This #GoToSocial account has become a step-by-step tutorial in how to self-host the publishing platform #Ghost (and troubleshoot issues) 😆
If you're not interested in my messages on the subject, I will be using a new hashtag #EleSelfHostsGhost so you can just mute it.
I'm a little late to the party because everything is now set-up and running smoothly:
✅ I manually installed Ghost on my Ubuntu VPS
✅ I imported all the old posts and media: https://news.elenarossini.com
✅ I installed #Apache to use #Varnish cache and changed the cache's maxAge so that a bit of traffic wouldn't overwhelm my VPS
✅ I published and shared on Mastodon a new blog post: https://news.elenarossini.com/what-im-up-to-march-april-2025-edition/ Thanks to Varnish and the maxAge cache tweak, the VPS withstood the "Mastodon stampede" (the post had made it to Explore!)
So far so good.
👹 but when I tried to send that blog post as a newsletter to just 210 people, #Mailgun immediately flagged me as a spammer and froze my account 😱
It took about 48 hours of back-and-forth emails with the Mailgun team to convince them I'm not a spammer and to get my account reinstated.
Now, why am I sharing all this?
In case you are also tempted to self-host Ghost, I found that the official Ghost - Mailgun documentation has little information available. But I discovered this super helpful post in the Ghost Forums and I will be trying this tweak to see if it makes a difference:
https://forum.ghost.org/t/unable-to-send-newsletter-with-correct-mailgun-api-keys/34186/6
And yes, I'm aware that if you sign up for my newsletter you will get an email with a warning "this message failed the domain authentication" (or something along these lines). Problem is, when I implemented a tweak, changing config settings, the alert went away but I saw a spike in activity in my Dashboard, as if I had sent 600 emails (I did not). For now I can live with the warning.
I appreciate Ghost's new implementation of a spam filter because around the same time I got really suspicious signups originating from the same domain.
Anyway after I change all this I will try to send once again my blog post as a newsletter.
Special thanks to my parents for looking after my little one so I can do all this while she's on a school vacation ❤️
Elena Rossini on GoToSocial ⁂ /
npub1ga…57xl5
2025-04-14 10:52:34
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wss://relay.nostr.bandPublished at
2025-04-14 10:52:34Event JSON
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"content": "This #GoToSocial account has become a step-by-step tutorial in how to self-host the publishing platform #Ghost (and troubleshoot issues) 😆\n\nIf you're not interested in my messages on the subject, I will be using a new hashtag #EleSelfHostsGhost so you can just mute it.\n\nI'm a little late to the party because everything is now set-up and running smoothly:\n✅ I manually installed Ghost on my Ubuntu VPS\n✅ I imported all the old posts and media: https://news.elenarossini.com\n✅ I installed #Apache to use #Varnish cache and changed the cache's maxAge so that a bit of traffic wouldn't overwhelm my VPS\n✅ I published and shared on Mastodon a new blog post: https://news.elenarossini.com/what-im-up-to-march-april-2025-edition/ Thanks to Varnish and the maxAge cache tweak, the VPS withstood the \"Mastodon stampede\" (the post had made it to Explore!)\n\nSo far so good.\n\n👹 but when I tried to send that blog post as a newsletter to just 210 people, #Mailgun immediately flagged me as a spammer and froze my account 😱\n\nIt took about 48 hours of back-and-forth emails with the Mailgun team to convince them I'm not a spammer and to get my account reinstated.\n\nNow, why am I sharing all this?\n\nIn case you are also tempted to self-host Ghost, I found that the official Ghost - Mailgun documentation has little information available. But I discovered this super helpful post in the Ghost Forums and I will be trying this tweak to see if it makes a difference:\n\nhttps://forum.ghost.org/t/unable-to-send-newsletter-with-correct-mailgun-api-keys/34186/6\n\nAnd yes, I'm aware that if you sign up for my newsletter you will get an email with a warning \"this message failed the domain authentication\" (or something along these lines). Problem is, when I implemented a tweak, changing config settings, the alert went away but I saw a spike in activity in my Dashboard, as if I had sent 600 emails (I did not). For now I can live with the warning.\n\nI appreciate Ghost's new implementation of a spam filter because around the same time I got really suspicious signups originating from the same domain.\n\nAnyway after I change all this I will try to send once again my blog post as a newsletter.\n\nSpecial thanks to my parents for looking after my little one so I can do all this while she's on a school vacation ❤️",
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