Getting Started with Ghost

Kezz Bracey
David Balderston
Andy Boutte

Chapter No. 1
"The First Steps with Ghost"

In this package, you will find:

The authors biography
A preview chapter from the book, Chapter no.1 "The First Steps with Ghost"
A synopsis of the books content
Information on where to buy this book

About the Authors

Kezz Bracey is a web designer and frontend developer from Australia who has been
working in the field for the better part of a decade. Theme development kicked off for
her in the early days on the Joomla! platform, moving on to creating themes and plugins
for WordPress, and she began designing themes for the Ghost blogging platform at
its release.
David Balderston had early access to Ghost and started
with Andy Boutte. From there, he helped to launch other sites related to Ghost,
including
,
, and
. His background in IT helped with troubleshooting problems
and portraying them in a way people can clearly understand. He has been around Ghost
from the very beginning and has helped many people install and use the Ghost platform.
Andy Boutte worked in the Apple industry for 5 years where he received a dozen
certifications and became an Apple certified computer technician and iPhone technician.
He currently works for a leading software company, Shopatron, as a DevOps engineer
and previously worked there as a quality assurance analyst. This led him to testing Ghost
and
before its initial release and he began writing on
With his experience, he has developed the unique skill of
breaking down technical topics into terms that are easy to understand, which he utilizes in
his writing today.

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Getting Started with Ghost

When John O'Nolan, the founder of Ghost, first published a blog post in November 2012
describing his idealistic and fictional concept of a light, simple blogging engine focused
entirely on content publishing, little did he know the chain reaction of events that was
about to unfold.
His post immediately garnered massive amounts of attention, creating widespread buzz
and a wave of animated discussions across the Web. The immense tide of support that
emerged showed that his set of mockups and ideas for a new way of publishing online
had legs. John decided to take the leap, and, together with long-time friend and lead
developer Hannah Wolfe, he began working on the preliminary stages of Ghost
in earnest.
After six months of hard work, the world got its first sneak peek at Ghost when the
Kickstarter campaign to fund its ongoing development was launched. Initially, the goal
was to raise 25,000equivalent to around $39,000 USD. The campaign surpassed that
amount within twelve hours and went on to raise over $300,000 USD while also drawing
excited commentary from prominent authorities within the business and web world such
as Forbes, Wired, and TechCrunch. In the process, it also secured investments from
heavy hitters such as Microsoft, Envato, and WooThemes.
The first public release of Ghost (version 0.3.1) occurred in September 2013. It has been
continually evolving since then with an exciting roadmap of new features scheduled for
release all the way through to version 1.0, which is tentatively due in early 2015.
Though still in its infancy, Ghost has set out to tackle two major tasks, both of which it
has already positioned itself well to achieve. One is a goal most of us are familiar with
from the overall way Ghost describes itself as a platform; the other is one perhaps not yet
as widely known.
Twitter profile, is to initiate A
The first of these goals, as you'll see on the
movement to revolutionize the world of online publishing. Ghost has brought together
the insights of seasoned bloggers and experts in cutting edge web technology in order to
reimagine the user experience for content publishers. Ghost sees a world in which there
are no technical speed bumps for bloggers, allowing them to put all of their focus and
energy into the one thing they really want to do: publish content.
In line with this philosophy, Ghost has replaced the bells and whistles of typical
publishing platforms with shortcuts and other simplifications geared towards ease
of use. It aims to set itself into the background of the user's attention, instead bringing
the content they are working on into the fore. It's named "Ghost" for a very good reason:
it sees that its job is being done well if it is little more than an opaque specter that is
hardly visible as bloggers go about their business.

