Self-hosted Ghost (Dockerized, served by Caddy)

A self-hosted Ghost publishing platform, running in Docker and reverse-proxied by Caddy (not nginx).

Stack

Service	Image	Role
ghost	custom (./ghost/Dockerfile, extends ghost:6-alpine)	The publishing app
mysql	mysql:8.0	Database
caddy	caddy:2-alpine	Reverse proxy + automatic HTTPS

Data persists in local bind-mounted folders under ./data/ (data/ghost-content, data/mysql, data/caddy/data, data/caddy/config).

Quick start

# 1. Configure secrets
cp .env.example .env
# edit .env and set MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD / MYSQL_PASSWORD

# 2. Build & start
make dev          # or: docker compose up -d --build

# 3. Open the site / admin
#    http://localhost/         -> the blog
#    http://localhost/ghost    -> admin setup (create your account here)

Check status and logs:

docker compose ps
docker compose logs -f ghost

Going to production

IP only (no domain yet) — plain HTTP

1. In .env, set GHOST_URL=http://<public-ip> and leave CADDY_SITE_ADDRESS unset (Caddy serves plain HTTP on port 80).
2. Open port 80 to the internet.
3. make prod — verifies the .env settings, then starts the stack.

Real domain + HTTPS

1. Point your domain's DNS A/AAAA record at this server.
2. In .env, set GHOST_URL=https://your-domain and CADDY_SITE_ADDRESS=your-domain.
3. Ensure ports 80 and 443 are open to the internet (Caddy needs them to obtain a Let's Encrypt certificate).
4. make prod — Caddy provisions and renews the cert automatically.

Backups

The custom Ghost image ships with mysqldump. Back up the database with:

docker compose exec mysql sh -c \
  'mysqldump -u root -p"$MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD" ghost' > ghost-backup.sql

Ghost's uploaded images/themes live in ./data/ghost-content — back that up too (e.g. tar czf ghost_content.tgz -C data/ghost-content .).

Updating

docker compose pull          # newer mysql / caddy
docker compose build --pull  # newer Ghost base image
docker compose up -d