🌐 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

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🧭 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