How To Install Ghost On Localhost?

How To Install Ghost On Localhost: In this article on Ghost blogging platform review, I have spoken in details the advantages of Ghost and who should go for it. Ghost can be downloaded for free and installed in your own server. This, however, needs a bit of technical knowledge. So, if you do not want to get into the technicalities, you can go for Ghost (Pro) wherein you pay a monthly subscription to Ghost and they host your site.

In any case, if you like Ghost and want to create your blog on it, the best thing to do is check it yourself, how it works, and whether or not it’s going to serve your purpose by installing Ghost on your computer.

So, in this article, I will tell you how to install Ghost on localhost. Read on to find out.

How To Install Ghost On Localhost?

Before getting into the step-by-step guide on how to install Ghost on localhost, you should download and install the latest version of Node.js. Ghost is powered by Node.js and you can download Node.js for free from its official website.

So, now you have downloaded and installed Node.js. Let’s now see how to install Ghost on localhost.

Step 1: Install Ghost CLI

Ghost CLI is a CLI tool that is used to install and update Ghost. To download it, run cmd and open the terminal in your system. Type in the following command and hit ‘Enter’:

npm install -g ghost-cli

This will install the Ghost CLI.

Step 2: Use Ghost CLI To Install Ghost

Now, create a folder in your computer where you want to download and install Ghost. You can do it from the terminal itself by running the following command:

mkdir ghost

This will create a folder named ‘ghost’.

Next, navigate to the ‘ghost’ folder. Run the following command from your terminal:

cd ghost

Next, run the following command to install Ghost in this folder:

ghost install local

Upon successful installation of Ghost, you will see something like this on the screen:

You can now access your Ghost blog (hosted on the local server) at
http://localhost:2368.

Note: In the image above, it is showing http://localhost:2369 because the screenshot was taken when the second Ghost blog was set up locally on my computer.

Step 3: Set Up Your Admin Account

Now, in order to see how Ghost works, i.e. to get the admin access of your Ghost blog, and post content, you have to set up your Ghost account. For that, visit http://localhost:2368/ghost/ i.e. the URL of your blog followed by ‘/ghost’. You will see this screen:

Click on “Create your account” and fill up the details – your Site Title, Name, Email Address, and Password. Hit ‘Enter’.

The next step involves adding members which you can skip. You will be directed to the Ghost admin dashboard from where you can manage your site. You can check out the different functionalities and features from here – add pages and posts, upload themes, etc.

The dashboard is pretty simple and straightforward and would need know guidance to understand.

At any time, you can run the ‘ghost stop’ from the terminal to stop the Ghost server and your blog will not be available at http://localhost/2368. In order to start the server, run ‘ghost start’ from the terminal.

Make sure you are inside the same directory where you installed Ghost for these commands to work.

I hope I have been able to explain how to install Ghost on localhost.

If you have any query regarding installing Ghost on your computer, feel free to drop a comment below and I will get back to you at the earliest.