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The second goal, though not something Ghost explicitly sets out to do at its inception,
is to usher in a new wave of support for JavaScript-powered web applications built on
Node.js. It's very likely that Ghost will act as a driving force that helps take us from
the age of PHP (the dominant language of web platforms) to a new paradigm of lightning
fast JavaScript and Node.js-driven apps. Just as WordPress propelled the uptake of PHP
in its early days, so too may Ghost propel the uptake of Node.js and JavaScript-powered
web development.
JavaScript- and Node.js-based apps have been building in popularity in the technical
world for some time due to the plethora of advantages they bring, not least of which is
speed. Many people consider that PHP is on the downward slope of its dominance while
Node.js continues to be one of the fastest growing platforms online. Additionally, we are
seeing more and more technologies making a general shift of focus towards JavaScript.
Even WordPress, arguably the biggest PHP project there is, has been gradually rolling
out increasing numbers of JavaScript-driven features. All things point to JavaScript and
Node.js as being the way of the future.
Until now, the relative newness of Node.js-based technology has meant the average
blogger or website builder has not been able to partake in these advantages. Arguably,
the major roadblocks to enabling people to access the perks of Node.js apps have been
the limited availability of hosting and the technical expertise required. Ghost has shaken
that stagnation up thoroughly.
The sudden demand for Ghost support has reached the ears of many hosts. In just a few
short months, we have seen new automated Ghost installers pop up, hosts that previously
didn't support Node.js setting up services to make Ghost installation easy and brand new
hosts specializing purely in Ghost have also emerged. These developments have opened
previously non-existent doors to the very latest and most powerful technologies in a way
that's accessible to any user no matter what their level of experience.
Ghost is arguably the first in this new generation of web technology to reach widespread
public consciousness, bringing with it a wave of new possibility. If web applications of
the past could be paralleled with dial-up internet, then we might draw the comparison
that Ghost aims to be lightning fast broadband. Where other platforms may grow to
accommodate a myriad of use cases, Ghost sets out to remain focused on doing a single
job cleanly and efficiently.
This book is designed to show you exactly how to get started with Ghost. You'll learn
everything there is to know about using Ghost from working with the admin interface to
creating content. You'll get the information you need to choose the right automated Ghost
install equipped hosting for your needs. You'll be guided through the more technical
processes of manual installation on self-managed servers and local environments. And
you'll learn how to design and code your own Ghost themes from scratch, whether for
your personal use or to sell in the Ghost marketplace.

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By the end of this book, you'll be ready to jump head first into the exciting new world
of Ghost!

What This Book Covers

Chapter 1, The First Steps with Ghost, starts with a tour of Ghost as a blogging platform,
Ghost's official hosting platform, and shows you how to use it.
Chapter 2, Manual Installation and Configuration of Ghost, helps you install Ghost
locally to develop themes for it. We're going to show you how to do this, and also how to
manually install Ghost on a VPS host, as well as discuss the main configuration
considerations when hosting your blog.
Chapter 3, Preparing for Theme Development, deep dives into some of the main
components you'll want to edit, and setting up your development environment.
Chapter 4, Beginning Ghost Theme Development, helps us set up a template shell for the
theme, which is the first step to designing a theme. We'll take a look at all the aspects of a
Ghost blog that can be redesigned, and how to prepare your theme shell for them.
Chapter 5, Applying Design Choices and Visual Styling, helps you learn how to apply
visual styling and design attractive, responsive Ghost blogs.
Appendix, Markdown Syntax and Ghost Shortcut Keys, contains the list of keyboard
shortcuts in Ghost.

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The First Steps with Ghost

The first thing you'll need to do to get started with Ghost is to set up a brand new blog.
When Ghost was first privately released to its Kickstarter backers, it was something of
an arduous process to get the ball rolling, which was to be expected in the very early
stages of such a brand new platform. However, it has not taken long for brilliant minds
to put themselves to the task of making this process straightforward.
In this chapter, you'll learn about the following topics:

Ghost's official hosting

The basic use of Ghost, including what to do immediately after installation

and how to navigate within the admin interface

The essentials of post management in Ghost, including an introduction to

Markdown syntax

Automated installation of Ghost

In this section, we're going to assume that you just want a Ghost blogand you want
one fast. We'll show you how to set up the blog on Ghost's official service, Ghost(Pro).
Despite only having been out for a relatively short time, Ghost already has a number
of cost-effective hosting options that make installation easy. Ghost's own official
hosting service is one of them and so that's what we'll look at in this chapter, but for
those who want to explore other options, refer to Chapter 2, Manual Installation and
Configuration of Ghost.
If you're interested in more advanced endeavors that require extensive
control over servers, or you want local installation for development
needs, check out Chapter 2, Manual Installation and Configuration of Ghost,
where we step you through manual installation processes for both online
and local environments.

