Using Ghost to Build a Personal Blog

Application Scenario

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, and offer paid subscriptions to members. The Ghost application image uses Ubuntu 22.04 and is deployed using Docker. The Ghost application and the required operating environment have been preconfigured in the Ghost application image. This section describes how to use the Ghost application image to build a personal blog.

Resource Planning and Costs

Process

Step 1: Purchase FlexusL Instances

1. Log in to the FlexusLconsole and click Buy FlexusL.
2. Specify required parameters for the FlexusL instance.
   

   Parameter	Example	Description
   Region	CN-Hong Kong	For low network latency and quick resource access, select the region nearest to your target users. After a FlexusL instance is created, the region cannot be changed. Exercise caution when selecting a region.
   Application Image	Ghost	Select the Ghost application image.
   Instance Specifications	2 vCPUs | 2 GiB | System disk 60 GiB	Select instance specifications as needed.
   Instance Name	Ghost-Example	Customize an instance name that is easy to identify, for example, Ghost-Example.
   (Optional) Associated Service	Data Disk: 10 GiB Host Security Cloud Backup Vault: 70 GiB	You can bundle any of EVS, HSS (basic edition), and CBR to your FlexusL instances as needed and set specifications as needed.
   Required Duration	1 month	The minimum duration of a purchase is one month and the maximum duration is three years. Auto-renew is enabled by default, which means the purchased FlexusL instances will be automatically renewed before they expire. If you do not enable auto-renew during the purchase process, you can still enable it later after the instances are created. For more information about auto-renewal rules, see Auto-Renewal Rules.
   Quantity	1	Set the number of FlexusL instances to be purchased.

3. Click Buy Now and complete the payment as prompted.
4. Go back to the FlexusL console and view the purchased FlexusL instance.

Step 2: Configure Security Groups

Add inbound security group rules to allow traffic from ports 80, 443, 9000, and 9001 to access the application.

1. Log in to the FlexusL console and click a resource card to go to the instance details page.
2. In the navigation pane on the left, choose Cloud Servers. Locate the server and click its name.

   

3. On the Security Groups tab, click Add Rule. In the displayed dialog box, add rules displayed in the following figure and click OK.

   The following figure only displays common rules. You can add more rules as needed.

   

   Table 1 Security group rules

   Priority	Action	Type	Protocol & Port	Source	Description
   1	Allow	IPv4	TCP: 80	0.0.0.0/0	Specifies the internal forwarding port of an application.
   1	Allow	IPv4	TCP: 443	0.0.0.0/0	Allows HTTPS traffic to FlexusL instances.
   1	Allow	IPv4	TCP: 9000	0.0.0.0/0	Allows external access to the application O&M page.
   1	Allow	IPv4	TCP: 9001	0.0.0.0/0	Allows external access to the application dashboard.

Step 3: Reset a Password

A FlexusL instance does not have an initial password. After creating a FlexusL instance, set a password for the FlexusL instance.

1. In the Image area on the Overview page of the FlexusL console, click Access to go to the application dashboard and check whether the application has been up and running. If yes, go to the next step.
   NOTICE:

   Wait for several minutes until the image with the pre-installed application is up and running. Then, you can perform operations such as restarting or stopping the instance, or resetting the password. Otherwise, the initial password may become invalid and you cannot log in to the application dashboard.

   Figure 1 Entry to the application dashboard
   

   After the application is started, the initialization wizard page of the dashboard is displayed, as shown in Figure 2.

   Figure 2 Initialization wizard page of the Gost dashboard
   
   NOTE:

   If the dashboard is not properly displayed, check the following causes:

   • The port for accessing the dashboard is not allowed. Check whether the port is allowed based on Step 2: Configure Security Groups.
   • The dashboard is being started. Try again later.
2. In the resource card, choose > Reset Password, and perform operations as prompted.

   For details, see Resetting the Password for a FlexusL Instance.

   Figure 3 Resetting a password
   

Step 4: Initialize Ghost

Application images use code-based Ubuntu. They provide graphical user interfaces to make your operations easier. You need to initialize the application dashboard upon the first login. Then you can directly log in to the dashboard from the FlexusL console afterwards.

1. In the Image area on the Overview page of the FlexusL console, click Access to go to the application dashboard.
   Figure 4 Entry to the application dashboard
   
   NOTE:

   If the dashboard is not properly displayed, check the following causes:

   • The port for accessing the dashboard is not allowed. Check whether the port is allowed based on Step 2: Configure Security Groups.
   • The dashboard is being started. Try again later.
2. Set the website title, username, email address, and password, and click Create account & start publishing to create an account and deploy the application.

   The email address and password are credentials for logging in to the dashboard.

   Figure 5 Initialization wizard page of the Gost dashboard
   
3. Check the dashboard and web portal of the application.
   • After logging in to the dashboard, information similar to the following is displayed.

     

   • In an address box of a local browser, enter http://<Server-EIP>:9001 to access the web portal.

     If you have added a domain name, you can also use http://<wpwebsite.com>:9001 to access the web portal.

     

After the Ghost application is initialized, you can publish your posts on the dashboard.

Step 5: Publish a Post

1. On the dashboard, click the setting icon and click Navigation to add a menu.

   

2. Edit the menu name and URL and click Save.

   

3. Select Tags and click New tag to set a tag type for the blog post.

   

4. Choose Posts, click New post in the upper right corner, and click Publish.

   After editing the image, title, and content for a post, you can add tags to the post for classification.

   

5. In an address bar of a local browser, enter http://<Server-EIP>:9001 to view the created help menu and released documents.