What? Didn't I blog about this before? Yes, in fact, in 2013 I did an article showing how to get Ghost - a lovely nodejs-based blogging app - running on Azure. The instructions involved making some changes to Ghost itself to make it friendlier to Azure and doing a git deploy. Since this post both Ghost AND Azure have become friendlier. ;)
Fast forward two years and the instructions have changed! In fact, they've gotten WAY easier. You can still theoretically follow most of my old instructions, but these new ones are WAY better, so just do it this way.
STEP 1
There's a "Deploy to Azure" button up at http://deploy.azure.com that you can get an put in YOUR GitHub project's Readme.md so folks can easily and quickly deploy your app as well!
Here's what you do. Head over to the GitHub repository. Click Deploy to Azure. That will automatically install Ghost for you in Azure.
The Deploy.Azure.com website will look at the repository from the HTTP Referer header. You'll end up with a nice form like this.
DO make sure to double check your settings, the Site Location is alphabetical right now, and you may not want your blog in Brazil. ;)
Hit Next, then check the summary that will warn you what's getting created, then hit Deploy. Boom. Azure will actually run through the template and setup Ghost (or whatever app you wanted) automatically.
- Note it's setting it up from Source Control as well, although you can certainly change this. For example, you might want to Fork it yourself, and then Deploy.
- However, as this is set up today, you won't get updates until you go to Deployments within the Azure Portal and click Sync. You decide if you want the app to update when new code is committed.
After it's created, you can manage your site in the Azure Portal. I made a little free one for this example, as can you if you like.
And it works just great!
It's not super obvious what to do next. You'll need click the little chevron there, or visit something like /admin, and you'll get redirected to the Ghost setup process online.
Now you can start your first post!
What's going on here?
Felix Rieseberg added a few files to Ghost and has the fork up here on GitHub. The most interesting one is the AzureDeploy.json. This is an Azure Resource Manager template. Here's another simple example from Elliot Hamai for an ASP.NET MVP app. This file tells Azure (and the Deploy to Azure button) what kinds of things it needs to create and actually gives the system enough information to build a whole form for you!
Maybe this is the perfect time for you to start your own blog! Perhaps you've been putting it off. Go check out my FREE two-hour documentary movie with Rob Conery called Get Involved in Tech! We will get you ready to jump into the world of Social Software Development.
Here's a video of Elliot and I talking about the Deploy to Azure button on Azure Friday. Here's Elliot's blog announcing Deploy to Azure and explaining more.
Remember that Ghost is open source and you can learn more at https://ghost.org!
DON'T WANT TO SIGN UP FOR AZURE? You can try Azure out for an hour without signing up for anything. Check out http://try.azurewebsites.net. You can make a PHP, Java, nodejs, Python, ASP.NET web app, or even setup Ghost itself. You can also try out Visual Studio online, which is basically a complete IDE in your browser written entirely in JavaScript.
Sponsor: Big thanks to our friends at Raygun for sponsoring the feed this week. I use Raygun myself and I encourage you to explore their stuff, it's really something special. Get full stack error reporting with Raygun! Detect and diagnose problems across your entire application. Raygun supports every major programming language and platform - Try Raygun FREE!
© 2015 Scott Hanselman. All rights reserved.
