After filling up the basic setup by visiting http://localhost:2368/ghost/, your account is set. Now let's start to explore the admin panel of Ghost.

There are 7 default posts populated to your website, give them a look, you will have the basic idea of how to use the Ghost CMS. After that, you are free to delete them and their tag getting-started.

Now take some time to play with it, don't afraid to try things you want to, you can always re-install a whole new Ghost app by using the commands we used before.

Once you are familiar to the Ghost system and the admin portal, you can start to create your own content. Start blogging!

Posts

When editing a posts, you can open the "Post Settings" sidebar by clicking the gear icon at the top right corner, there are few things you can do:

  • upload a post image or choose one from Unsplash;
  • define the unique url for your post;
  • choose tags for your post - you can create new tags here too;
  • write a short summary for your post in "Excerpt" area;
  • tick the box to make this post featured.

There are some advanced settings like change the meta data, customize social media sharing card, use code injection and change template. If you are not sure what are they, just leave them just for now, you can always come back and edit them later.

Tags

You can edit individual tag detail from Tags at the left bar. Each tag can have its own image and description, some Ghost themes will display those in tag pages.

Internal tags

You can make a tag as a internal tag if you include a # before it, such as #carousel. The url of the internal tags are start with hash-, and a internal label will be added in the tags management page.

Pages

Pages are special posts, you can use pages to put things are more general to your blog, such as About, Contact...

Themes

Themes are templates that can be used by a Ghost website in order to change the visual look of the front-end website. You can manage your theme at admin panel -> Settings -> Design.

Ghost organization provides a marketplace for Ghost theme developers to publish their themes. Some of them are free so you can download them and upload the zip file to your Ghost website and activate them.

I have also created a free blogging theme for Ghost, which is also the theme this website is currently using. If you like it, you should go check it out: The Fizzy Theme. (please star it on GitHub, Thanks! 😄)