"Coming Soon" page + private blogging

I have some WordPress development experience and am trying out Ghost for a new project. The private blogging feature is great for building out the initial content prior to going public with the site, but I’d like the main URL – www.example.com – to display a custom, static HTML, “Coming Soon” page instead of redirecting to www.example.com/private/

I’m aware that I could simply customize the private.hbs template with my “Coming Soon” info, and that would work for me if I could change the redirect path to something more friendly than “/private/”, e.g., www.example.com/coming-soon/

Any ideas how to achieve that?

Currently you can’t do that via config, maybe you should be able to though!

If you want to dig into the code here is where you’ll wanna start - https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost/blob/master/core/server/apps/private-blogging/lib/middleware.js#L12

Hope this helps :relaxed:

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Thanks, @egg … Yes, it helps a lot! This will be my first go at server-side javascript coding, so I hope you don’t mind a few more questions:

  1. Aside from the evil of hacking core files, would simply changing line 12 from…
    const privateRoute = '/private/';
    …to…
    const privateRoute = '/coming-soon/';
    …be enough to change the URL to which anonymous users are redirected?

  2. Is there a way to change that constant without modifying a core file?

  3. Would I also need to change ‘private’ to ‘coming-soon’ in line 7 of index.js, here:

https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost/blob/master/core/server/apps/private-blogging/index.js#L7

PS: Yes, I’d love to see this as a config option!

No probs!

Looks like you’re right about 3 - you’ll probably want to change that too :slight_smile:

As for changing it without modifying core files - nope not at the moment, we’re open source and accept PRs though!

Good luck, have fun :tada:

Followup: The above described changes appear to have worked. Here’s a summary for anyone who want’s to replicate what I did:

  1. Download a copy of your active theme from your site’s admin backend, at the bottom of www.yoursite.com/ghost/#/settings/design and unzip it.

  2. In this downloaded copy of your theme, save a copy of private.hbs, https://raw.githubusercontent.com/TryGhost/Ghost/master/core/server/apps/private-blogging/lib/views/private.hbs , then open it in a text editor.

  3. On line 26, add these id and style attributes to hide the password form:
    <section class="gh-flow-content" id="private" style="display:none">.

  4. I put my “Coming Soon” content just above this <section> tag, but it can go anywhere except in that section. It can be a whole page or just a single line, like <h1 style="text-align:center; margin: 25vh 5%">YourSite.com is coming soon!</h1>

  5. At the end of the template, just above </body>, add this link:
    <a style="position:fixed; z-index:9999; bottom:0; left:0; line-height:1; font-size:24px; cursor:pointer" onclick="document.getElementById('private').style.display='block'">&nbsp;&nbsp;</a>
    This will create an invisible link in the lower-left corner of the page, which you can click to unhide the password form.

  6. Re-zip your theme folder and upload it via the same admin panel from which you downloaded it.

If you want the URL redirect path to be /coming-soon/ (or whatever you like) instead of /private/, make the two edits described in the previous posts. I did it via SSH:

ssh root@your-domain-or-ip-address
su - ghost-mgr
# Your file paths may vary:
cd /var/www/ghost
# Edit the files with your preferred editor:
nano /var/www/ghost/versions/2.9.0/core/server/apps/private-blogging/index.js
# In line 7 of index.js, change 'private' to 'coming-soon'. Save changes. Then...
nano /var/www/ghost/versions/2.9.0/core/server/apps/private-blogging/lib/middleware.js
# In line 12 of middleware.js, change '/private/' to '/coming-soon/'.
# Save changes. Then activate the changes by restarting Ghost...
ghost restart
# I assume the site was down during the restart, but it only took a few seconds.

The redirect URL is still a bit ugly because of Ghost’s added query string, /coming-soon/?r=%2F, but it’s tolerable. If I had more time to waste I’d figure out how to lose the query. :)

Thanks again, @egg, for your support.

PS: This approach could also be used for taking a site offline temporarily for maintenance, major upgrades, etc.

3 Likes

Thanks for documenting!

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