Upgrading Ghost running on a Digital Ocean droplet

It's one-click install, but updates need to be done manually. Configure terminal/Filezilla for SSH access, backup content, use the ghost-cli to do the update.

Mark Andrews

Connecting to the droplet

Generate SSH key

ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "me@email"
Upload content of id_rsa.pub (public key) to Digital Ocean

Optionally convert to PPK for use with Filezilla

sudo apt install putty-tools
puttygen id_rsa -o digitalocean.ppk

Backup content

  • SFTP to backup /var/www/ghost/content/images
  • Export post content to JSON through Ghost interface -> Labs

Update Ghost and dependencies

Connect via terminal

ssh root@dropletIP

Switch to unpriveleged user

sudo -i -u ghost-mgr

Ensure Node is updated

sudo apt-get install -y nodejs

Ensure Ghost cli is updated

sudo npm install -g ghost-cli@latest

Update Ghost

ghost update --no-check-mem
The flag is only required where encountering < 150MB RAM error

Other useful commands

Restart Droplet

sudo shutdown -r now