Cover image for Getting Started with Ghost

Getting Started with Ghost

Author David Balderston , Andy Boutte , Kezz Bracey
Release Date: 2014/11/01
ISBN: 9781783985180
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Book Description

Reach out to the world and publish great content with the power of Ghost

In Detail

Designed to be fast, streamlined, and eminently customizable, Ghost allows you to focus on what really counts: publishing great content.

This book begins with a detailed overview of the Ghost blogging platform. You'll quickly learn how to use Ghost's sleek yet comprehensive approach to blog management. You can use the official dedicated hosting solution, a third-party host, or take control of everything using a VPS to install Ghost. Ghost's theme API exposes a rich array of customization based on the Handlebars.js template system. You'll learn the basics of Grunt and Stylus, which make theme customization easy, allowing you to create a great looking, responsive blog. By the end of this book, you'll have all you need to create a blog that's easy to use and attractive, enabling you to reach out to your audience like never before.

What You Will Learn

  • Get to grips with the fundamentals of Ghost
  • Explore the various hosting options available
  • Install and configure Ghost on a VPS
  • Gain a greater understanding of how Ghost differs from older CMS systems
  • Interact with Ghost's theme API, including using Grunt and Stylus to manipulate Handlebars.js
  • Prepare a Ghost theme template you can use for any kind of theme
  • Develop your own fast and responsive theme that attracts more readers to your blog

Downloading the example code for this book. You can download the example code files for all Packt books you have purchased from your account at http://www.PacktPub.com. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit http://www.PacktPub.com/support and register to have the files e-mailed directly to you.

Table of Contents

  1. Getting Started with Ghost
    1. Table of Contents
    2. Getting Started with Ghost
    3. Credits
    4. About the Authors
    5. About the Reviewers
    6. www.PacktPub.com
      1. Support files, eBooks, discount offers, and more
        1. Why subscribe?
        2. Free access for Packt account holders
    7. Preface
      1. What this book covers
      2. What you need for this book
      3. Who this book is for
      4. Conventions
      5. Reader feedback
      6. Customer support
        1. Downloading the example code
        2. Errata
        3. Piracy
        4. Questions
    8. 1. The First Steps with Ghost
      1. Automated installation of Ghost
        1. A background on Ghost's hosting
        2. Using Ghost's hosting solution
      2. Creating a blog on Ghost(Pro)
        1. Creating your user account
        2. Configure settings
        3. General settings
        4. User settings
      3. Content management
        1. The content management area
        2. Creating and deleting posts
        3. Converting a post to a page
        4. Modifying the permalink or publishing date
        5. Featured posts
        6. Editing existing posts
        7. The post editing area and inline preview
        8. Setting the title
        9. Saving a draft
        10. Adding tags
        11. The word count display
        12. Publishing and unpublishing posts
        13. Converting a post to page, plus permalink and date modification from the post editor
      4. Markdown, image upload, and inline HTML
        1. Image upload
        2. Inline HTML
      5. Hosting Ghost on other providers
        1. DigitalOcean
        2. Amazon EC2
      6. Summary
    9. 2. Manual Installation and Configuration of Ghost
      1. Manually installing Ghost on your local computer
        1. Command-line interface and SSH access
        2. Identifying your VPS operating system
        3. Installing Ghost on Ubuntu (VPS and local)
          1. Configuring Ghost on Ubuntu for VPS
        4. Installing Ghost on CentOS (VPS and local)
          1. Configuring Ghost on CentOS for VPS
        5. Installing Ghost on Mac OS X (local)
          1. Configuring Ghost on OS X
        6. Installing Ghost on Windows (local)
          1. Configuring Ghost on Windows
      2. Additional configuration for VPS usage
        1. Pointing a custom domain at Ghost (VPS)
        2. Hosting multiple Ghost blogs on the same VPS
          1. Nginx
        3. Keeping Ghost running (VPS)
          1. The forever process manager
        4. Adding SSL for security
        5. Upgrading Ghost
      3. Troubleshooting
        1. listen EADDRINUSE IN USE
        2. listen EADDRNOTAVAIL
        3. Command not found
        4. Places to find help
      4. Summary
    10. 3. Preparing for Theme Development
      1. Handlebars' logicless templating
        1. Double and triple curly braces
        2. Handlebars' paths
        3. The each and foreach block helpers
        4. The if helper
        5. The unless and else helpers
        6. Template tag parameters
        7. Comments
      2. Creating CSS via the Stylus preprocessor
        1. Variables
        2. Stylus syntax
        3. Mixins
      3. Setting up your environment
        1. Sublime Text 2 and Package Control
        2. Installing Stylus and highlighting Handlebars syntax
        3. Creating your project environment
        4. Installing Grunt
        5. Creating a project folder
        6. Installing the project compiler
        7. Set project options
        8. Run the watch task
        9. Minifying JavaScript
      4. Summary
    11. 4. Beginning Ghost Theme Development
      1. An overview of the currently available design options
        1. The themeable areas of a Ghost blog
        2. The primary theme design building blocks
        3. Extra design tools
        4. The current exclusions in Ghost
      2. Quick start theme quiz
        1. Default
        2. Index and tag archive
        3. Tag archive
        4. Post and page
        5. Post
      3. Creating your theme shell
        1. The setup file and folder structure
        2. Running the first CSS and JS compile into theme
        3. Adding basic code to template files and package.json
          1. package.json
          2. default.hbs
            1. The wrapper code and {{{body}}} tag
            2. Document <header> section and {{blog}} object
            3. The document <footer> section
            4. The {{ghost_foot}} tag and extra scripts
          3. Extra notes
          4. index.hbs
          5. post.hbs
          6. tag.hbs
          7. page.hbs
      4. Adding test content and activating your theme
      5. Summary
    12. 5. Applying Design Choices and Visual Styling
      1. Stylus files
        1. The import_stylus.styl file
        2. The meta folder
        3. The vars_mixins_etc folder
        4. The styles folder
      2. Applying the quick start theme quiz choices
        1. The default themes
          1. Overall layout – single column
          2. Overall layout – twin column
          3. Use the blog cover image – as site background
        2. Single column layout – header height auto
        3. Single column layout – header height large
        4. Single column layout – full screen header
        5. Index and tag archive
          1. Posts – excerpt, full or trimmed
          2. If excerpt – show post's first image/video/soundcloud
          3. Adding zebra striping – alternate colors every second post
          4. Featured posts – list first above default posts
          5. Applying styles to featured posts
          6. Applying styles to the posts with certain tags
          7. Tag archive
        6. Post and page
          1. If single column layout AND header height full/large – post header style
          2. Post
      3. Adding unique visual styling
        1. Adding icon fonts
        2. Setting image fallbacks
        3. Example design – twin column visual styling
        4. Example responsiveness – twin column design media queries
      4. Summary
    13. A. Markdown Syntax and Ghost Shortcut Keys
    14. Index