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The First Steps with Ghost

A background on Ghost's hosting

Before we describe the specifics of Ghost's hosting service, a little background is
relevant on how the company itself has set themselves up as an entity and the license
they've adopted for the software. This information may well play a part in how you
decide which host to use.
Firstly, Ghost is set up as a not-for-profit organization. This means that while staff
can receive a wage, every single cent of profit they generate goes straight back into
continuing to make Ghost bigger, stronger, and better. Thanks to this structure, there
will never be any commercial interests that could lead Ghost astray in the way that
often occurs when a company is beholden to shareholders. Nor is Ghost at the risk of
being acquired by another entity who may want to change the principles and direction
of the project. They have committed themselves to keeping Ghost's priorities in the
right place by adopting a legal structure that supports the health of Ghost itself ahead
of any individuals involved within it.
Secondly, they have adopted the MIT license rather than any other open source
license because they believe it allows for the maximum level of freedom for users
and developers. They want people to be able to do anything at all with Ghost
and that includes the choice to apply whatever license they may wish to the
Ghost-related works they create.
In a nutshell, the team at Ghost is doing everything they can think of to make the
future of the platform vibrant, open, and strong.
Part of making that happen is embarking on what they have referred to as a
Sustainable Open Source approach. Too often, open source projects that have much to
offer fall by the wayside due to a lack of funding or are forced to change their model
in order to stay afloat. From the outset, Ghost has sought to ensure it continues
to remain viable via its own dedicated hosting service. Should you choose to host
with Ghost directly, you can be sure the money you put in will go straight towards
keeping the project strong.

Using Ghost's hosting solution

On the technical front, probably the biggest advantage of hosting directly with Ghost
is that you gain access to their updates as they are released and their team manages all
of the backend server security. Ghost and server updates are handled automatically in
the background, so you never have to think about them. The second big advantage is
that no one knows the software quite as well as the creators themselves, so you're in
safe hands.

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Chapter 1

Ghost(Pro) does not allow backend access to your files, but is rather designed to offer
the most streamlined service. This means that if you want to set any customized
configurations, or make any major changes on the backend, you will not be able to.
This is usually not a problem, because most users just want a reliable platform to
host their blog, without too much extra customization. As you grow in confidence
with managing your Ghost blog, you may choose a different hosting option, allowing
you to tinker with code and use custom settings. Chapter 2, Manual Installation and
Configuration of Ghost, will help you along if you decide to delve deeper!
Ghost(Pro) also provides the ability to point your own domain, or subdomain,
at your Ghost blog. Full instructions on how to go about that can be found at
https://ghost.org/blogs/domains/#setup, when logged into Ghost.org.
Adding a custom theme only requires going to the Settings section of your My Blogs
dashboard, browsing for a theme ZIP file on your computer, and then saving your
settings. The theme will then be applied to your blog automatically with no further
steps needed.
Pricing to host on Ghost(Pro) starts at $10 per month for a single blog
with up to 25,000 views/month. All the plans are monthly plans with
no long-term commitments necessary.
For Ghost's full pricing chart visit https://ghost.org/pricing/.
And to register a new account at Ghost.org go to https://ghost.org/.

Creating a blog on Ghost(Pro)

The Ghost hosting interface is deliberately simple, ensuring there are no confusing
options to slow down your installation. Setup is as easy as hitting the New Blog
button, filling in your preferred blog title, and clicking on the Create New Blog
button. That's it!

Creating your user account

As soon as you have installed Ghost online, there is one thing that you must do
immediately and without delay: register your blog's owner user account.
With Ghost(Pro), you have an overall account you log into at http://ghost.org;
however, you'll also need a user account for each Ghost blog you create in order to
log into their individual admin areas.

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The First Steps with Ghost

Some hosts will take care of this user account setup as part of the installation
process, but most will not.
The minute you have finished your installation, you should go to:
http://<yourdomain.ghost.io>/ghost/signup/, which will look
something like the following screenshot:

Once there, fill in your name, e-mail address, and password and then click on
SIGN UP to create your user account.
You must complete this step immediately because until you do that, the form
will be open for anyone to come along and create a user account.
Now that your account is created, go ahead and log in.

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Configure settings
After you've logged into your account, you're ready to configure some basic settings.
The available settings are very simple, so there's not a lot you'll need to do at this stage.
Ghost currently has two settings areas: General and User. Both the settings can
be accessed via the Settings tab in the top admin menu. The panels are both fairly
self-explanatory, so this will be a brief overview to point out the various features.

