Ghost apps & integrations 🔁 (6/7)

Work with all your favourite apps and tools, or create your own custom integrations using the Ghost API.

Work with your existing tools

It’s possible to connect your Ghost site to hundreds of the most popular apps and tools using integrations that take no more than a few minutes to set up.

Whether you need to automate workflows, connect your SendInBlue email list, build a community with Cove Chat comments, or embed products from your Gumroad store — our integrations library has got it all covered with hundreds of tutorials.

Zapier

On top of this, you can connect your Ghost site to more than 1,000 external services using the official integration with Zapier.

Zapier sets up automations with Triggers and Actions, which allows you to create and customise a wide range of connected applications.

Example: When someone new subscribes to a newsletter on a Ghost site (Trigger) then the contact information is automatically pushed into MailChimp (Action).

Here are the most popular Ghost<>Zapier automation templates:

https://zapier.com/apps/ghost/integrations

Make.com

If you expect to have more than 5 Zaps with their free tier, then you will find most integrations available with Make.com as well, with more affordable pricing, and an interface I prefer.

Custom integrations

At the heart of Ghost sits a robust JSON API – designed to create, manage and retrieve content with ease.

It’s possible to create custom Ghost integrations with dedicated API keys and webhooks from the Integrations page within Ghost Admin. You will have to read the instructions but it’s not beyond non-coders, just a little detailed so best to start with simple examples, like alerts to a your Slack or Discord channel, to get the hang of the principles.

Beyond that, for power-users and those learning to code the API is a modern playground and allows you to build entirely custom publishing apps. You can send content from your favourite desktop editor (Ulysses does this very nicely), build a custom interface for handling editorial workflow, or use Ghost as a full headless CMS for a static site with a superfast, secure and scaleable custom front-end like Gatsby, Hugo or Jekyll.

The Ghost API is thoroughly documented and straightforward to work with for developers of almost any level.

Final step: Themes

Alright, on to the last post in our welcome-series! If you’re curious about creating your own Ghost theme from scratch, or to see what a theme developer might be able to customise for you, let’s see how that works…