A fully open source, adaptable platform for building and running a modern online publication. We power blogs, magazines and journalists from Zappos to Sky News.

Your local blog installation

mkdir myblog
cd myblog
ghost install local

[ldoguin@caolila:~/myblog]$ ls
content/  current@  versions/  config.development.json

rm content/themes/casper/
cp -r current/content/themes/casper/ content/themes/
git init
cd content/themes/
git submodule add https://github.com/curiositry/mnml-ghost-theme
git submodule add https://github.com/zutrinken/attila/

Your blog on Clever Cloud

clever create --type node myblog # create a node application
clever addon create mysql-addon --plan s_sml myblogsql # create a MySQL database
clever service link-addon myblogsql # Link the database to the application
clever env set NODE_ENV production # setup environment variable for production
clever env set CC_PRE_RUN_HOOK ./clevercloud.sh # run a specific script before the build phase
clever domain add mysuperblog.cleverapps.io # Add a test domain name

Installing Ghost for your Clever Cloud Application

#!/bin/sh
npm install -g ghost-cli # install ghost-cli on Clever Cloud
mkdir ghost # create a folder for a new local instance of Ghost
cd ghost
ghost install local
ghost stop
cp ../config.production.json . # copy the production configuration

Configure Ghost for Production

{
  "server": {
    "port": 8080,
    "host": "0.0.0.0"
  },
  "database": {
    "client": "mysql"
  },
  "mail": {
    "transport": "Direct"
  },
  "process": "local",
  "logging": {
    "level": "debug",
    "transports": [
      "stdout"
    ]
  },
  "paths": {
    "contentPath": "../../../content/"
  }
}

clever env set database__connection__host btxgsb7xrhkuydlmb3zr-mysql.services.clever-cloud.com
clever env set database__connection__user ukf6bzfjgd2eg0iw
clever env set database__connection__password 87xRmGJljF3aSgGullm
clever env set database__connection__database btxgsb7xrhkuydlmb3zr
clever env set database__connection__port 20222
clever env set url https://mysuperblog.cleverapps.io/

Run Ghost

{
    "name": "ghost",
    "version": "0.1.0",
    "description": "",
    "scripts": {
        "start": "ghost run --dir ghost"
    },
    "devDependencies": {
    },
    "dependencies": {
    }
}

Ignoring local development files

.ghost-cli
config.development.json
current
versions

Git push to Production

git add clevercloud.sh package.json config.production.json content
git commit -m "Initial commit"
clever deploy

UPDATE: This article is a little bit old, but some users decided to write a more recent documentation here on how to deploy a Ghost blog on Clever Cloud

1. Retrieve Ghost files

In order to download Ghost files, just visit this page : https://en.ghost.org/download/

Extract the file and put the folder in your favorite place.

2. Open an account on Clever Cloud

Just visit the signup page and follow the steps.

3. Create an application

Add a Node.js application.

More information available in our documentation : http://doc.clever-cloud.com/clever-cloud-overview/add-application/

4. Create a File System Bucket

Let’s store the data!

When you deploy an application, a new instance is created. If you do not persist content files like articles and images, you will lose them between two deployments.

In order to store these files, we have created FS (File System) buckets.

Just add one in the services section.

More information can be found in our documentation : https://doc.clever-cloud.com/databases-and-services/fs-buckets/

You will receive the credentials by email. At the root of the application, create a clevercloud/buckets.json file with the following structure:

[
  {
    "bucket" : "bucketId",
    "folder" : "/content"
  }
]

It tells the application to use the files located in the content directory in the FS Bucket.

With the FTP credentials, upload the files located in your local content folder to the remote FTP folder. At the root of the FTP folder, you should have /data, /images, etc. folders.

5. Ghost Configuration

You have to tell Ghost how you would like to use it by editing the /config.js.

In both development and production sections:

• change host to 0.0.0.0
• change port to 8080

6. Deploy the application

Last operation, push the local files to the cloud!

Deploy your application on Clever Cloud is very easy. Just type the following commands:

• init the git repository : git init
• create a .gitignore file like this:

node_modules
content

• add all files: git add .
• commit: git commit -m firstcommit
• push to Clever Cloud: git push <ccremoteurl> master

You can then check the logs in the left panel logs section.

Not happy with SQLite? Go MySQL

If you do not want to deal with SQLite storage, you can store your data in MySQL.

To do this, replace the following section:

database: {
  client: 'sqlite3',
  connection: {
    filename: path.join(__dirname, '/content/data/ghost-test.db')
  }
}

with:

database: {
  client: 'mysql',
  connection: {
    host: 'yourhostname',
    user: 'yourusername',
    password: 'yourpassword',
    database: 'yourdbname',
    charset: 'utf8'
  }
}

You can create a MySQL database on Clever Cloud in 5 seconds.

Want to send emails?

Ghost require external mail providers so that you can send emails. Some of them are Mailjet, Mailchimp, Mailgun or Gmail.

The following example allow you to send emails with your Gmail/Google Apps accound from Ghost :

mail: {
  transport: 'SMTP',
  fromaddress: 'myemail@address.com',
  options: {
    auth: {
      user: 'youremail@gmail.com',
      pass: 'yourpassword'
    }
  }
}

Feel free to ask us if you have any questions about this article.