I realized the other day how important it is to document all of our processes, especially if you spent time piecing together different tools and resources. Here I outline exactly how I set this Ghost blog up, with links to corresponding instructions.

Note: This tutorial is for a manual installation of Ghost; more automated options are available as well.

Good luck!

1. Register a domain

Get something clever, like yourname.com. There are a lot of domain registrars out there, but my research took me to Namecheap for ease of use, price, and functionality.

2. Set up web hosting

I used DigitalOcean (disclaimer: my referral link) for their ease of use and price. I also met the co-founders this year, really great guys and passionate about what they're doing.
New droplet settings:

  • Hostname: ghost
  • Size: 512MB / 1 CPU / 20GB SSD
  • Region: New York 2
  • Image: Ubuntu 14.04 x64
  • Settings: Enable VirtIO

You will need a terminal and SSH access later. DigitalOcean has a community tutorial on setting up SSH keys if you need a primer.

3. Point your domain

We need to point the domain you registered in step 1 to your web host in step 2. In my case, I changed my DNS info on Namecheap to:

  1. NS1.DIGITALOCEAN.COM
  2. NS2.DIGITALOCEAN.COM
  3. NS3.DIGITALOCEAN.COM

And on DigitalOcean, under "DNS", I added my domain name "tonyy.in" with my "ghost" droplet.

4. Install Ghost

Follow "Step 1: Install npm" from this community tutorial:

ssh root@yourname.com
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install python-software-properties python g++ make
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:chris-lea/node.js
sudo apt-get install nodejs

Follow "Install and Run Ghost" from the Ghost docs:

cd ~/
curl -L https://ghost.org/zip/ghost-latest.zip -o ghost.zip
sudo apt-get install unzip
unzip -uo ghost.zip -d ghost
cd ghost/
npm install --production
npm start

Check to make sure ghost is installed properly, and Ctrl+C to stop the process.

5. Configure Ghost

Add in your domain name to Ghost's config.js settings.

cd ~/ghost/
nano config.js

Under // ### Production change the url:

production: {
    url: 'http://yourname.com',

6. Run Ghost

Follow "Making Ghost run forever" using "Forever" from the Ghost docs:

cd ~/ghost/
npm install forever -g
NODE_ENV=production forever start index.js

7. Install Nginx web server

Now that we have Ghost installed and running, we need a web server for public viewing.

Follow "Setting up Ghost with a domain name" from the Ghost docs:

sudo apt-get install nginx
cd /etc/nginx/sites-available
nano ghost.conf

Copy & paste the following into ghost.conf:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name yourname.com;

    location / {
        proxy_set_header   X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header   Host      $http_host;
        proxy_pass         http://127.0.0.1:2368;
    }
}

Then:

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/ghost.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/ghost.conf
sudo service nginx restart

8. Done!

Sign in and start writing on your new Ghost blog at yourdomain.com/ghost.

I installed a custom Ghost theme called StayPuft, you can check out the different themes available on the Ghost marketplace. Thanks for reading!

Update (7/4/14): My friend Dan wrote a followup post on his blog about setting up an email service on your Ghost blog, check it out!