How to Install Ghost CMS on Ubuntu 24.04 VPS with MySQL 8 & Nginx (Ghost-CLI Guide)

Why Modern Publishers Are Choosing Ghost Over WordPress

While WordPress remains the Swiss Army knife of web development, Ghost was engineered specifically for professional publishers, journalists, and newsletter writers. Built on Node.js, Ghost delivers sub-100ms response times out of the box, natively integrates Stripe subscription paywalls, and includes a markdown editor that eliminates content formatting friction.

Prerequisites

• A fresh Ubuntu 22.04 or 24.04 VPS.
• A registered domain name pointed to your VPS IP address.
• At least 2 GB of RAM (Contabo VPS 1 provides 8GB).

Step 1: Creating a Non-Root System User

Ghost-CLI refuses to install under root for security reasons:

sudo adduser ghostuser
sudo usermod -aG sudo ghostuser
su - ghostuser

Step 2: Installing Nginx, MySQL 8, and Node.js

# Update repositories and install Nginx
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo apt install -y nginx mysql-server

# Install Node.js 20 LTS (Ghost officially requires Node 18 or 20)
curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_20.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt install -y nodejs

# Install Ghost-CLI globally
sudo npm install -g ghost-cli@latest

Step 3: Setting Up MySQL Database

sudo mysql

ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'YOUR_STRONG_ROOT_PASSWORD';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

Step 4: Installing Ghost via Ghost-CLI

# Create directory and assign permissions
sudo mkdir -p /var/www/ghost
sudo chown ghostuser:ghostuser /var/www/ghost
sudo chmod 775 /var/www/ghost
cd /var/www/ghost

# Run the automated Ghost installation
ghost install

Ghost-CLI will ask for:

• Blog URL: https://yourdomain.com (use HTTPS directly).
• MySQL hostname: localhost.
• MySQL user / password: root and your configured password.
• Database name: Press Enter to accept default ghost_prod.
• Set up Nginx? Type Y.
• Set up SSL? Type Y and provide an administrative email.
• Start Ghost? Type Y.

Step 5: Completing Administrator Registration

Open your browser and navigate to https://yourdomain.com/ghost. Create your administrator account, set up your publication title, and start publishing articles instantly.