General settings
Let's first have a look at the general settings:

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The First Steps with Ghost

The general settings are as follows:

Blog Title: This will be used by most themes in the header as well as
sometimes in the footer. Ghost will also output your Blog Title in your
site's <title> tags.

Blog Description: This will also tend to appear in the header of most
themes. Ghost will output your Blog Description in the description
metatag of your site.

Blog Logo: The blog logo is typically positioned in the header or the top
of the sidebar in most themes. To add a custom logo, click on the green
Upload Image button next to the Blog Logo label.

Blog Cover: Not all themes use the blog cover image, but those that do,
tend to use it as a background for large headers or as the background for
the entire site. To add a custom block cover image, click on the green
Upload Image button next to the Blog Cover label.

Email Address: This is the e-mail address to which you'll receive

admin-related notifications.

Posts per page: This can be set to determine how many posts a user can
see before needing to click through to the next page. This affects post
listings on the home page and on tag pages.

Dated permalinks: If checked, this option will add the date of publishing to
post permalinks in the <yourdomain>.com/YYYY/MM/DD/post-title/ format.

Theme: This option will allow you to choose from any themes that were in
your blog's content/themes directory when it was last started up. Note that
new themes uploaded to this directory won't be seen until Ghost is restarted.
This area is not available on Ghost(Pro), where themes are
added via the Settings section for each blog instead.

After making any changes to these settings, click on the blue Save button in the
top-right corner of the screen.

User settings
This section has two main purposes. One is to give you the ability to change your
password; you'll see the fields that allow you to do so at the bottom of the page. The
other is to enter information that your theme can display in the author profile area
on single posts of your blog.

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The author profile settings are as follows.

Author Image: In the little circle at the top-left of the user settings, you'll see
the author image. To add your own, click on this circle and an uploading
window will appear.

Author Cover: This is an image similar to the Blog Cover image that can
be used by the theme on single posts. It would seem likely that this image
may be designed to appear on author profile pages once their functionality
is included in Ghost. Click on the Change Cover button in the bottom-right
corner of the cover image preview to change it.

Author Name: Fill in the name here that you'd like to have displayed
publicly as the author of your posts.

Email: This is a required field; however, it can use a different e-mail address
than your main admin e-mail. Be aware that this address may be displayed in
your author profile on some themes.
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The First Steps with Ghost

Location: Again, the location you enter here will appear in your author
profile area should you want people to know where you live. If not, leave
this blank.

Website: Add the URL of any other website of yours you'd like people to
know about. Most themes will include a hyperlinked display of this URL
in the author section of your single posts.

Bio: Include up to 200 characters about yourself to have included in your

single post author section.

Content management
The post management process in Ghost is very smooth and simple. In this section,
we'll cover the essentials of post management, as well as a couple of features you
might need a little more help finding than others.

The content management area

The first page you'll be presented with each time you log in to Ghost is your content
management area, which can also be reached anytime by clicking on the Content tab
in the admin menu. This is where we'll begin looking at how to manage your content.
The content management area screen can be seen in the following screenshot:

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Down the left-hand side you'll see a list of all the content that has been added to your
blog so far. On a new site, this content is always the default "Welcome to Ghost" post.
On the right you'll see a preview of whichever post is currently selected from that list.

Creating and deleting posts

To create a new post click on either the New Post tab in the admin menu, or the
small green plus sign above the post list (highlighted in the following screenshot):

To delete a post, first select it from the list from the left-hand side panel by clicking
on its title. Then click on the small grey gear icon in the top right of the post preview
and click on Delete This Post at the bottom of the menu that pops up.

Converting a post to a page

By default, when you create a new piece of content, it will be generated as a post,
which means it will appear with all your other posts on your front page. However,
you also have the option to convert a post into a static page. This will remove the
item from your regular list of posts so that it can act as a standalone item, such as an
About Us page, for example. This makes the page accessible via its URL, but is not a
part of the regular post feed. Note that Ghost's navigation menu creation UI is not
yet released, so until it has released, any links to static pages have to be hardcoded
into a theme, which many themes have done.
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The First Steps with Ghost

Additionally, if the theme has any special formatting in place for the appearance of
pages, it will be activated. How this presentation differs will depend on the theme
you are using.
To convert a post into a page, click on the same gear item you would when deleting
a post and then check the Static Page box. Ghost will detect that the box has been
checked and automatically convert the post to a page.

