¶ 
What is Ghost?
Ghost is a powerful app for professional publishers to create, share, and grow a business around their content. It comes with modern tools to build a website, publish content, send newsletters & offer paid subscriptions to members.
¶ 
1 · Deploy Ghost
services:
ghost:
image: ghost:5-alpine
container_name: ghost
restart: unless-stopped
ports:
- 8085:2368
environment:
database__client: mysql
database__connection__host: db
database__connection__user: root
database__connection__password: example
database__connection__database: ghost
url: https://example.com # this url value is just an example, and is likely wrong for your environment!
TZ: America/New_York
security__staffDeviceVerification: false
privacy_useTinfoil: true
mail__options__auth__pass:
mail__options__auth__user:
mail__options__host:
mail__options__port: 587
mail__options__secure: false
mail__options__service:
mail__transport: SMTP
mail__from:
volumes:
- /mnt/tank/configs/ghost:/var/lib/ghost/content
db:
image: mysql:8.0
container_name: ghost_db
restart: unless-stopped
environment:
MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: example
volumes:
- /mnt/tank/configs/ghost/db:/var/lib/mysql
- Change all the default user names and passwords. Make sure when you change them in the ghost service you mirror those changes in the db service.
- Update the
urlfield to match your FQDN
You can deploy as many of these containers as you want for each website you want to host. Be sure to change the external port for each one.
¶ 2 · Logging In
Once you have deployed this container go to https://example.com/ghost to login and create your account.
¶ 3 · Monitoring With Umami
In order to enable monitoring, go to the Settings gear icon in the lower left corner, then select Code Injection section (under Advanced), and in the Site Header section paste the Tracking Code from the website you created in Umami.
¶ 4 · Getting Mail Working
You don't need mail to work to host content on Ghost. If you want to have subscribers sign up and get emails when you update content however, you will need email set up. You will also need email configured if you want to have multiple contributors with individual accounts on your platform. Mailgun is free as long as you send less than 1000 emails per month.
¶ 4.1 Mailgun
If you go this route remove any lines in the docker compose file which start with
Navigate to mailgun. Enter all the information keeping the default Foundation 50k Trial selected. Once you have an account, login to your account on mailgun and follow the steps in this video on the correct way to get email configured.
¶ 4.2 Transactional Email
Once you get to the 10 min mark in the video, he switches gears from bulk email to transactional email. Because we deployed in docker, we need to get access to our container a different way than in the video. (If you can get to the console of the container, skip to step #3) First we need to ssh into our server with sudo privileges. Once there, follow these steps to get the container ID and then execute the command shown:
- Find the Container ID or Name: You need to know the container ID or name of the container you want to access. You can list all running containers with:
docker ps - Execute a Command or Start a Shell: To start a shell session inside the container, use:
docker exec -it <container_id_or_name> /bin/bash - After you execute that command, we will be in the directory containing
config.production.json. To edit it, enter the commandnano config.production.jsonand follow the steps in the video to replace the “mail” block with the example from Ghost with the correct SMTP credentials from mailgun:
// config.production.json
"mail": {
"transport": "SMTP",
"options": {
"service": "Mailgun",
"auth": {
"user": "[email protected]",
"pass": "1234567890"
}
}
},
4. Now restart your container and you're done!
¶ 5 · Migrating From Wordpress
In the event you want to move all your content from Wordpress, there are a few steps to take. Official instructions can be found here.
¶ 5.1 Posts and Pages
Install the Ghost Export Plugin to your WP instance. I could not get the full .zip with all the images and such to work, but if you can, all you need to do is export your site as a zip file and upload it to Ghost (Ghost > Settings > Import/Export > Universal Import). For those who can't get the full .zip working, use the JSON instead, knowing it won't contain any of your pictures/media.
¶ 5.2 Redirects
If you left the WP settings for the posts default, it uses a directory tree which includes the /year/month/date/post-name format. Ghost does not use that, so you need to set up 301 redirects in Ghost. Create a .yaml file with these contents keeping the spacing exactly as you see it:
301:
^\/(\d{4})\/(\d{2})\/(\d{2})\/(.*)$: /$4
After that, upload this in the Labs section (Ghost > Settings > Labs > Redirects).