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5 Things to do After Setting up Your Ghost Blog

These are the top 5 things you should do right after you create your blog using Ghost.

Zeeshan Abid

• 5 min read
5 Things to do After Setting up Your Ghost Blog

In my last two posts, I wrote about how to setup a Ghost blog post and make it available on the internet securely. If you haven't already, I highly recommend you check out my post here:

Securing your blog with Traefik and LetsEncrypt | iThink
This post demonstrates how to use Traefik and LetsEncrypt to obtain a free TLS certificate. Traefik enables us to make the blog accessible securely on the public internet, even if it is running on a private network.
iThinkZeeshan Abid

This is the third and final post in the series where I talk about what to do after setting up a Ghost blog. Starting a blog is a big step and many things need to be done in the right way to get the blog up and running. After setting up your Ghost blog, some important considerations should be taken into account before you start writing. This includes signing up for the blog to access the admin panel, optimizing the blog for SEO, and choosing an appropriate theme for the blog.

Signup

The first, and most important step to setting up your blog with Ghost, is to sign up for an account. It will give you access to the admin panel and other features and it also ensures that only you have control over your blog and that no unauthorized changes can be made to it. You may want to include additional members to your blog in the future. You can use admin settings to add additional members.

To do this, go to https://your.domain.com/ghost (note the /ghost) in your browser. Here you can sign up for your blog. Enter a title for your blog, your name, email, and a strong password. This will give access to essential tools you need to get your blog up and running, and you can customize the settings to your liking from there. The signup page looks like this:

Create a new account for your blog
Create a new account for your blog
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Tip: I recommend you choose a strong password. This password grants you administrator access, and if it is compromised, anyone can change the content of your blog.

Choose a Theme

Choosing a theme for your blog is a crucial step. You want to ensure the theme you select is appropriate for the content you plan to post. Consider the color scheme, fonts, and other design elements.

Ghost offers many free and paid themes. For starters, free themes should be sufficient, as paid themes can be expensive. To change the blog theme, go to Settings > Design > Change Theme and select the theme that best suits you.

Press the gear icon to access the blog settings
Press the gear icon to access the blog settings
Select "Change theme" to change the theme of the blog
Select "Change theme" to change the theme of the blog
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Tip: Some themes are adaptive and can change to a light or dark mode automatically depending on the user's system settings.

Choose a Title & Description

The title and description of your blog are important for SEO purposes, but they are also key indicators of what your blog is about and who your target audience is. When crafting the title and description, it is important to include relevant keywords to ensure that your blog can be easily found by those searching for it. Additionally, make sure that your title and description accurately reflect the content of your blog. It is also important to ensure that your time and language settings are properly updated, as this can also affect how potential readers find your blog. Taking the time to properly craft your title and description can be an invaluable step in ensuring that your blog is seen by the right people.

Add a title, description, and other settings for your blog
Add a title, description, and other settings for your blog
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Tip: You can always change the title and description of your blog. If you feel that the current title and description are not effective, feel free to make changes.

Site Metadata for SEO

SEO is essential for getting your blog noticed online. Ghost offers easy-to-use SEO-friendly tools. To access them, go to Settings > General > Site Meta Settings. Here you can add title and description metadata. You can also customize metadata for Twitter and Facebook. This is useful when sharing posts on social media, as Twitter and Facebook will fetch the title and description from your blog and display it in the feed. Additionally, you can add links to your Twitter and Facebook accounts on your blog, so readers can easily connect with you. All these features make it easier for your blog to show up in search engines and for readers to reach you on social media.

Add SEO metadata for search engines and social media
Add SEO metadata for search engines and social media

Write Your First Post

Now it is time for you to start writing your first blog post. Your readers are expecting valuable information, so write with a motivating and inspiring tone. Don't forget to make sure the quality of your content is top-notch. Go to settings and press + sign from the left sidebar.

Create a new blog post
Create a new blog post

It will bring up the new post and you can start writing:

Write your first blog post
Write your first blog post

You can spice up your post with some visuals like images, galleries, and even YouTube videos. Ghost offers plenty of helpful writing tools to make your post look amazing. When you're satisfied with your post and ready to go, hit the publish button and your work will be visible to the world. If you want to schedule your blog to be published at a later date, you can also do that too. Now that you're all set, get to blogging!

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Tip: You can customize posts with settings like metadata and custom URLs from the right sidebar. This gives you better control over the posts you write and how they appear on social media.

Conclusion

Having a blog is an excellent way to express yourself and get in touch with an audience. It is important to be consistent with your blog and make sure to add fresh content regularly. This will help to keep your readers engaged and coming back for more. Posting new material consistently will also help to increase the reach of your blog, potentially introducing it to even more readers. There are so many different types of content that you can share on your blog, from personal stories and interesting facts to tips and tutorials. Find what works best for you and your audience, and let your creativity shine!

Happy Blogging!