With the release of Ghost v6 and the announcement that Ghost CLI will be discontinued in future releases (from v7 onwards), I wonder for how much longer CLI will be supported? A year? More?
I started my self-hosting journey in January of this year and I’m still very much a newbie.
I am extremely thankful for the superb Ghost CLI step-by-step installation tutorial available on your site. It was so easy and clear, even a total newbie like me succeeded. On top of that, I followed your documentation to set up Mailgun and even installed Varnish Cache. So far so good.
Now, Docker is a completely different beast. I’ve been reading up about it and I’ve been trying to learn it but it does feel like my Everest.
So I wonder for how much longer I can stay on Ghost CLI before I will need to upgrade. Do I have a year? More?
Right now I don’t need ActivityPub integration (I already have 17 ActivityPub accounts!) or analytics (I pay for Plausible Analytics). But I’m wondering in terms of security and functionalities when it would feel like it’s time to upgrade from v5.
And yes, I understand this is a very broad question… but I’d like to understand how urgently I need to learn and master Docker. I know I could pay someone to move my site but I like to be self-sufficient.
Thanks in advance!
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Unfortunately I can’t say much on the CLI timeline/end of support since I don’t know myself! I switched to docker install when v6 came out, with little previous docker experience, and it definitely had its challenges, but once I got the hang of it it was pretty easy. If you have any specific issues or concerns with it I’m sure people here, myself included would be glad to help you out!
I’m assuming you’ve seen the Docker install guide, but I’ll send it here just in case.
Branching off of this, just realised there is a slight Ghost CLI timeline/end of support, it’s not exactly a timeline:
So, we’re moving toward Docker Compose as the officially supported way to install, run and update Ghost. This is now available as a developer preview, and will become the default from Ghost 7.0 onward.
So, I imagine that when Ghost 7.0 is released (given we just got 6.0, this will probably be a little while), the CLI will be discontinued. So you definitely have time to get more familiar with Docker!
Just to clarify, you can use the CLI to go to Ghost 6.0. You’ll probably want to do that, even if you wait for v7 to do the Docker switchover.
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Thank you for your responses Carolina & Cathy.
Yes, I know that CLI is still an option for v6 but I have been reluctant to update to it fearing that without ActivityPub being set-up, I may get error messages in the Dashboard.
It took me so much work to get my self-hosted instance running smoothly and everything is working perfectly now.
My gut feeling is that for my particular case, it’s best to wait a little while longer… for devs to contribute to v6 and to the Docker guide, smoothing things out and sorting out bugs…
So in the meantime I will just stay put on v5, practice Docker (with another VPS / a dummy domain) and make the move sometime in early 2026.
I just asked the question wondering the sense of urgency I should feel re: learning Docker. I had just gotten comfortable with CLI and this seems like a major undertaking. But I’m extremely motivated, as I truly love my Ghost site.
Thanks for your input!