Chapter 1: Introduction

In this guide, you’ll learn how to set up your own custom domain and deploy a Ghost website using Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). The site will be served directly through an OCI Load Balancer, ensuring a secure, scalable, and production-ready environment.

By the end of this guide, you’ll know how to:

• Register a domain name
• Configure DNS zones in Oracle Cloud
• Delegate your domain’s name servers to OCI
• Deploy Ghost using Docker containers
• Provision an OCI Load Balancer for traffic management
• Implement SSL encryption with Let’s Encrypt and Certbot
• Launch a fully operational and secure Ghost website

Overview of the Setup Process

Here’s a high-level overview of the process:

1. Choose and register a domain (GoDaddy and Hostinger examples included)
2. Create an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) account
3. Set up a public DNS zone for your domain in OCI
4. Update your domain’s name servers to point to OCI
5. Wait for DNS propagation to complete
6. Provision a VM instance with Debian in OCI
7. Set up an Oracle Linux 7 instance using ARM architecture (recommended for cost-effective performance)
8. Install and configure Docker to deploy Ghost and Nginx (or Nginx Proxy Manager)
9. Configure the OCI Load Balancer to route traffic to your instance
10. Set up SSL certificates using Certbot and Let’s Encrypt
11. Validate the configuration and deploy your site to production