Installing Ghost CMS on RamNode VPS

Connect to your RamNode VPS via SSH using the credentials provided in your welcome email:

ssh root@your_server_ip

For security reasons, Ghost should not be run as the root user. Create a new user with sudo privileges:

adduser ghostadmin

Grant the new user sudo privileges and switch to that user:

usermod -aG sudo ghostadmin
su - ghostadmin

Ensure your system is up to date before proceeding:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade -y

Ghost uses NGINX as a reverse proxy to handle incoming web requests:

sudo apt-get install nginx -y

If you have UFW firewall enabled, allow NGINX traffic:

sudo ufw allow 'Nginx Full'

Install MySQL 8 as the database server for Ghost:

sudo apt-get install mysql-server -y

Configure the MySQL root user with password authentication. Ghost does not support socket-based authentication:

sudo mysql
-- Run these commands in the MySQL shell:
ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH 'mysql_native_password' BY 'your_secure_password';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit

Ghost requires Node.js v22 LTS. Install it using the NodeSource repository:

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

Verify the installation:

node --version
npm --version

Ghost-CLI is the official command-line tool for installing and managing Ghost installations:

sudo npm install ghost-cli@latest -g

Create a dedicated directory for your Ghost installation with proper ownership and permissions:

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/ghost
sudo chown ghostadmin:ghostadmin /var/www/ghost
sudo chmod 775 /var/www/ghost
cd /var/www/ghost

With all prerequisites in place, run the Ghost installation command:

ghost install

The installer will prompt you for several configuration options:

Once installation completes, access your Ghost admin panel by navigating to:

https://yourdomain.com/ghost

Create your admin account and configure your publication settings including site title, description, and branding.

For newsletter functionality and transactional emails, configure SMTP settings. Edit the Ghost configuration file:

cd /var/www/ghost
nano config.production.json

Add your mail configuration within the JSON structure:

"mail": {
  "transport": "SMTP",
  "options": {
    "host": "smtp.your-email-provider.com",
    "port": 587,
    "secure": false,
    "auth": {
      "user": "your-email@example.com",
      "pass": "your-smtp-password"
    }
  }
}

Restart Ghost to apply changes:

ghost restart