Update: it seems like the pre-packaged release is now working for me, which is awesome!

Ghost finally arrived yesterday and I was eager to try it out. The UI is really amazing and it seems like creating a theme for it can be done in minutes¹. I ran into some common errors with the pre-packaged release so here’s a really condensed guide on how to get it up and running. This may not be the perfect thing to do if you’re actually planning on using it in production, but more so for just playing around with it.

Prerequisites

The default database used for Ghost is SQLite3, so make sure that you have that installed. Don’t worry, it’s extremely easy.

Installing Ghost

1. Clone the repository.
2. Run git submodule update --init². This will install the default theme.
3. Run npm install -g grunt-cli. This will install Grunt³.
4. Run npm install. This installs all the dependencies.
5. Run gem install bourbon. This will install the Sass mixin library Bourbon.
6. Run grunt init. This will compile the stylesheet and templates.
7. Go to localhost:2368/ghost and sign up.

As you can see it’s not that hard. Now go make a theme or something!