Catalog / Ghost CMS Cheatsheet
Ghost CMS Cheatsheet
A quick reference guide to Ghost CMS, covering its core concepts, features, and common tasks.
Core Concepts
Key Terminology
Posts |
The primary content type in Ghost, representing articles or blog entries. |
Pages |
Static content like ‘About’ or ‘Contact’ pages. |
Tags |
Used to categorize and organize posts. |
Authors |
Users who create and publish content. |
Members |
Users who can subscribe to your content. |
Themes |
Control the visual appearance of your site. |
Admin Interface
Access the Ghost admin panel by navigating to This is where you create, edit, and manage your content, users, and settings. |
The admin interface is divided into sections for Posts, Pages, Members, Settings, and Explore. |
Content Editor (Koenig)
Ghost uses a block-based editor called Koenig for creating posts and pages. Each piece of content is a ‘card’, allowing for flexible layout and content types. |
Common card types include Markdown, HTML, image, embed, and callout. |
Theme Development
Theme Structure
Ghost themes are built using Handlebars.js for templating. Key files include:
|
Handlebars Helpers
|
Access site-wide data (e.g., name, description, logo). |
|
Access post-specific data (e.g., title, content, url). |
|
Access page-specific data. |
|
Output the URL of a post, page, tag, or author. |
|
Output the post or page content. |
|
Output the post excerpt. |
Theme Settings
Ghost themes can be configured using This allows users to easily change things like accent colors, social media links, and other theme-specific options without directly editing the theme files. |
API & Integrations
Content API
Ghost provides a Content API for fetching posts, pages, tags, and authors. This allows you to use Ghost as a headless CMS and build custom frontends using any technology. Access requires an API key, which you can generate in the Ghost admin panel. |
Example request using the Content API:
|
Admin API
The Admin API allows you to manage content, users, and settings programmatically. It requires authentication using JWT (JSON Web Tokens). Use cases include building custom integrations and automating content management tasks. |
Webhooks
Ghost supports webhooks, allowing you to trigger actions in other applications when certain events occur (e.g., post published, member created). This enables seamless integration with other services and workflows. |
Command Line Interface (Ghost-CLI)
Installation
Install Ghost-CLI globally using npm:
|
Common Commands
|
Install a new Ghost instance. |
|
Update an existing Ghost instance to the latest version. |
|
Start the Ghost process. |
|
Stop the Ghost process. |
|
Restart the Ghost process. |
|
Configure Ghost settings. |
Configuration
Ghost-CLI helps you configure your Ghost installation, including setting up the database, mail server, and SSL certificate. Run |