQL 8.
• To check: ghost config database.client, in the site folder, shows the database in use.

Email and newsletters

Ghost distinguishes two kinds of sending, which do not take the same path. This is the most important thing to set up after the install.

The SMTP relay, for transactional email

The documentation lists this configuration as required in production. Ghost also emails a code when it detects a login from a new device: set up this relay before inviting your team.

On a Simafri VPS, sending goes through an authenticated SMTP relay, on port 587: the address of an email account you already have, or Simafri Suite.

"mail": {
  "transport": "SMTP",
  "from": "'Acme Support' <support@example.com>",
  "options": {
    "host": "smtp.example.com",
    "port": 587,
    "secure": false,
    "requireTLS": true,
    "auth": {
      "user": "support@example.com",
      "pass": "1234567890"
    }
  }
}

mail__transport=SMTP
mail__options__host=smtp.example.com
mail__options__port=587
mail__options__secure=false
mail__options__requireTLS=true
mail__options__auth__user=support@example.com
mail__options__auth__pass=1234567890
mail__from="'Acme Support' <support@example.com>"

docker compose up -d --force-recreate ghost

• secure and requireTLS: Ghost sends through Nodemailer, whose documentation asks for secure set to false on port 587, with the connection then upgraded through STARTTLS. requireTLS refuses to send if that upgrade fails. The repository’s example file shows port 465 and secure=true: replace those two lines.
• The sender address: from carries a real address that someone reads, which improves deliverability according to the project, and SPF, DKIM and DMARC records on the sending domain complete the setup.
• The test: invite a staff member from the admin area and check that the email arrives.

Mailgun, for newsletters

The SMTP relay does not cover newsletters. According to the documentation, bulk email is not sent over SMTP, and Mailgun is, at present, the only bulk email service Ghost supports. You create your Mailgun account and enter its API keys in the Ghost settings.

If you do not send your articles by email, you need no Mailgun account at all: you can ignore those settings. If you prefer another newsletter tool, the project suggests syncing your members to it, for example with Zapier or its integration guides.

Back up and restore Ghost

Ghost offers three levels of copy, and they do not hold the same things. To rebuild a site exactly, the project asks you to back up the database and the content folder directly.

The export is under “Settings”, “Advanced”, “Import/Export”, “Export” tab, “All data” button. For the full copy with Ghost-CLI, the MySQL account and the database name to use are in config.production.json:

mkdir -p ~/ghost-backups
mysqldump -u ghost_user -p ghost_production > ~/ghost-backups/ghost_backup.sql
cd /var/www/sitename
tar czf ~/ghost-backups/ghost_content_backup.tar.gz content/

With Docker Compose, the official tooling keeps content in data/ghost. The dump follows the form given by the MySQL image, and the root password is already in the container. Also keep a copy of .env and the Caddyfile.

cd /opt/ghost
mkdir -p ~/ghost-backups
docker compose exec -T db sh -c 'exec mysqldump -uroot -p"$MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD" ghost' > ~/ghost-backups/ghost_backup.sql
tar czf ~/ghost-backups/ghost_content_backup.tar.gz data/ghost

Restore

cd /var/www/sitename
ghost stop
mysql -u ghost_user -p ghost_production < ~/ghost-backups/ghost_backup.sql
tar xzf ~/ghost-backups/ghost_content_backup.tar.gz
sudo chown -R ghost:ghost content
ghost restart

cd /opt/ghost
docker compose stop ghost
docker compose exec -T db sh -c 'exec mysql -uroot -p"$MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD" ghost' < ~/ghost-backups/ghost_backup.sql
tar xzf ~/ghost-backups/ghost_content_backup.tar.gz
docker compose start ghost

Copy these files off the server, with rsync or scp, and run a test restore on a test machine. If you start again from an export with paid members, connect the same Stripe account before importing your members.

Update Ghost

The project releases updates every week and points out that a public web server must stay up to date. Read the release notes, then run the command for your method.

With Ghost-CLI

ghost check-update
ghost backup
ghost update

• Rollback: ghost update --rollback returns to the previous version if an update goes wrong.
• The content folder stays in place during updates.
• Major versions arrive every 12 to 18 months and break compatibility: the documentation calls for backups, a read of the changes and a theme compatibility check.
• Node.js: change it separately from Ghost, then run ghost update [version] --force with your current version, since its binary dependencies are compiled for a specific Node.js version.

With Docker Compose

cd /opt/ghost
git pull
docker compose pull
docker compose up -d
docker image prune

The last line, which is optional, removes old images. Leave GHOST_VERSION commented out in .env: pinning a version stops these update commands from working.

Harden and grow your instance

The documentation gives several settings for a server in production:

• MySQL: run mysql_secure_installation after a successful Ghost-CLI install.
• Firewall: UFW rules for SSH, Nginx, HTTP and HTTPS, with no other firewall alongside.
• SSH: login by key only, with no password and no root account.
• Staff: two-factor authentication can be required for every login under “Settings”, “Staff”.

For load, the project places a CDN and a caching layer in front of Ghost. It specifies that clustering and sharding are not supported: a single instance serves the site, and the cache absorbs the traffic.

Who does what on a managed VPS

Self-hosting means running the server as well as the application. On a managed VPS, our teams take charge of the server and proactively monitor your instance; Ghost remains your software, with its settings and its data.

If you would rather have our teams step into the application itself, this service is billed by the hour or as a fixed fee, with an estimate shared before the work begins.