Public testing phase We’re in a public testing phase — feel free to look around, but we’re not taking orders yet. Ordering opens 1 October 2026. See plans →

Ghost: your first steps

Picked Ghost? Your site came with Ghost installed on the Node.js runtime — the publishing platform for blogs, newsletters and memberships.

What gets installed

  • Ghost 6 from the official npm package (pinned; npm checks every file against the registry's published checksum), running as a systemd service on Node.js 22 with its own MariaDB database in your container.
  • Your owner account (the email address on your veldhost account), the publication named after your site, the Casper theme, and content/ for themes, images and files next to the code.
  • Ghost's settings live in config.production.json in the site's code root (Files tab): the public address, the database and the mail transport.

First login

  1. Your site page in the portal shows the sign-in address (/ghost/), your login email and a generated password — we display it for 7 days, so save it now.
  2. Sign in, then set your own password under Settings → Staff → your profile.
  3. Write your first post; set the publication title, description and logo under Settings → General.
  4. Newsletters and paid memberships need an email provider (Ghost uses Mailgun for bulk mail) and Stripe — connect both under Settings → Email newsletter and Settings → Membership. Transactional mail (invites, password resets) needs a mail transport in config.production.json.

Updating

  • Press Back up now on the Files tab first.
  • Change the ghost version in package.json (Files tab) to the release you want, then run a deploy on the Deploy tab: it runs npm install, restarts the app, and Ghost migrates its database on start.
  • Ghost majors need a matching Node.js major; the Node card on your site page switches it.

Limits

  • Ghost needs 1 GB of memory, so it is a Pro-or-higher app; the install itself briefly borrows more memory for npm install, which we arrange automatically.
  • Ghost supports MySQL 8 officially; our container database is MariaDB, which Ghost runs on today (we exercise every release on it before we offer it), but a future Ghost release may drop it — we will say so here first.