Setting Up Self-hosted Ghost based Website

After deciding to go for Ghost as your publishing platform, you have a few choices about where to host it.

I have went through a lot of reading on the internet and I picked DigitalOcean.

There are so many more articles explaining the pros and cons on hosting on DigitalOcean so I am not going to talk any further about it. But below are two main reasons I went DigitalOcean.

Reasons Picking DigitalOcean I need to highlight

• The main reason is DigitalOcean offers a 1-click installation that you can setup your ghost instance in few minutes! The basic plan costs $5 which is much cheap than the Ghost(Pro) that is at $29.
• The 1-click App offers also SSL setup which I did not expect! This is really a no-brainer for someone who is lacking technical skills.

So here are how to set it up:

1. Get your domain name ready :)
2. Create an account in DigitalOcean (Click here to get $100 free credit)
3. Create a SSH key and add to your DigitalOcean account (Instruction)
4. Go here to start the 1-click App setup, and follow further instructions

P.S. One thing worth mentioning. The actual cost of hosting on DigitalOcean might be $6, one dollar more which is 20% of your droplet price, if you want to have a backup service. I am sure we all don't want to lose the most valuable asset which is the blog contents themselves!

Happy with your website?

So now you should have your ghost up and running, accounts setup and tried to make your first post. What's next? There are still so many to play with ghost!

1. Make your ghost website private
   This is to buy yourself some time to get your website organized before exposed to the whole world (literally the whole WORLD)
   You can find this option under the General Settings in the admin page.
2. Setting up some tags that you could better sort the posts
3. Start working on getting your website a good sets of logos. Not only a single size but for different purpose. e.g iso, big banners.. etc.
4. Setup Google Analytics!
5. And now finally... writing more contents for your website