Install Ghost with NGINX on Arch Linux

2022-02-03

Complete guide on how to install Ghost and using NGINX as a reverse proxy to make the site accessible on the internet over HTTP/2.

Installation

pacman -S nodejs-lts-fermium npm sqlite nginx-mainline certbot certbot-nginx
npm install ghost-cli@latest -g

Prepare directory

Create a directory to install Ghost to and cd to it

mkdir /var/www/`yourdomain.com`
cd /var/www/`yourdomain.com`

Install Ghost with a sqlite database

ghost install —-db=sqlite3

When asked about URL, enter the full URL to your domain. E.g. https://hogwarts.zone

Configuration

NGINX

DigitalOcean has provided a tool for configuring your web server over at nginxconfig.io, use it and follow the instructions to create a site. Then proceed with the instructions below.

Enable your site in NGINX

If you’ve generated a config as mentioned above you should be ready to activate your site.

cd /etc/nginx
ln -s sites-available/`yourdomain.com` sites-enabled/`yourdomain.com`

Disable the default site

If you want to disable the default site and create a new one, instead of adding your site to the default webroot, you can disable it by removing the symlink.

rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

Certificate renewal

Create a systemd service

[Unit]
Description=Let’s Encrypt renewal

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/bin/certbot renew —quiet —agree-tos —deploy-hook “systemctl reload nginx.service”

Create a timer

Make it run twice a day at random times to help reduce load on Let’s Encrypt servers.

[Unit]
Description=Twice daily renewal of Let’s Encrypt’s certificates

[Timer]
OnCalendar=0/12:00:00
RandomizedDelaySec=1h
Persistent=true

[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target

Start and enable the service

systemctl start certbot.timer
systemctl enable certbot.timer

Run NGINX

systemctl start nginx
systemctl enable nginx

Live

Your website should now be live at https://yourdomain.com.