Ghost Heroku Kit

Run Ghost on Heroku with as little effort as possible.

Running locally

1. Clone or download

   $ git clone git@github.com:joeyespo/ghost-heroku-kit.git

2. Install dependencies

   $ npm install

3. Run

   $ npm start

By default, sqlite3 and the file system will be used like usual. Related paths are included in .gitignore to prevent any accidental commits.

Deploying

Push your repo to GitHub and click the Deploy to Heroku button.

That's it!

Preparing your project

You may also want to edit / replace the following to reflect your own project

• app.json
• package.json
• this readme file
• content/images/logo.png

Swapping out services

The following backing services are supported out of the box

• Heroku Postgres
• Mandrill
• Mailgun
• Sendgrid
• Cloudinary

To switch, simply include the appropriate addon in app.json.

Using S3

Amazon S3 is supported too, but you'll have to manually create an account since there's no S3 addon. To use it, remove your current storage addon and set the following environment variables:

• S3_BUCKET
• S3_ACCESS_KEY_ID
• S3_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY

You'll get a chance to set these after clicking Deploy to Heroku.

Under the hood

Ghost Heroku Kit doesn't contain Ghost directly. This allows you to exclude the underlying blog engine from your repository. This also allows Ghost upgrades to be as simple as npm update.

Heroku addons are what fills in the missing pieces. By default, this project uses Mandrill and Cloudinary to provide the required services with zero config.

This project also follows Heroku best practices by using environment variables instead of named environments. This is what allows people to independently deploy to their own targets without requiring any code changes to config.js. For convenience, you can create an .env file to configure locally without accidentally committing anything.

Known Issues

Using a database other than Postgres will require a change to config.js until knex accepts general connection strings.

Ghost currently requires you to set the public url. Because of this, you can't use the Heroku button or PR apps without explicitly setting the SITE_URL environment variable.

Heroku doesn't take app.json into account when using heroku create. Once it does, you'll be able to use that instead of deciding between the Deploy button and configuring your app manually.

Support Ghost!

Many thanks to the entire Ghost team for building such an amazing platform.

Running on Heroku might be helpful for running small / experimental one-off blogs, but if you plan on using Ghost professionally, please consider supporting them.