CMS integrations
Ghost
GrowGanic publishes each finished article to your Ghost publication, hosted on Ghost Pro or self-hosted.
A primary destination. Your article lives here and the canonical URL points at it, so this is the site Google credits. About 2 minutes.
#What connecting does
Every article GrowGanic finishes is created as a post on your Ghost publication and published. Nothing waits for approval.
Ghost has no one-click path because Ghost has no app platform to register with. You create a custom integration in your own admin, which takes about two minutes, and that integration is yours to revoke at any time.
GrowGanic writes posts and nothing else. Your newsletter subscribers are never emailed by us, on any publish.
#Before you start
- Admin access to your Ghost publication, so you can create a custom integration under Settings.
- Your Ghost site URL, which for Ghost Pro is the yourblog.ghost.io address rather than a custom front end.
#Connect
Set it up
- Open your Ghost integrations page, or in Ghost admin open Settings (gear icon), then Integrations.
- Click Add custom integration, name it (e.g. GrowGanic), then Create.
- Copy the Admin API Key (format id:secret, both halves joined by a colon). Paste the whole thing including the colon below.
- Do NOT paste the Content API key (it sits right above the Admin one). Content keys are read-only and we reject them with a clear error.
What you paste
| Field | Required | Where to find it |
|---|---|---|
| Site URL | Yes | Your Ghost site address, for example https://your-blog.ghost.io. This is where the Admin API lives, which is not always where your public site lives. |
| Admin API key (id:secret) | Yes | Ghost Settings, then Integrations, then your custom integration. Copy the whole value including the colon. The Content API key sitting just above it is read-only and is refused with a sentence saying so. |
If it will not connect
- The secret half of the Admin key is exactly 64 hex characters; a shorter paste usually means the copy missed part of it.
- Newsletter subscribers are never auto-emailed by GrowGanic. Articles publish to your site only.
#Permissions we ask for
Every permission below is used by a call GrowGanic actually makes. We ask for nothing we do not use.
| Permission | Used for | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Admin API key | Creating, updating and deleting posts | A Ghost custom integration carries admin-level API access; there is no narrower key to ask for. It is scoped to the API, never to your admin login, and revoking the integration revokes it entirely. |
GrowGanic reads and writes posts. It never sends your newsletter: no publish we make triggers an email to your members, and drafts never could. It touches no members, no tiers and no settings.
#What we write
| Field | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| title | The article title. |
| lexical | The article body, converted from HTML into Ghost's Lexical format. |
| slug | The article slug. |
| custom_excerpt | The excerpt. |
| feature_image and feature_image_alt | The hero image and its alt text. |
| status | published, or draft when you have asked for drafts. |
| codeinjection_head | The article's structured data. It lives here rather than in the body because the Lexical conversion can drop HTML comments and inline scripts. |
Fields your setup does not have are skipped rather than guessed at, and the article publishes with the ones it does have.
The hero image
The hero is sent as a URL and Ghost stores its own copy, which is how Ghost handles any feature image.
The alt text is written alongside it, taken from the article's own image description where one exists.
#Publishing behaviour
The connect test creates a real draft called "GrowGanic connection test" and then deletes it. That round trip is the only way to tell an Admin API key from a read-only Content key, because Ghost accepts both for reading. If the delete ever fails you are left with one named draft in your posts list, visible only to you.
Editing an article in GrowGanic updates the same post. It never creates a second one.
You can set articles to arrive as drafts instead of publishing live, from Settings in GrowGanic.
If this destination is ever unreachable, the article is not held. It publishes to your GrowGanic blog and moves here on its own once the connection is healthy again. GrowGanic never holds a finished article back waiting for you.
#Disconnect
Disconnecting stops publishing to Ghost. Posts already on your publication stay published and stay yours.
You can also delete the custom integration in Ghost admin, which revokes the key immediately. GrowGanic finds out on the next call, switches the connection off and emails you. The key you pasted is kept, so that once the problem is fixed clicking Test puts the connection back with nothing re-entered. Disconnect if you want it gone from our database.
Open Integrations in GrowGanic, find this destination and click Disconnect. The stored credential is deleted from our database in the same step, not marked inactive. Articles already published stay exactly where they are, and they are yours.
#Troubleshooting
| What you see | Why | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Missing the colon, or too many colons. | The Admin API key is two halves joined by exactly one colon and the paste was partial. | Copy the whole value again. The secret half is exactly 64 hex characters, so a short paste is usually a truncated copy. |
| This API key can read posts but cannot publish them. | The Content API key was pasted. It sits directly above the Admin one on the same screen. | Copy the Admin API key instead, in id:secret format. |
| Ghost Admin API not found at this URL. | The address given is your public front end rather than the Ghost install. | Use your Ghost site URL, for example https://your-blog.ghost.io. |
| Ghost did not respond in time. | The address is wrong, or the site was asleep. | Check the address and try again. |
Still stuck? Email [email protected] and tell us the sentence you are seeing. Or read the other destinations.