How to Run a Ghost Blog using Alibaba Cloud Simple Application Server

By Kelvin Galabuzi

What Is a Ghost Blog?

Ghost is a popular, free, open-source blogging platform used to create and publish content to users worldwide. The platform is written in Node.js and is well-known for being a fast Content Management System (CMS), which is a key attraction for many businesses developing web content.

Connect to a Simple Application Server (SAS)

The following steps describe how to connect to a Simple Application Server instance on the Alibaba Cloud platform:

Note: This article assumes that you already have a running Simple Application Service instance with a domain name associated with it.

Step 1: Log in to your Alibaba Cloud account and go to the Simple Application Service console. Access the Connect section under the Server Maintenance blade and click Set Password:

Step 2: Set the root user's password and click OK:

Step 3: Select Yes, restart the server immediately and click OK:

Step 4: Connect to your Simple Application Server instance via SSH using the root user:

Install Ghost on the Simple Application Server Instance

The following steps describe how to install Ghost to the Simple Application Server on Alibaba Cloud.

Step 1: Add a new user running the following command:

adduser ghostuser

Step 2: Add administrative permissions to the new user:

usermod -aG sudo ghostuser

Step 3: Log in as the new user:

su – ghostuser

-Step 4: Update the packages on your system running the following commands:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

Step 5: Install NGINX:

sudo apt-get install nginx

-Step 6: Open up the firewall to allow NGINX:

sudo ufw allow 'Nginx Full'

Step 7: Install the MySQL server:

sudo apt-get install mysql-server

Step 8: Access your MySQL database server and change the MySQL root user password:

sudo mysql

ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'ghostpass22';

Quit

Step 9: Install Node.js:

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_14.x | sudo -E bash

sudo apt-get install -y nodejs

Step 10: Install the Ghost CLI:

sudo npm install ghost-cli@latest -g

Step 11: Create a directory for your Ghost installation:

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/buzzyshirts

Step 12: Change the directory owner to the previously created user and set the directory permissions:

sudo chown ghostuser:ghostuser /var/www/buzzyshirts

sudo chmod 775 /var/www/buzzyshirts/

Step 13: Navigate to the newly created directory and run the ghost install command:

ghost install

Step 14: Insert the following parameters:
- Blog URL: Insert the URL of your blog
- MySQL hostname
- MySQL username
- MySQL password
- Ghost database name
- Ghost MySQL user: Insert yes
- Set up NGINX: Insert yes
- Set up SSL: Insert yes
- Email for SSL Certificate

Step 15: Access the Ghost admin panel using the URL provided after Ghost has started from the command line:

Step 16: Continue to the next step:

Step 17: After inviting some users (if you wish to), you will be directed to the administrator dashboard, where you can add some pages and posts to your blog:

Step 18: Now, visitors can access the blog via the public facing blog URL:

Community

How to Run a Ghost Blog using Alibaba Cloud Simple Application Server

What Is a Ghost Blog?

Connect to a Simple Application Server (SAS)

Install Ghost on the Simple Application Server Instance

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