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Ghost App

About

Ghost makes it simple to publish content online, grow an audience with email newsletters, and make money from premium memberships.

Structured data

Ghost outputs basic meta tags to allow rich snippets of your content to be recognised by popular social networks. Currently there are 3 supported rich data protocols which are output in {{ghost_head}}:

The Cloudron app enables output of structured data by default.

Gravatar

For privacy reasons, Gravatar functionality is disabled by default. You can re-enable this by editing the useGravatar field in /app/data/config.production.json using the File Manager. Be sure to restart the app after editing the config file.

Importing

You can import content from another Ghost installation from Settings -> Labs -> Import content.

If the JSON file is large, the import might fail. To fix this:

  • Give the app more memory (say 2GB).
  • Increase the SQL service memory limit to atleast 2GB each. This can be reverted back to default after import.
  • Next, use the File Manager to edit /app/data/env to adjust the NodeJS max-old-space-size limit. Set it to 2GB using a line like this export NODE_OPTIONS="--max-old-space-size=2048"
  • Restart Ghost and try the import again.

Subscribe Button

The Subscribe button lets uses subscribe to your blog. If you don't use this feature, you can disable the functionality as follows:

  • Settings -> Membership -> change Subscription access to Nobody. This will remove the floating Subscribe button at the bottom of the page. You can also remove the button from the Portal using Settings -> Membership -> Customize Portal.

  • To remove the Subscribe button on the nav bar, you have to adjust the theme or inject custom CSS as suggested here.

Email

Ghost sends two types of emails:

  • Transactional emails - used for password reset, member sign up confirmation, invites etc.
  • Bulk emails - for newsletters. This requires Mailgun.

Transactional emails

Like all apps, Ghost sends out emails via Cloudron's mail server. You can setup a relay in Cloudron's Email view to configure how these mails are ultimately sent out.

There are three email addresses in Ghost:

  • Password Reset & Invitation - This address can be changed using the Mail FROM address set in the Email section of the app.

  • Support email address - defaults to noreply@app.example.com.

  • Newsletter email address - defaults to noreply@app.example.com.

When trying to change the Support and Newsletter email addresses, to say newaddress@example.com, Ghost will send a confirmation mail from noreply@example.com to newaddress@example.com. The noreply@ address is hardcoded and cannot be changed.

Out of the box, Cloudron will block this confirmation mail because it does not allow apps to send emails with arbitrary FROM addresses. To remedy this:

  • In Cloudron dashboard, go to Email -> Select Domain -> Settings -> Enable Masquerading. This will allow Ghost to send emails with noreply@example.com. Do not turn off this setting later because Ghost will need to send email as the Support email address for subscription confirmation.

  • Create the support@ and newsletter@ mailboxes in example.com. This is required to receive the confirmation mails.

  • Change the addresses inside Ghost:

    • The Support email address can be changed in Membership -> Portal Settings -> Customize Portal -> Account page settings . Click on the received confirmation link.
    • The Newsletter email address can be changed in Email newsletter -> Newsletter -> Customize -> Email addresses -> Sender email address. Click on the received confirmation link.

  • Click on the received confirmation links.

See this forum post for a step by step guide.

Bulk emails

Newsletters are sent out to members using Mailgun. Mailgun is required. You can sign up with Mailgun and setup the API Key at Settings -> Email newsletter.