Daniel's ramblings

Set up Ghost blog in Ubuntu 14.04

ghost-tag ghost-blog ubuntu setup-tag fresh

Here I'd like to walkthrough how to setup Ghost blog 0.5.10 with Apache2 and MySQL. Which is the setup I currently have. I may also write up how to set it up with NginX and SQLite later on.

Setting up Ghost blog 0.5.10 with Apache2 and MySQL

System Info:

Fresh install of Ubuntu 14.04 64bit server.

$ cat /etc/*-release
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=14.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=trusty
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS"
NAME="Ubuntu"
VERSION="14.04.2 LTS, Trusty Tahr"
ID=ubuntu
ID_LIKE=debian
PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS"
VERSION_ID="14.04"
HOME_URL="http://www.ubuntu.com/"
SUPPORT_URL="http://help.ubuntu.com/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="http://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/"

$ uname -ri
3.16.0-31-generic x86_64

Install NVM to get NodeJS:

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v0.24.0/install.sh | bash

Ghost Blog currently requires NodeJS version 0.10.x I have found 0.10.24 to work so I stuck to it.

Use NVM to install NodeJS.

$ nvm install 0.10.24
$ nvm alias default 0.10.24

Restart your terminal emulator to have nvm working.

update apt-get and install apache2 and mysql-server:

$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install apache2 mysql-server -y

Follow MySQL root password instructions to finalize installation.

Download Ghost blog from their website (this download is for 0.5.10, check Ghost blog for the latest version:

$ curl -L https://ghost.org/zip/ghost-0.5.10.zip -o ghost-0.5.10.zip && unzip ghost-0.5.10.zip -d ./ghost-0.5.10 && cd ghost-0.5.10 && npm install --production

npm install --production will install all necessary packages for production. if you want to get all packages for developing ghost, just do npm install.

Configure MySQL:

Login to mysql client as root

$ mysql -uroot -p
Enter password:

create user and database for ghost:

mysql> CREATE DATABASE ghostdb;
mysql> CREATE USER 'ghost'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY '<password>';
mysql> GRANT ALL on ghostdb.* to 'ghost'@'localhost';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

Configure Ghost config file at ~/ghost-0.5.10/config.js:

File doesn't exist yet so we'll copy the example:

$ cp config.example.js config.js

and now edit, I use vim:

$ vim config.js

MySQL config: http://support.ghost.org/config/#database

Config file is separated into 3 sections: production, development, and testing. There's also testing-mysql and testing-pg which are used by Travis, an Automated testing run through GitHub.

production: {
  url: 'http://192.168.3.76/',
  mail: {},
  database: {
    client: 'mysql',
    connection: {
      host     : '127.0.0.1',
      user     : 'ghost',
      password : '<password>',
      database : 'ghostdb',
      charset  : 'utf8'
    }
  },
  server: {
  // Host to be passed to node's `net.Server#listen()`
  host: '127.0.0.1',
  // Port to be passed to node's `net.Server#listen()`, for iisnode set this to `process.env.PORT`
  port: '2368'
  }
}

url should point to the domain assigned to the IP. Since this is for an internal testing server I just used the LAN IP address.

database will need to be edited completely.

Under 'testing-mysql' you can see an example of how to configure it, or follow the snippet above as a guide.

Note: if you wish to access ghost without apache2 from LAN and not rerouted from apache2 or nginx, change host: '127.0.0.1' to the IP assigned to the server. Otherwise, you can keep it as 127.0.0.1, requests will be from apache2 or nginx and that's localhost (127.0.0.1).

I believe production and testing are supposed to be set with different databases in case something gets corrupt during testing. Since this is all testing, I just used the same database.

Configure apache2:

we need to make a config file for the blog in sites-available and enable it, along with other mods and optimize mpm-prefork. enable proxy pass mod:

$ sudo a2enmod proxy && sudo a2enmod proxy_http
$ sudo service apache2 restart

disable the default site config:

$ sudo a2dissite 000-default.conf

make copy or create a new config file for ghost:

$ sudo cp 000-default.conf ghost.conf
$ sudo vim ghost.conf

<VirtualHost *:80>
  # The ServerName directive sets the request scheme, hostname and port that
  # the server uses to identify itself. This is used when creating
  # redirection URLs. In the context of virtual hosts, the ServerName
  # specifies what hostname must appear in the request's Host: header to
  # match this virtual host. For the default virtual host (this file) this
  # value is not decisive as it is used as a last resort host regardless.
  # However, you must set it for any further virtual host explicitly.
  # ServerName ghost.local

  ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost

  # Available loglevels: trace8, ..., trace1, debug, info, notice, warn,
  # error, crit, alert, emerg.
  # It is also possible to configure the loglevel for particular
  # modules, e.g.
  #LogLevel info ssl:warn

  <ifmodule mod_proxy.c>
    ProxyRequests Off
    <Location />
      ProxyPreserveHost on
      ProxyPass http://127.0.0.1:2368/
      ProxyPassReverse http://127.0.0.1:2368/
    </Location>
  </ifmodule>

  ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/ghost_error.log
  CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/ghost_access.log combined

  # For most configuration files from conf-available/, which are
  # enabled or disabled at a global level, it is possible to
  # include a line for only one particular virtual host. For example the
  # following line enables the CGI configuration for this host only
  # after it has been globally disabled with "a2disconf".
  #Include conf-available/serve-cgi-bin.conf
</VirtualHost>

uncomment ServerName and enter your domain pointed to the blog.

add:

ProxyRequests Off
<ifmodule mod_proxy.c>
  <Location />
    ProxyPreserveHost on
    ProxyPass http://127.0.0.1:2368/
    ProxyPassReverse http://127.0.0.1:2368/
  </Location>
</ifmodule>

Disable ProxyRequests to disable forward proxy, this can be a security risk. ifmodule means if the module mod_proxy is enabled, use these settings.

A reverse proxy is activated using the ProxyPass directive or the [P] flag to the RewriteRule directive. It is not necessary to turn ProxyRequests on in order to configure a reverse proxy.

ProxyPassReverse Adjusts the URL in HTTP response headers sent from a reverse proxied server.

For more information: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_proxy.html#x-headers

prepend the log files with ghost for easier debugging later on:

ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/ghost_error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/ghost_access.log combined

save and close, then enable the site:

$ sudo a2ensite ghost.conf && sudo service apache2 reload

Start ghost:

NODE_ENV=production npm start or npm start --production Ctrl + C to exit out.

Automate starting Ghost blog:

We'll use pm2 to manage our ghost blog:

$ npm install pm2 -g

Start ghost blog with pm2 from ./ghost-0.5.10:

$ NODE_ENV=production pm2 start index.js --name ghost

to stop pm2 stop ghost

to restart pm2 restart ghost

Resources:

NVM GitHub: https://github.com/creationix/nvm

MySQL config: http://support.ghost.org/config/#database

Apache2 Proxy info: http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_proxy.html#x-headers

Making A Ghost theme from scratch.

This includes the use of schema.org, and other SEO optimizations.

http://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/adding-ghost-template-tags-and-markup--webdesign-15803