Is there a way to use ghost cms for free

Developer help Installation
21

Cool. I run mine on the $6 version (new intel). Works like butter in the sun.

22

I just saw you already dismissed this option because they donā€™t have the particular theme you want for free.

But for completeness of the thread for others who look here, I wanted to include this option.

23

Did you try new AMD?

24

I highly recommend Qovery. Itā€™s a new service and it allows you to set up your whole Ghost blog from a template, so you donā€™t have to install it.

There are a few downsides:

  • No(t yet) access to SSH or sth like Ghost CLI
  • No direct access to your image files via your filesystem( ā†’ I found a workaround for that)
  • Setting up a custom domain does requires a little bit of work, but isnā€™t very complicated

But all in all I think itā€™s a great way to host Ghost for free without installing it.

1 Like
25

As a noob, I do not know what Docker or CI/CD or DevOps or even WWW meanā€¦but I know a shiny new tool when I see itā€¦this Qovery thing seems promisingā€¦I was once able to install a Ghost instance on Heroku using a starter, it was simple ā€¦and Qovery claims itā€™s a Heroku killer:

Thanks for sharing @ralphjsmit and please tell us more if you canā€¦would love to read a guide on your blog about how this works

26

Hey Joseph, installing Ghost on Qovery is very simple (step 1 - 5). Configuring though is a little bit more work and involves some basic use of Git and the command line.

  1. Login to Qovery with your GitHub account
  2. Create a new Project
  3. Create a new Application > From a template > Ghost
  4. Follow the installation steps. Qovery will create a GitHub repo in your account.
  5. You now have your own Ghost installation on a domain like ghost-router-XXXXXXXXX.qovery.io.

Custom domain
6. Add a custom domain like this: Custom domain | Qovery
7. Change your .env file to this:
url=$QOVERY_ROUTER_GHOST_ROUTER_CUSTOM_DOMAIN_URL

How to ā€˜ownā€™ your content
Your content exists of two things:

  1. Uploaded images (+ themes)
  2. Members, posts, etc.
  • You donā€™t have access to the /content/ folder if you want to host for free.
  • I found a workaround for this involving Netlify. It is a bit to complicated to explain here.
  • All members, posts, etc can simple be exported from inside Ghost and imported in a new (fresh) installation at will.

How to update
Add a new commit in GitHub

Blog post
I totally agree that this can seem very daunting as a beginner. One year ago Iā€™d have found this also daunting :blush::wink:
I absolutely plan to write a blog post about the whole process in June, Iā€™ll keep you updated and post it here when itā€™s ready.

1 Like
27

Thanks, looks promising, I was able to get to deploying stage in under 2 minutes

28

Can confirm Qovery works easy-peasyā€¦magicalā€¦it does use SQLite3 as the database (which is not recommended, as it creates issues when membership hits 100s)ā€¦however, my understanding is that Qovery is especially strong with running databases for appsā€¦I just have to figure how to run it