Happy Ghost 6.0 Day 🎉! Quick question

Developer help Self-hosting
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Congratulations on the 6.0 release, thanks everybody involved for your hard work in bringing these cool new features to us self-hosters. :slightly_smiling_face:

Quick question, I noticed in the new Installation Guides, the Ubuntu installation guide doesn’t mention anything about the new ActivityPub and Tinybird analytics features.

However the new Docker Compose installation guide does mention those and how to install them.

Does this mean I have to switch over to the Docker Compose method if I want to use the ActivityPub and Tinybird features?

I’m currently self-hosting on Ubuntu 24.04 with NGINX and I haven’t upgraded Ghost yet as I wanted to make sure before proceeding.

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Hi @ghostdan, the old (it’s not changed) Ubuntu install guide doesn’t mention them no, but the update guide you’d need to follow to upgrade an existing site is here:

That does have a callout to explain you need to switch if you want the new Analytics feature.

I’ll add the same callout to the ubuntu install guide.

To be clear, the docker compose method is in preview, not yet a recommended setup :slight_smile:

You can use our hosted ActivityPub service with any self-installed Ghost, up to the documented limits: How To Install Ghost With Docker (preview) - Ghost Developer Docs

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My understanding (not that I’ve gotten my self-hosted server there yet today) is that activitypub is supported (via proxying ap.ghost.org), but analytics is not. Having said that, I don’t have it working, so it might not be!

(Oops, Hannah is faster than I am.)

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Oh good point - ActivityPub is supported if you want to use the hosted version, but I need to add docs for how to enable it on an existing site.

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Ah ok, I have a couple new installations I need to run on a new server in addition to an update on an old server, so hadn’t made it over to the update guide yet. Thanks for pointing out the callout on the update guide. :slightly_smiling_face:

Understood if I want to use Tinybird analytics I’d need to move over to Docker. I’ll have to give it a think, but that’s for another post. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

Thanks for the quick answer, and again for all the hard work in 6.0. Looking forward to upgrading. :partying_face:

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I’ve updated the Ubuntu guide and general hosting guides to have sections explaining the new setup.

Next: how to make an existing Ghost-CLI site work with AP

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I am excited about the new release! Great job!

Now I have to update my 4 ghost blogs.

I am running Ghost with docker compose already.

I planned to start a new ghost site with the official docker-compose and then dump and import the old database.

Questions:

  • There are migrations needed. Is it possible to import a ghost 5 database into a ghost 6 application?
  • Will there be a mismatch between some other components, like activitypub or the analytics? Not sure how much they depend on each other yet.
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You can always do an export and import into a Ghost site, as long as the site you’re importing into is on the same or higher version as the site the export was generated from.

So yes, you can export on 5 and import into 6.

However, Ghost’s import/export feature is content-only. If you use members, the import/export features are lossy.

If you already have a docker or otherwise not Ghost-CLI Ghost site running v5 and you want to migrate to our docker compose setup, I think this might be the best way to migrate… but it’s totally off the cuff so take it with a pinch of salt:

  1. Follow the first part of the Migration guide for Ghost CLI - a.k.a do the clone and config steps of a fresh docker install
  2. In .env pin the GHOST_VERSION to 5
  3. Do the install and run step
  4. Yay! Now you have a brand new v5 site on the new docker tooling
  5. Use mysqldump to dump your existing mysql database and import it into the new mysql service.
  6. Manually copy all the stuff from your /content directory into your ./data/ghost directory ( ghost-docker/compose.yml at main · TryGhost/ghost-docker · GitHub )
  7. Now your site is running on the new docker tooling
  8. Unpin the Ghost version, and do the update steps to get on to 6.0
  9. Then follow the rest of the install guide to enable web analytics and activity pub

Something like that!

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Maybe I have an easier idea.

  1. Current “custom” docker compose setup with v5.
  2. Then switch the tag on the “custom” compose to v6. (This should do the update for the database migrations as well)
  3. Keep volumes from the custom compose and migrate to the official compose that offers more things (activitypub, etc)

That way, I could upgrade to Ghost 6 without all the new things and therefore keep a clean install.

Am I missing something?

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The steps above were trying to make something that made zero assumptions about the existing setup and loosely follow the migration path.

If you have volumes setup already and know how that stuff works, then yeah you’re on to a much quicker solution!

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I also really liked the new feature, congratulations, Ghost team!

It prompted me to update my version of Ghost, which was frozen. My app is self-hosted, and after installing version 6, I was able to access Ghost. After I started following some accounts, the app crashed and now just stays on this “Loading interrupted” screen. What should I do?

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You’re going to need to share a lot more details. Ghost cli or docker? Self host activitypub or use ap.ghost.org? Share your prizy config file? Is your dashboard on the same or different url and does it redirect? What errors are in the browser console and what are on your ghost logs?

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Not to sound direct, but why is my post getting hijacked with questions about problems unrelated to my original question (which was solved already)?