How to Ghost install on CentOS 6.5 with WHM/cPanel

Hadie Danker

In all cases, $DOMAIN is the domain name where you want to want to install Ghost and $USERNAME is the corresponding username of the domain owner.

Ghost_Logo_on_White

Step 1. SSH into your server as root.

Step 2. Add the Enterprise Linux repositories.

$ yum install http://mirror.compevo.com/epel/6/i386/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm

Step 3. Install Node.js and the Node Package Manager

$ yum install nodejs
$ yum install npm

Step 4. For Atomic Secure Linux users only: Give Node.js the ability to remap memory.

$ paxctl -m /usr/bin/node

Step 7. Navigate to the user’s folder where you want to install Ghost and create a ‘ghost’ folder.

$ cd /home/$USERNAME/www/
$ mkdir ghost

Step 8. Download and unzip Ghost.

$ wget https://ghost.org/zip/ghost-0.4.0.zip --no-check-certificate
$ unzip ghost-0.4.0.zip ghost

Step 9. Install Ghost.

$ cd ghost
$ npm install --production

Step 10. Start Ghost.

$ npm start

Step 11. Follow the onscreen instructions to verify that it works and to setup your login info.

Step 12. Stop Ghost.

$ npm stop

Step 13. Setup Ghost to run as a background service.

$ npm install forever -g
$ NODE_ENV=production forever start index.js

Step 14. Install and configure supervisord to manage Ghost as a background service.

$ yum install supervisor
$ vi /etc/supervisord.conf

Add the following to the end and save the file:

[program:ghost]
command = node /home/$DOMAIN/www/ghost/index.js
directory = /home/$DOMAIN/www/ghost
user = ghost
autostart = true
autorestart = true
stdout_logfile = /var/log/supervisor/ghost.log
stderr_logfile = /var/log/supervisor/ghost_err.log
environment = NODE_ENV="production"

Step 15. Edit the config file and enter your domain name in the appropriate location under Production.

$ vi config.js
production: {
url: 'http://$DOMAIN',

Step 20. Start Ghost.

$ supervisord

Step 21. Create a custom virtualhost configuration.

$ mkdir /usr/local/apache/conf/userdata/std/2/$USERNAME/$DOMAIN/
$ touch /usr/local/apache/conf/userdata/std/2/$USERNAME/$DOMAIN/ghost.conf

Step 22. Edit the custom virtualhost file.

$ vi /usr/local/apache/conf/userdata/std/2/$USERNAME/$DOMAIN/ghost.conf

Add the following text and save the file:

ProxyPreserveHost on
ProxyPass / http://$DOMAIN:2368/

Step 24. Verify the the virtualhost configuration is loading correctly.

$ /scripts/ensure_vhost_includes --user=$USERNAME

Step 25. Recompile httpd.conf.

$ /usr/local/cpanel/bin/apache_conf_distiller

Step 26. Restart Apache.

$ service httpd restart

Your site should now load at the specified domain.