Deploy and Host Ghost CMS + MySQL on Railway

Run Ghost 6 on Railway with MySQL 8, persistent content storage, persistent database storage, private networking, and a Railway public domain.

About Hosting Ghost CMS + MySQL on Railway

• ghost: official ghost:6-alpine image exposed on port 2368
• mysql: official mysql:8.4 image on Railway private networking
• Persistent Ghost content volume at /var/lib/ghost/content
• Persistent MySQL volume at /var/lib/mysql
• Generated MySQL application and root passwords
• Ghost configured with Railway's public domain and private MySQL host

Why Deploy Ghost CMS + MySQL on Railway

The validated local template waits for MySQL before Ghost starts, which prevents first-boot migration failures when the app beats the database online. It also avoids a Railway HTTP healthcheck path because Ghost redirects common public paths to the canonical site URL while Railway healthchecks need a direct 200.

Current live note: the published ghost-cms-mysql marketplace template still needs this reliability fix applied in the Railway template editor. Do not replace it with a new template unless preserving the existing URL and earnings history is no longer required.

Validation Proof

• Fixed source validation project: ghost-cms-mysql-fix-20260523
• Fixed Ghost deployment reached SUCCESS
• Final fixed deployment: 5fd6cd70-9abb-4614-9aa4-9f6d62f7cdc2
• Public Ghost URL returned HTTP 200
• Temporary validation project and draft were deleted after verification

Common Use Cases

• Self-hosted blogs and publications
• Editorial sites
• Newsletter-backed Ghost installs
• Membership and audience experiments
• Ghost evaluation environments

Dependencies for Ghost CMS + MySQL Hosting

Ghost stores content in MySQL and uploaded media/themes on the Ghost content volume. MySQL stays private; only the Ghost web service receives a public domain.

Deployment Dependencies

• url: Railway public Ghost URL
• database__connection__host: private MySQL host
• database__connection__user: MySQL application user
• database__connection__password: generated MySQL application password
• MYSQL_PASSWORD: generated MySQL password
• MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: generated MySQL root password

After Deploy

1. Open the Ghost public URL.
2. Complete Ghost's first-admin setup.
3. Add SMTP variables if newsletters or transactional email are needed.
4. Keep Ghost as a single app instance unless storage, sessions, and queueing are redesigned for horizontal scale.

Support Checklist

If a deploy fails, include the ghost and mysql deployment IDs, the first 80 lines of ghost logs, and whether the public URL reaches the Ghost setup page.