Deploy Ghost to WebFaction
Setup a new account on http://webfaction.com - it needs to be a paid account, the free trial does not have access to the features which you will need to deploy Ghost.
Either a root domain, with NS records to:
ns1.webfaction.com
ns2.webfaction.com
ns3.webfaction.com
ns4.webfaction.com
Or an A-Record for a subdomain, pointed to the IP address of your server. I'll tell you where to find the IP address later.
In your WebFaction (WF) control panel, go to Domains/Websites > Websites. Click on "Add new website" and enter the following details:
- Name - any name for your blog, no spaces
- Domains - enter the domain you have pointed at WF
- Contents - Add an application > Create a new application
You will now get a modal/popup, enter the following details
- Name - same as your blog name above, no spaces
- App category - Custom
- App type - Custom app (listening on port)
Press Save to close the modal. Once it has closed, press save again to finish creating the website.
You should now see an overview of your applications, and if you are setting up a blog on a subdomain, you should be able to see the IP Address which you need to point your subdomain to in Step 0 above.
In your WF control panel, go to Domains/Websites > Applications.
You will now see a list of your applications - beside your new application you will see "Custom app (listening on port) (port #####) - write down this port number somewhere, you will need it again in a minute
This is probably the hardest part, if you can get past this - you're golden.
I'm going to assume you're on Mac or Linux. If not - follow these instructions for Windows.
Open up Terminal.app - and get ready to love that sexy command line prompt. Enter the following:
ssh username@username.webfactional.com - where "username" is the webfaction username that you signed up with
Press enter. You should be prompted for a password. Enter your WebFaction account password.
You should now be at a new command prompt that looks something like
[username@web123 ~]$
Now, in the same place as you were at the end of the last step, enter the following (replace 'yourblogname' with the blog name you set up in step 1):
This will download Node.js onto your server
cd ~/webapps/yourblogname
mkdir src
cd src
curl http://nodejs.org/dist/node-latest.tar.gz | tar xz --strip-components=1
The next two commands will run the install.
./configure --prefix=$HOME
make install
This part takes a while. Grab a cup of tea. Alternative, put Terminal in fullscreen mode, sit back in your chair, and pretend you're in The Matrix.
Once that is eventually finished, you can check Node.js is working properly by typing following command:
node -v
It should return something like v0.10.18
And you should also have npm, the package manager for node, type:
npm -v
It should return something like v1.3.8
And now we can use NPM to install Forever, a utility which will keep your Ghost blog running... forever.
npm install -g forever
Congrats. Your server is now prepped, and ready to rock. Keep this terminal window open, this is your Remote Terminal - you will need it again later.
Right! The good part. First make a place on your computer where you will keep your Ghost site. Your live website will always mirror these files. They will be identical. Unzip your Ghost package here.
Scroll down and ...
Replace all references to url: 'http://my-ghost-blog.com' with http://yourdomain.com from Step 0
Replace all references to port 2368 with the port number you wrote down in Step 1 above.
Save and close the file.
Open up a new terminal window. This one is your Local Terminal - don't get the two confused!
cd ~/path/to/your/ghost
Next we're going to install grunt, a tool which will help us get Ghost deployed
npm install -g grunt-cli
Now we're going to install Ghost locally
npm install
If you get errors, try sudo npm install
Now build a Ghost package to deploy to your server
grunt build
Now let's send that zip file to your server - make sure you edit the following command to include your WF username, and your blogname (from Step 1) at the end.
scp .dist/build/Ghost-Build.zip username@username.webfactional.com:~/webapps/blogname
Now switch to your Remote Terminal and run
cd ~/webapps/yourblogname
unzip -uo Ghost-Build.zip
rm -rf Ghost-Build.zip
Now we do the install
npm install
and finally, we start up Ghost
forever start index.js
Navigate to your chosen domain, and you should see a working blog. If not - you fucked something up - start again.