ActivityPub: SITE_MISSING error - Need manual registration

Developer help Self-hosting
1

I’m trying to enable ActivityPub on my self-hosted Ghost instance but encountering a SITE_MISSING error from ap.ghost.org. Based on similar threads here, it appears my site needs to be manually registered.

Setup Details:

  • Ghost version: 6.2.0

  • Installation: Self-hosted via Ghost CLI on Ubuntu 22.04

  • Domain: cms.anlgs.com (points directly to DigitalOcean droplet, no Cloudflare)

  • ACTIVITYPUB_TARGET: https://ap.ghost.org/ (confirmed via systemctl)

  • nginx configuration: Correctly proxying /.ghost/activitypub/*, /.well-known/webfinger, /.well-known/nodeinfo, and /.well-known/host-meta to ap ghost

Issue: When I enable the Network feature in Ghost Admin, Ghost logs:

ERROR No webhook secret found - cannot initialise

When I test the site with browser.pub or curl the .well-known endpoints, ap ghost returns:

{
“error”: “Forbidden”,
“code”: “SITE_MISSING”
}

What I’ve tried:

  • Toggling Network OFF/ON multiple times

  • Restarting Ghost service

  • Verifying all nginx proxy paths are correct

  • Confirming ACTIVITYPUB_TARGET environment variable is set

It appears my site was never registered with ap ghost. Could someone from the Ghost team please manually register cms.anlgs.com with ap ghost?

Thank you!

1 Like
Self hosted Ghost 6 on Raspberry Pi 5 via Cloudflare Tunnel: ActivityPub routes (.well-known, /.ghost/activitypub) failing with 403
2

Bumping this. I’m still seeing the same error. Can someone from Ghost help?

3

I’m facing the same issue, does anybody figured it out? I mean, without using Caddy and/or Traeffik, because we are using Nginx.

4

Had the same issue. Managed to ‘register’ my site and get it working just by turning Network off, refreshing the page, and then turning Network back on.

This guide helped: How to Enable ActivityPub on a Self-Hosted Ghost 6 Blog

5

Thanks for sharing, I’m trying to connect to my own ActivityPub service (not using Ghost’s one) so this solution is not working for me.

The Cloudflare mention on this blog should be very useful for those who want to use the Ghost AP.