Modifying the permalink or publishing date

When a new post is saved, it has a permalink automatically generated and applied,
and when published the publish date is applied. You can change both of these
after the fact if you would like. To do so, click on the little gear icon above the
post preview, and then click in either of the fields displaying your permalink or
date. Enter your new permalink (or URL) or date, ensuring that you maintain
the same formatting that was already there, that is, with use of hyphens, spaces,
date presentation, and so on. Ghost will detect any changes to these fields and
automatically save them.

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Featured posts
It's also possible to set specific posts to the Featured status. This adds a .featured
class to the post that a theme may use to style featured posts in a different way, and
also makes it possible for a theme to separate them into their own display area. (How
this is done will be covered in Chapter 5, Applying Design Choices and Visual Styling).
To set a post to the Featured status, click on the grey outlined star in the top left of
the post preview. When the status is successfully changed to Featured, the star will
be filled in grey.

Editing existing posts

After you create a new post via the method described earlier, you'll be taken directly
into it to begin editing. If you wish to edit an existing post, select it by clicking on
its title in the left-hand pane list, and then click on the small grey pencil icon or
click on the Edit This Post button that appears above its preview. Then perform the
following steps:
1. Click on the title to select it.

2. Click on the pencil icon to edit.

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The First Steps with Ghost

The post editing area and inline preview

Once you initiate editing, you'll be taken to the post editing interface. It's here that
you'll spend the bulk of your time in Ghost. The post editing screen is shown in the
following screenshot:

Ghost displays the actual editing space on the left-hand side of the screen. This is
where you'll type in your content. To the right, you'll see a real-time preview of your
content. As you scroll up or down in your editing space, the preview on the right
will automatically scroll to the same position, making it very easy to visualize your
content as your blog readers will see it.
At the moment, the content preview uses a default set of styles to determine
its appearance. In the future, styles will be drawn from the active theme, so the
preview looks exactly as the post will when published.

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Setting the title

The large field you see spanning the top of the post editing interface is the post's title.
When you first create a new post, the title will not yet be set and you will see this:

To set a new title, or edit an existing one, simply type whatever you wish into
this field.

Saving a draft
One of the first things you will want to do, typically as soon as you've typed in your
new post's title, is save your draft. To do this, click on the blue Save Draft button in
the bottom-right of the screen. You can also use Ctrl + S.

Adding tags
To add tags to your post, locate and click on the small grey tag in the bottom-left
corner of the interface. A cursor will appear and you can type in the tag you wish
to apply.

When you have finished typing the tag name, press Enter and your text will be
converted into a tag as shown in the following screenshot:

You can repeat this as many times as you wish. The tags that are applied to your
post will appear in the single post view and, as of Ghost 0.5.0, each tag will have
its own archive page.
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The First Steps with Ghost

The word count display

As you're working on your post, you'll see a very handy live word count tally
helping you keep track of your progress. Keep an eye out for this at the top-right
corner of your post preview:

Publishing and unpublishing posts

When you're ready to publish your post, hover your mouse over the little downwards
pointing arrow on the right end of the Save Draft button and you'll see it spin around
and point upwards. Click on it and the following menu will appear:

Click on PUBLISH NOW and the menu will close, converting the previously blue
button into a red one reading PUBLISH NOW:

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Click on this red button and your post will be published live on the frontend of
your blog.
After you have done this, the button will be converted again, back to its former
blue color and now reading UPDATE POST:

If you make any edits after publishing, just click on this button to push them to
your live post.
Should you need to unpublish the post, the process is essentially the same as for
publishing the post. Again, click on the small arrow to the right of what is now
the UPDATE POST button and the following menu will pop up:

This time select UNPUBLISH and the button will turn red, now displaying
UNPUBLISH:

Click on the red button and your post will no longer be publicly visible while the
button will return to its original blue SAVE DRAFT state.

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The First Steps with Ghost

Converting a post to page, plus permalink and

date modification from the post editor
The functions described earlier that allow you to modify your post's permalink
and date, or convert it into a page from the content management area, are also
available in the post editing area. They work in the same way as described earlier,
the only difference being the location of the little gear icon you need to click on
to commence the process. In this case, look for the gear icon to the left of the
SAVE DRAFT / UPDATE POST button in the bottom-right of the screen.

