How to update Ghost on DigitalOcean

If you're self hosting Ghost on DigitalOcean, then you'll find yourself needing to update it at some point.  Below are the simple steps that I take periodically to ensure that my install is always on the latest version.

Before carrying on, it might be worth taking a backup of your current site.  This is always advised and is something I do if there's a major update to do.

Firstly, start the terminal within DigitalOcean or SSH in with:

ssh root@[yourdomain]

Once you're logged in, you need to switch to ghost-mgr:

sudo -i -u ghost-mgr

Next, navigate to your Ghost installation:

cd /var/www/ghost

Then, you want to see if there's updates available:

ghost check-update

If there is, then run:

ghost update

You may find that Ghost Manager is out of date so you need to update that using the following command:

sudo npm install -g ghost-cli@latest

When you're doing this, you may notice that you have a permissions warning so pay attention to what the output says.  If this does happen, the output will advise you need to run the below code:

sudo find ./ ! -path "./versions/*" -type f -exec chmod 664 {} \;”

And after all of the above, your Ghost installation should be up to date.  Exit the terminal (by using exit) and feel free to run sudo reboot.

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