The Bottom Line: toolbrain.net runs Ghost CMS v6 in Docker behind an Nginx reverse proxy with automatic LetsEncrypt SSL. The entire deployment — from Docker Compose to Nginx config to the custom Python publishing CLI — is version-controlled and deployable with a single docker compose up -d. The zero-touch publishing pipeline (tb-publish.py) accepts raw HTML, runs pre-flight validation, posts via Ghost Admin API, and cross-references the SQLite database for integrity — all from a cron job with no human in the loop. Total infrastructure cost: $12/mo (VPS + domain).

This build log walks through the full stack: how Ghost is containerized, how Nginx terminates TLS and proxies requests, the custom publishing automation that makes scheduled cron-based posting possible, and the monitoring hooks that keep the site healthy. If you're self-hosting Ghost and want a production-grade setup you can git clone && docker compose up, this is the blueprint.

1. Docker Compose Stack

Ghost v6 + MySQL 8, pinned to explicit versions. No orchestration beyond Compose — the site is low-traffic enough that a single-node VPS handles everything.

version: '3.8'
services:
 ghost:
 image: ghost:6-alpine
 restart: always
 depends_on:
 - db
 environment:
 url: &url "https://toolbrain.net"
 database__client: mysql
 database__connection__host: db
 database__connection__user: ghost
 database__connection__password: ${GHOST_DB_PASSWORD}
 database__connection__database: ghost
 volumes:
 - ghost_content:/var/lib/ghost/content
 labels:
 - "traefik.enable=false"
db:
image: mysql:8.0
restart: always
environment:
MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD: ${MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD}
MYSQL_DATABASE: ghost
MYSQL_USER: ghost
MYSQL_PASSWORD: ${GHOST_DB_PASSWORD}
volumes:

mysql_data:/var/lib/mysql
cap_add:
SYS_NICE

volumes:
ghost_content:
mysql_data:

Key decisions:

• ghost:6-alpine — 60 MB image, minimal attack surface. Ghost v6 switches from mobiledoc to lexical as the default editor format; all our publishing tools had to account for this.
• MySQL 8 over SQLite — Ghost ships with SQLite by default, but MySQL gives us proper concurrent access for the publishing script reading the DB while Ghost writes to it.
• Environment variables via .env — passwords never in version control. The .env file is listed in .gitignore; only .env.example is committed.

2. Nginx Reverse Proxy & TLS

Rather than Caddy (common in Ghost setups) we opted for Nginx because the existing server already had Certbot running for other domains. One less daemon to manage.

server {
 listen 443 ssl http2;
 server_name toolbrain.net www.toolbrain.net;
ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/toolbrain.net/fullchain.pem;
ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/toolbrain.net/privkey.pem;
ssl_protocols TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3;
ssl_ciphers HIGH:!aNULL:!MD5;
client_max_body_size 20M;
location / {
proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:2368;
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
proxy_buffering off;
proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
}
location /ghost/api {
proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:2368;
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
proxy_buffering on;
}
}
server {
listen 80;
server_name toolbrain.net www.toolbrain.net;
return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
}

Note the two location blocks: the API endpoint uses proxy_buffering on because the Ghost Admin JSON responses are large and the client (tb-publish.py) doesn't need streaming. Everything else — page renders, images, assets — uses proxy_buffering off for lower time-to-first-byte.

3. The Zero-Touch Publishing Pipeline

The core of the automation is tb-publish.py, a Python 3 CLI that accepts HTML files and pushes them to Ghost via the Admin API. This is what lets scheduled cron jobs publish build logs, news roundups, and tip-of-the-day posts without any manual intervention.

