How to get started with Ghost’s digital publishing platform

Building a new digital outlet can be a daunting task, but Ghost is designed to make it easy to start publishing professional content. Ghost’s robust capabilities, low price point and open-source nature make it an attractive option for small newsrooms looking to get up and running quickly.

Although Ghost’s toolkit is pretty straightforward, it can still be overwhelming to start using it. This guide will walk you through the basics, as well as a few considerations you should keep in mind.

Step 1: Account setup

First thing’s first: Building a Ghost website requires setting up a Ghost account. A few things to keep in mind through the sign-up process:

• Getting started with Ghost requires an email address and a credit card. The site ties user verification to your credit card, but says they don’t use this information for payments or auto-subscriptions. 
• You can start using Ghost’s features with a 14-day free trial. After the trial is over, your site can stay with Ghost’s free plan or be upgraded to a premium version for a monthly payment.
• Ghost will ask for a site name during sign-up, and use that name to set up an automatic subdomain on ghost.io. Your site’s url will look like “yournamehere.ghost.io.” If you have your own .com or .org site, you’ll need a premium subscription to transfer your Ghost site out to another domain.

Step 2: Customize your site

Once you’re signed in, Ghost generates a basic mock-up of a publishing site, and lets you dive right into customizing the various design elements. There’s a lot of stuff to play around with in this stage, but here are a few things to keep in mind:

• It’s helpful to start this process with a name, tagline, and logo for your outlet. Ghost lets you plug those elements early on in the process, and having those key design decisions on the page makes it easier to visualize your design decisions.
• Before you tinker too much with the individual elements in the Design tab, check out the Theme section in Settings (the gear icon in the lower-right of your dashboard). There’s an assortment of free templates to pick from, as well as paid themes on Ghost’s marketplace if you’re looking for something more bespoke.
• As you’re customizing your site, make sure to adjust the meta data options under Settings-General-Meta Data. These settings affect how your site shows up in Google searches and on X/Facebook.

Step 3: Add your organization

Unless you’re starting entirely from scratch, you’ll likely need to import parts of your existing organization to its new home on Ghost. The platform has a few different tools to help smooth your organization’s transition to Ghost:

• You can add new staff members to your site by Settings-General-Staff; the Invite People button sends an invitation link to your team member’s email. Each invited staff member gets assigned one of four different roles, and each role comes with different permissions and access to the site:
  • Contributors can create and write articles, but can’t publish them.
  • Authors can publish their own posts, but can’t edit articles made by other staffers.
  • Editors can add new team members and edit other people’s work. 
  • Administrators have full access to all site content.

Staff roles can be adjusted after the initial sign-up period.

• If you’re moving onto a Ghost site from a different platform, the Import/Export tools under Settings-Advanced-Import/Export can help you bring over existing content and users you want to preserve. Ghost’s help site has a how-to guide for some common platforms like Substack or Mailchimp, and the platform also offers a concierge team to help with specific import requests.
• If you’re paying for Ghost(Pro), you can establish a custom domain for your new site. The process involves purchasing a web domain with a domain registration service (Ghost recommends Squarespace), followed by adding a few DNS records within that registrar to connect your Ghost site to that custom domain. This guide on Ghost’s website has a more detailed breakdown of how the process works.

Step 4: Start posting

Ghost’s content management system is a major draw: It’s fairly intuitive to use but supports many types of content. Once your site’s established and you’re ready to post, here’s where to start:

• Ghost distinguishes between two types of content: Posts and Pages. Posts are for the individual articles and blogs that make up your outlet’s content feed. Pages are for more permanent, standalone types of content like an About Us page or a Contact form. Each type of content has its own section in the left-hand toolbar of your site’s dashboard. Pages also generate a custom url when they’re published that you can add to your site’s navigation bar (Settings-Site-Navigation).
• To make a simple text Post, click the plus sign next to the Post tab in the dashboard, add in a title and image and start typing! Ghost’s text editor supports basic formatting options like bolding and hyperlinks, as well as the Markdown language for more advanced formatting.
• You can also add different types of media into your Posts with Ghost’s Cards system. While editing a Post, clicking the plus icon to the left of the article text brings up a list of Cards you can add to the Post, each one designed to handle a specific type of media. Cards can add images or videos, gate off premium or email-only content, embed content from other sites, and a host of other features. This article from Ghost’s help page details more information about how Cards work.
• Each Post can be assigned any number of tags from the Post Settings menu. Tags can be created on the fly or in the Tags section of Ghost’s admin dashboard. Tagged content is automatically collected under its own url, which you can use to share specific groups of articles with your audience.
• Once you’re finished editing your Post, you can use the Preview button at the upper right corner of the editor to see how your article will look live on your site. If you’re happy with it, the Publish button right next to Preview lets you push your content out to the Internet. Clicking Publish allows you to publish your article right away or at a scheduled time; you can also decide whether to send out an email newsletter version of your new article from the publish screen as well.

Step 5: Building an audience

If you’re aiming to monetize the content you’re posting on Ghost, it’s important to start building memberships early. Ghost has a few simple tools to help you gain and keep track of your audience members.

• To start accruing members, make sure your site allows subscription sign-ups in the Settings-Members-Access pane of the dashboard. Once that’s established, you can change how your users sign up for memberships via the Signup Portal page in Settings. The Portal is how Ghost registers users for free and paid accounts; you can customize how that signup sheet looks and what information is presented.
• Ghost uses Stripe as its payment processor, so you’ll need a Stripe account to start monetizing your content. Payment rates can be set at the Settings-Members-Tiers; each tiers allows you to set the price point and content access level.
• If you want to stay connected with your users, it’s a good idea to set up an email newsletter so they’re informed whenever you publish. Options for this can be found in Settings-Membership-Newsletters. You can also create different newsletters for different types of content or audiences.

Is Ghost a good fit?

Ghost is an easy and powerful entry ramp into digital publishing, but there are many other options in the digital publishing space. Here are some criteria to keep in mind when considering Ghost:

• Price: Ghost(Pro) charges a flat fee, ranging from $15-$200 a month, with no revenue fees.  Models like Substack and Patreon take percentages of your revenue — which might be cheaper for smaller-scale operations.
• Features: Ghost has a lot of flexibility when it comes to creating and publishing content, but more established services like WordPress offer a wider array of features and support for more complex websites. 
• Ownership: Ghost’s open-source nature guarantees its users can keep control over their content and subscriber base, regardless of how Ghost as a platform changes over the years.

Pro tips

Once you’re comfortable with the basic functions of Ghost and are ready to explore more in-depth uses of the platform, here are a few places to start.

• If you want to add features to your site that aren’t in Ghost’s default package, you’ll want to check out Ghost’s list of Integrations for instructions on adding third-party content to your site.
• In a similar vein, third-party service Outpost is designed to complement Ghost’s toolset by automating membership management and collecting additional analytics.
• Use the Snippet feature at the end of the editing toolbar to easily copy and paste content you’ll need to reuse over and over again, like a disclaimer or a call to action.
• If you run into any trouble, Ghost’s official forums are a good resource for troubleshooting. Ghost also has a hiring platform for development help if you need some coding expertise.

Alternatives

• Medium: A free-to-start simple blogging platform, without all the bells and whistles that come with a paid Ghost subscription.
• Beehiive: A newsletter-focused platform that also offers an all-in-one approach to digital publishing.
• WordPress (.com or .org): Another open-source option that’s more established and has many options for plugins and custom-built features. The price point for WordPress can range widely depending on the host, plugins and other factors.

• Category: Getting Started Guides
• Tag: Content management, Newsletter platform, Open-source, Subscription paywall