Markdown, image upload, and inline HTML

Now that you know everything there is to know about using Ghost's interface for
content management, you're ready to dig into the actual process of writing the
content itself.
The fundamental principle behind the writing process in Ghost is that users should
be able to blog away without interruption or distraction, with little to no pauses
required to click on buttons or do anything other than focus on what they are
writing. To that end, one of the major features of Ghost is the Markdown syntax it
uses to facilitate post formatting.
Markdown is a system of basic symbols that can be used directly inline with content
in order to generate the most common formatting requirements, such as headings,
and to handle common tasks such as inserting images.
For example, on most writing platforms, should you wish to format a line of text as
Heading 1, you would first need to stop writing, take your hand off the keyboard,
grab your mouse, highlight the line, and then click on the platform's H1 button.

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But with Ghost, none of this is necessary. You simply enter a single # character at the
start of your line and it will present as H1 text.

This means no pauses to take your hands off the keyboard and work with the mouse
or interface buttons. Everything becomes a part of a smooth typing process.
At first glance, this may not seem like a huge time saver in itself; however, in
application, doing almost everything via the keyboard, without having to pause and
mentally change gears to use the mouse, means that you will be able to maintain much
greater focus on your writing. Hence, the overall time you save will amount to much
more than just the time no longer spent using the mouse.
This example from the Ghost homepage shows just how easy it is to generate some
of the most common formatting requirements using Markdown:

Using Markdown, you can perform the following actions in your Ghost posts:

Bold text

Italicize text

Format text as inline code

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Create text strikethroughs

Add links

Insert images

Create bulleted and numbered lists

Add blockquotes

Format text as headings 1 through to 6

For a full breakdown of Ghost Markdown syntax and the keyboard shortcuts you
can use to make insertions even faster, please refer to Appendix, Markdown Syntax
and Ghost Shortcut Keys.
To learn more about Markdown visit http://daringfireball.net/projects/

markdown/.

Image upload
Inserting images is one of the few things you'll use the mouse for when creating
Ghost content. The good news is the process is cleverly structured ensuring you
don't have to break your writing process to do so until the end.
When you first insert your image markdown, by either pressing Ctrl + Shift + I
or typing , a placeholder image will be added into your post
preview, as shown in the following screenshot:

When you know you want an image at a certain position in your post, you can go
ahead and add a placeholder then continue on with your writing without a pause in
your flow. Then after you're finished writing, you can come back and add images to
your post.
This process of adding images where placeholders are positioned is also very easy,
with two methods to choose from. You can either click on the placeholder image
and have it open up a window where you can browse for your image file, or you
can drag-and-drop a file directly onto the placeholder to upload.
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Chapter 1

Inline HTML
On top of its ease of use, one of the beauties of a Markdown-based post editor is you
can also place raw HTML straight into your post and it won't be stripped out. If there's
something you need to do in your post that doesn't have associated Markdown syntax,
you can just add in the code you need directly.
One of the best applications of this is the insertion of videos. You don't need any
plugins or an extra functionality to place videos from the most common sites into your
post. Just copy the iframe embed code they provide you, such as the type you would
get from YouTube, for example, and paste it straight into your post.

Hosting Ghost on other providers

There's a huge array of different third-party providers of Ghost installations. VPS
hosting is one popular option. The two VPS providers we are going to cover are
DigitalOcean and Amazon EC2. Both of these providers have a one-click installation
of Ghost, so you still do not need to worry about manually installing Ghost. The
manual installation will be covered in the next chapter though.
While we are only covering two VPS providers, there are many other places you can
host Ghost. A great place to go for more information is a website that we created
called www.howtoinstallghost.com. We have many instructions on many different
providers, so feel free to check out that site if you are looking to host elsewhere.

