A Beginner’s Guide to Installing and Customizing Ghost CMS on Ubuntu

If you’re a blogger or online publisher looking for a modern and user-friendly content management system (CMS), Ghost is a great choice. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the process of installing Ghost on an Ubuntu virtual private server (VPS) and customizing it to fit your needs.

Installing Ghost CMS

To get started with Ghost CMS, you’ll need to host it on a reliable provider. Hostinger’s Ghost VPS hosting service is an ideal solution that offers several key benefits, including preinstalled Ghost templates, malware scanner, automated weekly backups, and Kodee AI assistant.

If you’re not using Hostinger’s Ghost hosting, you can install Ghost CMS manually by following these steps:

Log in to your VPS dashboard and navigate to the Operating System section.
Select Ghost from the available options and click Change OS.
Follow the on-screen instructions to set a new password for your VPS. The Ghost CMS installation process will take about five minutes to complete.

Understanding the Ghost dashboard

Once Ghost is installed, you’ll need to familiarize yourself with the admin interface. The Ghost dashboard features a clean and intuitive layout, with quick access to sections like Posts, Pages, Tags, and Settings. You can easily manage everything from creating and editing content to configuring essential SEO settings.

Setting up a new Ghost site

Ghost makes it simple to set up your first website. After entering basic details during the initial site configuration, you can further customize your site’s title, description, language, and publication timezone in the Settings section. You can also link your social media accounts and enable password protection for added privacy.

Customizing themes and design

Ghost offers several premade themes that you can customize to create a unique design for your site. You can change the theme from the Design & branding section, where you can browse through available preinstalled options or explore the Ghost theme marketplace for more choices. The interface lets you preview your site’s appearance and adjust colors, typography, and layout without editing any code.

Creating and managing content

Once you’ve customized your site’s appearance, it’s time to start creating content. Ghost’s editor allows for rich content formatting, with support for images, videos, and HTML embeds. You can easily add headings, lists, quotes, and other text formatting options to structure your content. Ghost provides live previews and scheduling features, allowing you to see how your content will look when published and set a future date for automatic posting.

Using tags and categories

Tags are essential for organizing content and making it easier for you and your audience to find relevant posts. Ghost doesn’t use traditional categories, but you can effectively organize content using tags. You can create tags and customize their details, including names, descriptions, slugs, and metadata. Adding colors and cover images to tags can further enhance their visibility.

Managing users and permissions

As your site grows, you may need to add team members to help manage content. Ghost provides a complete roles and permissions system to manage users and control their access effectively. You can invite new team members, assign roles, and change user permissions as needed.

Improving search engine optimization (SEO)

Optimizing your Ghost site for search engines can increase its visibility and attract more visitors. Ghost provides built-in options to improve your site’s ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs), including meta title and description customization, clean URLs, alt text for images, mobile friendliness, and internal linking. You can also integrate external tools like Google Search Console (GSC) and Google Analytics (GA) for advanced SEO monitoring.

Integrating external services

You can connect your Ghost site to various third-party services to enhance its functionality. Ghost provides built-in support for platforms like Zapier, Slack, and Unsplash. If your preferred service is unavailable, you can create custom integrations using the Ghost API. Ghost also offers migration tools to move content, members, and subscriptions between platforms.

Troubleshooting common issues

While Ghost is user-friendly, you may encounter occasional issues during installation, setup, or regular use. Some common problems include missing dependencies, port conflicts, permission issues, 500 Internal Server Error, SSL certificate errors, and out-of-memory issues. We’ve provided troubleshooting steps for each of these issues to help you resolve them.

Conclusion

Ghost CMS is a powerful and flexible platform for creating content-driven websites. By following the steps in this guide, you can easily install Ghost on an Ubuntu VPS, customize its design, manage users, improve SEO, and troubleshoot common issues. Now that you’re familiar with Ghost, you can start building your first website and take full advantage of its features.

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