Step 1: Read the Bitnami documentation Step 2: Get the default application password to access the Ghost administration dashboard Step 3: Attach a static IP address to your instance Step 4: Sign in to the administration dashboard of your Ghost website Step 5: Route traffic for your registered domain name to your Ghost website Step 6: Configure HTTPS for your Ghost website Step 7: Read the Ghost documentation and continue configuring your website Step 8: Create a snapshot of your instance

Deploy a Ghost website on Lightsail

Here are a few steps you should take to get started after your Ghost instance is up and running on Amazon Lightsail:

Contents

Step 1: Read the Bitnami documentation
Step 2: Get the default application password to access the Ghost administration dashboard
Step 3: Attach a static IP address to your instance
Step 4: Sign in to the administration dashboard of your Ghost website
Step 5: Route traffic for your registered domain name to your Ghost website
Step 6: Configure HTTPS for your Ghost website
Step 7: Read the Ghost documentation and continue configuring your website
Step 8: Create a snapshot of your instance

Step 1: Read the Bitnami documentation

Read the Bitnami documentation to learn how to configure your Ghost application. For more information, see the Ghost Packaged By Bitnami For AWS Cloud.

Step 2: Get the default application password to access the Ghost administration dashboard

Complete the following procedure to get the default application password required to access the administration dashboard for your Ghost website. For more information, see Getting the application user name and password for your Bitnami instance in Amazon Lightsail.

On your instance management page, under the Connect tab, choose Connect using SSH.
After you're connected, enter the following command to get the application password:
```
$ cat $HOME/bitnami_application_password
```
You should see a response similar to the following, which contains the default application password:
```
bitnami@ip-192-0-2-0:~$ cat $HOME/bitnami_application_password
wB2Ex@mplEK6
```

Step 3: Attach a static IP address to your instance

The public IP address assigned to your instance when you first create it will change every time you stop and start your instance. You should create and attach a static IP address to your instance to ensure its public IP address doesn't change. Later, when you use a registered domain name, such as example.com, with your instance, you don’t have to update your domain’s DNS records every time you stop and start your instance. You can attach one static IP to an instance.

On the instance management page, under the Networking tab, choose Create a static IP or Attach static IP (if you previously created a static IP that you can attach to your instance), then follow the instructions on the page. For more information, see Create a static IP and attach it to an instance.

Attach static IP address in the Lightsail console

After the new static IP address is attached to your instance, you must complete the following steps to make the application aware of the new static IP address.

Make a note of the static IP address of your instance. It's listed in the header section of your instance management page.
On the instance management page, under the Connect tab, choose Connect using SSH.

After you're connected, enter the following command. Replace <StaticIP> with the new static IP address of your instance.


sudo /opt/bitnami/configure_app_domain --domain <StaticIP>

Example:


sudo /opt/bitnami/configure_app_domain --domain 203.0.113.0

You should see a response similar to the following. The application on your instance should now be aware of the new static IP address.

bitnami@ip-203.0.113.0:~$ sudo /opt/bitnami/configure_app_domain --domain 203.0.113.0
Configuring domain to 203.0.113.0
2024-06-06T21:43:42.393Z - info: Saving configuration info to disk
ghost 21:43:42.78 INFO  ==> Configuring Ghost URL to http://203.0.113.0
Disabling automatic domain update for IP address changes

Now that you have the default application password, complete the following procedure to navigate to your Ghost website's home page, and sign in to the administration dashboard. After you’re signed in, you can start customizing your website and making administrative changes. For more information about what you can do in Ghost, see the Step 6: Read the Ghost documentation and continue configuring your website section later in this guide.

On your instance management page, under the Connect tab, make note of the public IP address of your instance. If you previously attached a static IP to your instance, this will be the static IP address. The public IP address is also displayed in the header section of your instance management page.
Browse to the public IP address of your instance, for example by going to http://203.0.113.0.

The home page of your Ghost website should appear.
Choose Manage in the bottom right corner of your Ghost website home page.

If the Manage banner is not shown, you can reach the sign in page by browsing to http://<PublicIP>/ghost. Replace <PublicIP> with the public IP address of your instance.
Sign in using the default user name (user@example.com) and the default password retrieved earlier in this guide.

The Ghost administration dashboard appears.

Step 5: Route traffic for your registered domain name to your Ghost website

To route traffic for your registered domain name, such as example.com, to your Ghost website, you add a record to the DNS of your domain. DNS records are typically managed and hosted at the registrar where you registered your domain. However, we recommend that you transfer management of your domain's DNS records to Lightsail so that you can administer it using the Lightsail console.

On the Lightsail console home page, in the Domains & DNS section, choose Create DNS zone, then follow the instructions on the page. For more information, see Creating a DNS zone to manage your domain’s DNS records in Lightsail.

After your domain name is routing traffic to your instance, you must complete the following steps to make the Ghost application aware of the new domain.

On the instance management page, under the Connect tab, choose Connect using SSH.

After you're connected, enter the following command. Replace <DomainName> with the domain name that is directing traffic to your Ghost instance.


$ sudo /opt/bitnami/configure_app_domain --domain <DomainName>

Example:


$ sudo /opt/bitnami/configure_app_domain --domain example.com

You should see a response similar to the following example. The Ghost application should now be aware of the domain.

bitnami@ip-203.0.113.0:~$ sudo /opt/bitnami/configure_app_domain --domain example.com
Configuring domain to example.com
2024-06-06T21:50:00.393Z - info: Saving configuration info to disk
ghost 21:50:25.78 INFO  ==> Configuring Ghost URL to http://example.com
Disabling automatic domain update for IP address changes

If you browse to the domain name that you configured for your instance, you should be redirected to the home page of your Ghost website. Next, you should generate and configure an SSL/TLS certificate to enable HTTPS connections for your Ghost website. For more information, continue to the next Step 6: Configure HTTPS for your Ghost website section of this guide.