How it works

1. Pre-flight validation — checks for broken HTML, missing required tags (<h2>), and forbidden patterns (stray markdown, raw </br> in Ghost lexical fields).
2. API authentication — uses Ghost Admin API Key (JWT) from environment variable GHOST_ADMIN_API_KEY, scoped to posts:write.
3. HTML-to-lexical conversion — since Ghost v6 uses lexical JSON internally, the pipeline sends HTML in the html field and lets Ghost's rendering engine handle the conversion on the server side. This avoids fragile client-side lexical generation.
4. SQLite cross-reference — after the API returns success, the script reads the Ghost SQLite database directly to confirm the post exists and the lexical JSON is non-empty. This catches API "success" responses where the render failed silently.
5. Slug deduplication — if a title matches an existing slug, the script appends a counter (-2, -3, etc.) or skips if the content is identical (idempotent publish).

The companion toolbrain-publish.py --list command queries the last 5 published posts via API for quick verification without SSH'ing into the database.

4. Cron Integration & Monitoring

Posts are published via systemd timers on the host. Each timer fires a bash wrapper that sources the .env file and calls tb-publish.py with the appropriate HTML file. A typical timer looks like:

[Unit]
Description=Publish build log to toolbrain.net
[Timer]
OnCalendar=Mon-Fri 17:00:00
Persistent=true
[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target

When a cron job runs (like this one), it:

1. Generates the HTML content autonomously
2. Calls tb-publish.py --title "..." --html /tmp/out.html --tags "Builds" --excerpt "..."
3. Verifies with toolbrain-publish.py --list
4. Returns the output — which gets delivered to the configured destination (email, Slack, Discord webhook)

Failure handling: If the API returns a non-200 or the SQLite cross-reference fails, the script exits non-zero and the systemd timer logs the failure to journald. A separate health-check timer (runs every 10 minutes) hits https://toolbrain.net/ and alerts if the response isn't 200 or the page title is missing.

• Ghost Admin API docs: ghost.org/docs/admin-api
• Ghost v6 lexical migration guide: ghost.org/docs/roadmap

5. Performance & Resource Usage

After 4 months of production operation:

Metric	Value
VPS specs	2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, 80 GB NVMe ($10/mo)
Ghost container RAM	~180 MB steady-state, spikes to 350 MB on Admin panel use
MySQL container RAM	~220 MB with 3 weeks of InnoDB buffer warmup
Nginx RAM	~45 MB
Total memory used	~500 MB (12.5% of available)
Page load (median, all regions)	340 ms (first paint), 890 ms (fully loaded)
API response (publish)	~1.2 s for a 12 KB HTML post with 1 image
Monthly egress	~4.2 GB (mostly RSS readers and bot crawlers)

The Nginx expires headers for static assets (images, JS, CSS) are set to 7 days, and Ghost's built-in caching layer serves rendered pages from memory. No Redis or Varnish needed at this scale — the stack handles ~200 daily visitors without breaking a sweat.

6. Lessons Learned

• Ghost v6 lexical is not optional. If you send HTML-only posts via the API without ensuring the lexical field is populated, the Ghost Admin editor will open the post as a blank canvas — even though the rendered page looks fine. Always cross-reference the SQLite posts_meta table after publishing.
• MySQL > SQLite for API-driven workflows. Ghost's built-in SQLite gets row-level locks during writes. The publishing script reading from the DB while Ghost writes would occasionally get SQLITE_BUSY. MySQL handles concurrent read/write without contention.
• Nginx proxy_buffering matters. The Ghost Admin API returns large JSON blobs. Turning buffering on for API routes reduces Python client memory usage from ~80 MB to ~12 MB per large post publish.
• Content volume scales infrastructure needs. At 8–12 posts/day, the MySQL database grows ~15 MB/week. At 20+ posts/day, you'd want a separate database volume or periodic OPTIMIZE TABLE to keep InnoDB from bloating.
• Slug deduplication must be title-normalized. Our first version used raw title comparison — "Build Log: X" and "Build Log — X" generated separate slugs. The fix: normalize punctuation to hyphens before comparing.

Full Docker Compose and Nginx configs are available on the toolbrain/infra GitHub repo. Pull requests welcome.

This is build log #2 in the series. Build Log #1: AI-Powered Content Quality Enforcement Pipeline covers the quality scoring and auto-fix layer that runs on top of this infrastructure.

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Cross-links automatically generated from ToolBrain.

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