🚀Auto-Deploy a Ghost Theme (Self-Hosted)

Ghost makes automated theme deployment surprisingly smooth once you hook it into GitHub Actions.

The most reliable and widely used method is:

GitHub Actions → Ghost Admin API → Auto‑deploy theme on every push

This works whether your Ghost instance is running via Docker, bare metal, or a managed VPS.

🧩 Step 1 — Create a Custom Integration in Ghost

1. Log into your Ghost Admin
2. Go to Settings → Integrations → Add custom integration
3. Name it something like GitHub Actions
4. Copy:
   • API URL
   • Admin API Key

You’ll need these for GitHub.

🔐 Step 2 — Add Secrets to Your GitHub Repo

In your theme repository:

1. Go to Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions
2. Add two secrets:

These are required by the official deployment action.

⚙️ Step 3 — Add the GitHub Actions Workflow

Create a file:

.github/workflows/deploy-theme.yml

Paste this (from the official Ghost deployment action):

name: Deploy Ghost Theme

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main

jobs:
  deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3

      - name: Deploy Ghost Theme
        uses: TryGhost/action-deploy-theme@v1
        with:
          api-url: ${{ secrets.GHOST_ADMIN_API_URL }}
          api-key: ${{ secrets.GHOST_ADMIN_API_KEY }}

This workflow:

• Zips your theme
• Uploads it to Ghost
• Activates it automatically
• Runs every time you push to main

🧪 Step 4 — Push a Commit to Test

Just push any change:

git add .
git commit -m "Test auto-deploy"
git push

GitHub Actions will run → upload → activate your theme.

You can watch the logs in Actions.

🎉 That’s it — fully automated theme deployment!

This setup is recommended directly by Ghost’s official GitHub integration docs and the Ghost Theme Deploy Action on GitHub Marketplace.