How to Monitor a Ghost Blog or Publication

Ghost is the platform of choice for many independent publishers, newsletters, and media brands. Whether you're running Ghost(Pro) — Ghost's managed hosting — or a self-hosted instance on a VPS, external monitoring catches what Ghost's internal health checks don't: the user-facing availability that readers and paying members experience.

Ghost(Pro) vs Self-Hosted: Different Monitoring Priorities

Ghost(Pro) users have infrastructure managed by Ghost. Uptime, backups, and server maintenance are handled. Your monitoring focus is:

• Whether your custom domain is correctly configured and resolving
• SSL certificate health for your custom domain
• Whether the member portal and subscription flows work
• Domain expiry

Self-hosted Ghost users have all the same concerns plus:

• Server and process availability (Ghost Node.js process crashing)
• Database connectivity (MySQL/SQLite)
• Reverse proxy configuration (Nginx/Caddy)
• Let's Encrypt renewal success

What to Monitor

Main Publication URL

Monitor: https://yourpublication.com
Expected status: 200
Content check: publication name or "Subscribe"
Interval: 5 minutes

This is your reader-facing check. If your homepage returns an error, readers can't access your content.

Member Portal / Subscription Page

Ghost's membership and newsletter features depend on a working member portal. Monitor the portal URL directly:

Monitor: https://yourpublication.com/portal/
Expected status: 200

A broken member portal means new subscribers can't sign up and existing members can't manage their accounts — a direct revenue impact if you have paid tiers.

RSS Feed

Many Ghost publications have email newsletters powered by RSS-to-email tools. If your RSS feed breaks, scheduled newsletter sends can fail silently.

Monitor: https://yourpublication.com/rss/
Expected status: 200
Content check: <rss

SSL Certificate

Ghost provisions SSL via Let's Encrypt. For self-hosted instances, certificate renewal depends on your server configuration being correct. For Ghost(Pro) with a custom domain, DNS misconfiguration can block renewal.

SSL certificate monitoring with 30-day advance alerts catches renewal failures before readers see browser warnings. See also Let's Encrypt renewal failed for common failure causes.

Domain Expiry

Your domain is registered separately from Ghost. A lapsed domain takes your entire publication offline. Domain expiry monitoring provides advance warning before renewal deadlines.

Self-Hosted Ghost: Additional Checks

If you're running Ghost on your own server, add:

Health check endpoint:

Ghost exposes a health check at /ghost/api/admin/site/:

Monitor: https://yourpublication.com/ghost/api/admin/site/
Expected status: 200
Content check: "version"

This checks that the Ghost admin API is responding, which requires the Node.js process, database, and application layer to all be functioning.

Heartbeat monitoring for Ghost process:

If your Ghost instance is managed by a process manager (PM2, systemd), configure a heartbeat monitor that pings after each successful process health check.

Alerting for Publications

Publication outages have a direct impact on reader trust and subscriber retention. Configure:

• Immediate email + SMS for the site owner or technical manager
• Recovery alerts so you know when the site is back up
• Slack notifications if you have a small editorial team

For newsletters with scheduled sends, check availability before a scheduled send window. An outage during a newsletter send can affect open rates and subscriber links.

Get Started

Domain Monitor adds uptime, SSL, and domain expiry monitoring for any Ghost publication in minutes. Create a free account.

Related Articles

• Let's Encrypt Renewal Failed: How to Fix It
• How to Monitor a WordPress Website
• What Is Heartbeat Monitoring?
• What Is SSL Certificate Monitoring?