The minimalist concept offered by Ghost is what makes it appealing. When blogging with Ghost, you can put more focus on content creation and marketing instead of website customization. If you have just heard about Ghost and want to use it on your next blog, it makes sense to install it on a local machine to experiment with the blogging experience it offers. You can install Ghost on a local machine, no matter the operating system you use. Whether it is Windows, macOS, or Linux. This post will show you how to install Ghost on a Windows local machine.

It’s also reasonable to install Ghost on a local machine if you are a theme developer who wants to develop some new Ghost themes.

Ghost itself is a CMS written in JavaScript running on Node.js. That being said, you need to have Node.js installed on your computer before you can install Ghost.

Installing Ghost on a Windows local machine involves three steps as follows.

• Installing Node.js
• Installing Ghost-CLI
• Installing Ghost itself

How to Install Ghost in Windows

Step 1: Install Node.js

As mentioned above, Ghost is a JavaScript-based CMS running on Node.js. So, the very first thing you need to prepare before running the Ghost installation is to make sure that Node.js has been installed on your Windows machine. Node.js itself is a popular JavaScript runtime. In this context, it will play a role as a web server to run Ghost via web browser.

To install Node.js in Windows, first, download the installer file (available in MSI format) on its official website. There are two Node.js versions you can download: LTS and Current. You can download any version.

Simply double-click the MSI file once it’s downloaded on your computer to start the installation process of Node.js. Click the Next button on the appearing window.

Just like other software, you will be asked to accept the EULA (End User License Agreement) before installing Node.js. Simply agree with the EULA and click the Next button.

Select the location of the Node.js installation and click the Next button.

Next, you can select the features you want to include on the installation. You can simply click the Next button if you have no idea. The default Node.js installation has included all the necessary features to run Ghost.

On the next step, you will be prompted to select the tools you want to include on the installation. These tools are not necessary to run Ghost so you can simply click the Next button.

Click the Install button and wait a moment until the installation process is done.

Once the installation process is done, you can type node -v on Command Prompt to validate the installation. The command will check the Node.js version installed on your machine.

Step 2: Install Ghost-CLI

Ghost-CLI is a tool to install Ghost. You can install it using NPM, a JavaScript package manager for Node.js. NPM has been installed upon the Node.js installation. To install Ghost-CLI in Windows, launch Command Prompt and type the following command.

npm install ghost-cli@latest -g

Step 3: Install Ghost

Once Ghost-CLI is installed, you can start to install the Ghost CMS. First, create a new folder under your home directory. You can create the directory whether via File Explorer or Command Prompt. To create the directory via Command Prompt, you can type mkir[space]directory name (e.g., mkdir ghost)

Once the directory is created, move to it using the cd command on Command Prompt (cd ghost). Next, type the following command to install Ghost.

ghost install local

Once the installation is done, you can type ghost version on Command Prompt to validate the installation. The command will display the Ghost version installed on your machine.

Running and Stopping Ghost

Once the installation process is done, you can start to run Ghost. To do so, you can type ghost start on Command Prompt. While to stop Ghost, you can type ghost stop. Make sure to run these commands on the directory where Ghost is installed.

To access Ghost on web browser, you can type http://localhost:2368 on address bar. To access the Ghost dashboard, you can type http://localhost:2368/ghost on address bar.