Step 6: Configure HTTPS for your Ghost website

Complete the following procedure to configure HTTPS on your Ghost website. These steps show you how to use the Bitnami HTTPS Configuration Tool (bncert-tool), which is a command line tool for requesting Let's Encrypt SSL/TLS certificates. For more information see Learn About The Bitnami HTTPS Configuration Tool in the Bitnami documentation.

Important

Before starting with this procedure, make sure that you configured your domain to route traffic to your Ghost instance. Otherwise, the SSL/TLS certificate validation process will fail.

On your instance management page, under the Connect tab, choose Connect using SSH.
After you're connected, enter the following command to confirm the bncert tool is installed on your instance.
```
sudo /opt/bitnami/bncert-tool
```
You should see one of the following responses:
- If you see command not found in the response, then the bncert tool is not installed on your instance. Continue to the next step in this procedure to install the bncert tool on your instance.
- If you see Welcome to the Bitnami HTTPS configuration tool in the response, then the bncert tool is installed on your instance. Continue to the step 8 of this procedure.
- If the bncert tool has been installed on your instance for a while, then you might see a message indicating that an updated version of the tool is available. Choose to download it, and then enter the sudo /opt/bitnami/bncert-tool command to run the bncert tool again. Continue to the step 8 of this procedure.

Enter the following command to download the bncert run file to your instance.


wget -O bncert-linux-x64.run https://downloads.bitnami.com/files/bncert/latest/bncert-linux-x64.run

Enter the following command to create a directory for the bncert tool run file on your instance.
```
sudo mkdir /opt/bitnami/bncert
```
Enter the following command to make the bncert run a file that can be executed as a program.
```
sudo chmod +x /opt/bitnami/bncert/bncert-linux-x64.run
```
Enter the following command to create a symbolic link that runs the bncert tool when you enter the sudo /opt/bitnami/bncert-tool command.
```
sudo ln -s /opt/bitnami/bncert/bncert-linux-x64.run /opt/bitnami/bncert-tool
```
You are now done installing the bncert tool on your instance.
Enter the following command to run the bncert tool.
```
sudo /opt/bitnami/bncert-tool
```
Enter your primary domain name and alternate domain names separated by a space as shown in the following example.

If your domain is not configured to route traffic to the public IP address of your instance, the bncert tool will ask you to make that configuration before continuing. Your domain must be routing traffic to the public IP address of the instance from which you are using the bncert tool to enable HTTPS on the instance. This confirms that you own the domain, and serves as the validation for your certificate.
The bncert tool will ask you how you want your website's redirection to be configured. These are the options available:
- Enable HTTP to HTTPS redirection - Specifies whether users who browse to the HTTP version of your website (i.e., http:/example.com) are automatically redirected to the HTTPS version (i.e., https://example.com). We recommend enabling this option because it forces all visitors to use the encrypted connection. Type Y and press Enter to enable it.
- Enable non-www to www redirection - Specifies whether users who browse to the apex of your domain (i.e., https://example.com) are automatically redirected to your domain's www subdomain (i.e., https://www.example.com). We recommend enabling this option. However, you may want to disable it and enable the alternate option (enable www to non-www redirection) if you have specified the apex of your domain as your preferred website address in search engine tools like Google's webmaster tools, or if your apex points directly to your IP and your www subdomain references your apex via a CNAME record. Type Y and press Enter to enable it.
- Enable www to non-www redirection - Specifies whether users who browse to your domain's www subdomain (i.e., https://www.example.com) are automatically redirected to the apex of your domain (i.e., https://example.com). We recommend disabling this, if you enabled non-www redirection to www. Type N and press Enter to disable it.
Your selections should look like the following example.
The changes that are going to be made are listed. Type Y and press Enter to confirm and continue.
Enter your email address to associate with your Let's Encrypt certificate and press Enter.
Review the Let's Encrypt Subscriber Agreement. Type Y and press Enter to accept the agreement and continue.

The actions are performed to enable HTTPS on your instance, including requesting the certificate and configuring the redirections you specified.

Your certificate is successfully issued and validated, and the redirections are successfully configured on your instance if you see a message similar to the following example.

The bncert tool will perform an automatic renewal of your certificate every 80 days before it expires. Repeat the above steps if you wish to use additional domains and subdomains with your instance, and you want to enable HTTPS for those domains.
Tip
Enter the following command to restart the services on your instance.
```
sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh restart
```
You are now done enabling HTTPS on your Ghost instance. Next time you browse to your Ghost website using the domain you configured, you should see that it redirects to the HTTPS connection.

Step 7: Read the Ghost documentation and continue configuring your website

Read the Ghost documentation to learn how to administer and customize your website. For more information, see the Ghost Documentation.

Step 8: Create a snapshot of your instance

After you configure your Ghost website the way you want it, create periodic snapshots of your instance to back it up. You can create snapshots manually, or enable automatic snapshots to have Lightsail create daily snapshots for you. If something goes wrong with your instance, you can create a new replacement instance using the snapshot. For more information, see Snapshots.

On the instance management page, under the Snapshot tab, choose Create a snapshot or choose to enable automatic snapshots.