Ghost CMS High Availability

Ghost CMS HA is the high-availability version of the efficient publishing platform geared towards content creators, journalists, and media outlets.

Main Ghost CMS features

• Minimalistic editor. User-friendly and Markdown-compatible article writing interface that supports dynamic blocks (galleries, video and audio files, bookmarks) and is optimized for distraction-free work.
• Newsletters. Emailing new posts to subscribers directly from the platform interface, complete with audience segmentation.
• Membership. Embedded sign-up and content access management system (free and paid-for access).
• SEO. Automatic generation of meta tags, Google AMP, sitemaps, and structured data, with no additional plugins necessary.
• Customization. Full control over frontend, theme support, and design customizability (Handlebars.js).

To store data, the solution employs Yandex Managed Service for MySQL^® with automatic backup, replication, and monitoring.

1. The application requires a domain delegated to Yandex Cloud DNS. Specify the ns1.yandexcloud.net. and ns2.yandexcloud.net. name servers. For more information, see How to delegate a domain to Cloud DNS servers.

2. Create a Yandex Virtual Private Cloud network as well as subnets in the ru-central1-a and ru-central1-d availability zones.

3. Create a Yandex Lockbox secret with a password for a Managed Service for MySQL^® database. In the Key field, enter db_password.

4. In the management console, select the folder where you want to deploy the application.

5. Select Cloud Apps.

6. In the left-hand panel, select Marketplace.

7. Select Ghost CMS HA and click Use.

8. Specify the following:

   • Application name: Name of your Ghost CMS HA instance.
   • Application description. This is an optional property.
   • Service account with the admin role for the folder, or select Auto to have the service account created when installing the application.
   • ID of the DNS zone to host the application’s domains.
   • Site subdomain for WordPress. This is an optional property. By default, the subdomain is empty. The website domain is formed by adding a subdomain to the DNS zone domain.
   • Administrator dashboard subdomain. The default value is admin. The administrator dashboard domain is formed by adding a subdomain to the DNS zone domain.
   • Mail sender. This is an optional property. The default is noreply@website_domain. It is used to set up the SMTP via Yandex Cloud Postbox.
   • VPC subnets in the ru-central1-a and ru-central1-d availability zones for deploying a Managed Service for MySQL^® cluster.
   • VPC network to deploy a VM in. This is an optional property. The default is a subnet in the ru-central1-d availability zone.
   • Number of vCPUs. This is an optional property. The default value is 2.
   • RAM in GB. This is an optional property. The default value is 2 GB.
   • vCPU guarantee. This is an optional property. The available values are 20%, 50%, or 100%. The default value is 100%.
   • Public SSH key. This is an optional property. It will be added to the Ghost user’s authorized_keys. To learn how to create an SHH key, see this guide.
   • Disk type. This is an optional property. The default value is network-ssd. For more information about disk types, see Storage in Managed Service for MySQL^®
   • Disk size in GB. This is an optional property. The default value is 20 GB.
   • ID of the secret with the DB password for accessing the Managed Service for MySQL^® cluster you created earlier.
   • Size of the Managed Service for MySQL^® cluster’s disk. This is an optional property. The default value is 20 GB.

9. Click Install and wait for the installation to complete.

After installing Ghost CMS HA, you will have access to:

• The main website: https://your-domain
• The Ghost admin dashboard: https://your-domain/wp-admin

For initial setup, open the admin dashboard and create an admin account.

Deleting an application

1. Delete the Yandex Cloud Postbox that was created automatically when installing the application. For technical reasons, it will not be deleted automatically when deleting the application.
2. Delete the DNS record created for Yandex Cloud Postbox address verification.
3. Delete all objects from the Yandex Object Storage buckets created when installing the application: you can only delete empty buckets.
4. Delete the Ghost CMS HA instance.

• Critical, high-traffic news outlets and personal blogs.
• Fee-based communities with access to exclusive content that require continuous operation.
• Corporate blogs and knowledge bases for large organizations.
• Email newsletters with a publication archive for media outlets with critically important SLAs.
• Brand-centered media that promote products and services and require high availability.

Yandex Cloud technical support is available 24/7. The types of requests you can submit and the relevant response times depend on your pricing plan. You can switch to the paid support plan in the management console. You can learn more about the technical support terms and conditions here.