Using Ghost to Build a Personal Blog

Scenarios

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 is running Ubuntu 24.04 and deployed with Docker. It comes pre-installed with Ghost and all required runtime environments. This section describes how to use the Ghost application image to build a personal blog.

If your Ghost application image was purchased before August 28, 2026, see Using Ghost to Build a Personal Blog (Historical Version) for instructions.

Resource Planning and Costs

Procedure

Step 1: Purchase FlexusL Instances

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

   Parameter	Example Value	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 Images	Ghost	Select the Ghost application image.
   Instance Specifications	2 vCPUs | 2 GiB of memory and 60 GiB of the system disk	Select instance specifications as needed.
   Instance Name	Ghost-Example	Customize an instance name that is easy to identify, for example, Ghost-Example.
   (Optional) Associated Services	Data Disk: 10 GiB Host Security Cloud Backup Vault: 70 GB	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	Set the required duration. FlexusL supports auto-renewal. Once enabled, FlexusL instances automatically renew before they expire. If you do not enable auto-renewal during purchase, you can still enable it after your FlexusL 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 Next: Confirm.

   On the displayed page, confirm the order details, read and select the agreement, and click Submit.

4. Select a payment method and complete the payment.
5. Go back to the FlexusL console and view the purchased FlexusL instance.

Step 2: Configure Security Groups

Add inbound security group rules to ensure that the application pre-installed in the image can be accessed.

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

   

3. On the Security Groups tab, click Add Rule to add the rules listed in the following table.

   The following only lists 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	Allows traffic forwarding within an application.
   1	Allow	IPv4	TCP: 443	0.0.0.0/0	Allows HTTPS access to the cloud server.
   1	Allow	IPv4	TCP: 2368	0.0.0.0/0	Allows external access to the application dashboard.

Step 3: Reset the 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.
   

   Wait for several minutes until the 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 Access to the application dashboard
   

   After the application is started, the initialization wizard page of the dashboard is displayed.

   Figure 2 Initialization wizard page of the Ghost dashboard
   
   

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

   • The port for accessing the dashboard is not enabled. Enable it as needed.
   • 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 Access to the application dashboard
   
   

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

   • The port for accessing the dashboard is not enabled. Enable it as needed.
   • 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 Ghost 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 bar of a local browser, enter http://server-EIP:2368 to access the web portal.

     If you have already added a domain name, you can also use http://wpwebsite.com:2368 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 the address bar of a local browser, enter http://server-EIP:2368 to view the created help menu and published documents.