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The First Steps with Ghost

DigitalOcean
DigitalOcean is a Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting company with a one-click
Ghost installation. They have taken the code provided by the Ghost team and
integrated it with their own hosting platform. DigitalOcean runs all of their website
hosting on Solid State Drives, which helps make the VPS servers run even faster and
decrease your page load times. The greatest benefit of hosting on DigitalOcean is that
not only is your Ghost blog live almost immediately, but you also get full access to
the server on which it runs.
What this means is that you can access the server and make any changes you want.
For instance, if you would like to host a second Ghost website on your server, you
have the power to do that. Likewise, if you want to make special configurations or
update to their latest nightly version of the code, you can do that as well. While it is
not necessary for you to access the server to run your Ghost blog, having the ability
to do so is a useful feature. With DigitalOcean, you have to update to the new Ghost
software manually, but this should be very easy going forward.
DigitalOcean has played a big part in the Ghost community, even before Ghost was
released to the public. The fact that they have an instant install of Ghost, as well as
allow their users to have backend access to the server, makes them an outstanding
option to host your Ghost blog. DigitalOcean is actually the company that we use
to host all of our blogs.
The way DigitalOcean works as a service in general is to provide what they call
"droplets". Droplets operate as self-contained servers, which means that they give
you control over everything from your choice of operating system, for example
Ubuntu and CentOS, to security, which coding languages are supported, and
so on. When you purchase a new droplet, everything is installed fresh from the
operating system and up. The process of installing Ghost on DigitalOcean is fairly
simple, but we have created a step-by-step guide that you can find at http://www.
howtoinstallghost.com/how-to-install-ghost-on-digital-ocean-vps/.
You can get a DigitalOcean VPS with Ghost and one terabyte of traffic for $5
a month.
The Ghost image from Digital Ocean will set your new droplet up with Ubuntu
12.04 as an operating system, with Ghost preinstalled and ready to go. After
registering and creating a new droplet, you'll have the choice to select an image
under Applications. Choose the Ghost on x.x.x 14.04 image and the setup will be
handled for you. You'll be able to access your blog immediately via the IP address
allocated to you by DigitalOcean.

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Chapter 1

You should be prepared for the fact that setting up a custom domain name to point
at your site and handling updates is a little more involved as you'll need to work
with command line via an SSH client such as Putty (http://www.putty.org).
If command-line server management is something you're already
comfortable with or intend to learn, there is assistance available via the
following tutorial written by Ghost's own lead developer Hannah Wolfe
at https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/howto-use-the-digitalocean-ghost-application.

Amazon EC2
Amazon offers a cloud hosting service called EC2. With EC2, anyone can launch a
cloud-based server. The best part is that, with a new Amazon AWS account, you can
host what they call a "Micro" instance, which allows you to run Ghost, free of charge
for one year.
EC2 has a marketplace where individuals and companies upload pre-made images
of software for users to launch and use for themselves. If you visit the marketplace
and search for Ghost, you will see that there are already images ready to use. This
makes installing Ghost extremely simple. All you need to do is launch your own
instance of the image and Amazon will provide a URL to visit, and your Ghost blog
is up and running.
As EC2 is a virtual server, you have backend access to your Ghost blog. This allows
you to make any changes on the backend that you would like; however, because the
image you used already has Ghost installed and running, you do not need to access
the backend if you so choose.
The only downside with using EC2 is that as Ghost and other server software do not
update automatically; you are responsible to make updates as needed.
Because the microtier is free, Amazon EC2 is a great way to try out Ghost. EC2 has
been an extremely popular way for people to host their Ghost blog, and there is no
reason not to try it out.
We maintain an image of Ghost to facilitate the automated installation
of it, to offer an easy place to try out Ghost for free. There's more
information and instructions at http://www.howtoinstallghost.
com/how-to-setup-an-amazon-ec2-instance-to-hostghost-for-free/.

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The First Steps with Ghost

Summary
That's it. You've just taken your first steps with Ghost!
You now have all the information you need to choose the host that best suits your
needs. You know what to do immediately after installation and can navigate Ghost's
admin interface. You can configure your Ghost settings, manage your content, and
work with the post editor. You should also have a basic grasp on the concept of the
Markdown syntax.
If you've made your decision, and want to go with Ghost(Pro), and now want to
customize your Ghost blog's look and feel, you will also need to install a copy of
Ghost on your computer, ready for theme development. Head to the next chapter
where we cover how to install Ghost locally.

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Where to buy this book

You can buy Getting Started with Ghost from the Packt Publishing website:
Free shipping to the US, UK, Europe and selected Asian countries. For more information, please
read our shipping policy.

Alternatively, you can buy the book from Amazon, BN.com, Computer Manuals and
most internet book retailers.

www.PacktPub.com

For More Information:

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