Diagnosis of the issue

Checking SMTP connectivity

I first suspected that SMTP is blocked by my wonderful host, DigitalOcean, so I contacted their support and they promptly replied to my inquiry.

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DigitalOcean was not blocking the SMTP traffic and Jarland was kind enough to provide the iptables command to make sure that all ports are open.
iptables -I OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 25 -j ACCEPT (replace port 25 with the correct port for mailgun)
A quick telnet revealed that SMTP traffic is working fine but still sending emails from my blog is not working.

Debugging Ghost blog

With the above result, I suspected that something is wrong with a node package.
I stopped the service using
service ghost stop and then I run it again using npm start --production which will allow me to see any error details.
I tried sending an email and received an error message related to simplesmtp module used by nodemailer module.

Solution

NodeMailer was listing a dependency on simplesmtp version < 0.3.30.
Node 0.12 uses ECMAScript 6 (ES6) with which simplesmtp version 0.3.30 was not compatible.
In order to solve the problem use these steps:
* Stop ghost * Go to ghost/nodemodules/nodemailer/nodemodules and remove simplesmtp directory * edit package.json for the nodemailer module and change the dependency version for simplesmtp to 0.3.35 * reinstall simplesmtp module by running, in the nodemailer directory, npm install * relaunch Ghost service ghost start

Voila! You can now send emails again

Update: Ghost version 0.5.10 now fully supports Node version 0.12.0
The article applies only to earlier versions of Ghost

It has been an exciting week with a new Node release. Community was waiting for Node.js version 0.12 and on Friday 6th of February, that wait was over.
I couldn't resist the idea of upgrading the node version on my server to the latest one and given that it's only a couple of commands and that I also wanted to upgrade the version of ghost to the latest one, I decided to do it.

Upgrading Node to 0.12.0

As promised, it's only a few lines of commands:
sudo npm cache clean -f
sudo npm install -g n
sudo n stable
you can verify that you are running the latest version by typing node -v and you should get 0.12.0

Upgrading Ghost to version 0.5.8

To upgrade ghost, I just followed the regular upgrade instruction of taking a backup and then downloading the latest zip archive, unzipping it and overriding old ghost files.
You can find the step by step instructions at Upgrading Ghost.

Wait! it couldn't be that easy!

You are absolutely correct!
After preparing ghost, I ran npm install --production to make sure that all packages are up-to-date, but it complained about HTML-To-Text and sqlite3 packages.
It's time to get our hands dirty!

Fixing HTML-To-Text package

Ghost is declaring a dependency on HTML-To-Text version 1.0, which was not the latest one. I bumped it to the latest 1.2.0 version by editing package.json sudo nano package.json and then I also edited the module's package.json to change the supported node version. I knew that it's supported because the team already did that in the github repository.
This is all what's needed to resolve this problem.

Fixing sqlite3 package

when running npm install, I was receiving an error while trying to compile node-sqlite3 from source because a package for node 0.12 was not available. In order to resolve this error, I had to change the version of sqlite3 that ghost is declaring in package.json to 3.0.5, and then I ran npm install again.
Just make sure to have the build-essential in case you needed it.

Preparing Ghost

Now, everything should have been prepared and by running npm install --production it should pass without problems.
Just don't run Ghost yet as it will complain about Node version.
In package.json, change node dependency to be 0.12 and then run Ghost as usual npm start

Final thought

This is still hackish and I always recommend waiting the officially supported version, yet according to my current experience, ghost is running fine and I can see a welcome improvement in performance.

1. Personal branding

"You are a brand" - you probably have heard that advice before, and by starting your own blog, you are shaping and enhancing your personal brand.
You need to take care of your personal development and how you are perceived by the outside world. The most important asset you own is "You" and you need to make sure that your skills and knowledge that you gained during your work and life experiences are correctly marketed and conveyed to the world.

2. Blogging gives you superpowers

Remember those school days where you looked with glittering eyes to the teacher as he explained wonders about maths, physics, programming...etc.? Well, he might not be that knowledgeable after all, but the simple act of sharing information makes you an expert!

3. Paying back to the community

You probably have used community resources through out your professional career and benefited from the wealth of information that great heroes shared in open source projects, blog posts, websites ...etc. If that is the case, they pay it forward! A blog is a wonderful way to share your own knowledge and experience for the benefit of the community that is both cheap and effective.

4. Get valuable feedback

Not all your ideas are great! And maybe there is a better way to solve a problem. How would you know about that if you don't receive the valuable feedback from the community?
Blogging gives you the chance to meet new people, spread around the globe, and to get their valuable feedback.
Believe me, this reason alone is worth the effort of blogging.

5. Advance in your career

Blogging can open up new doors and help you reach other employers or investors. You might have gained good knowledge about management for example, but you are not on a management career path. Blogging about management might give you a better chance to switch your career.
Thinking about launching a new startup? Well, consider your blog as an appendix to your business plan that might help you in gaining investors' trust.
What about an employer having a particular problem that you already solved?

There might be hundreds of other reasons to blog, what are yours?

I have been thinking about starting my own personal blog for long time.
Actually, I never felt that I will have enough time to share my experience and knowledge, which might not be that interesting after all,yet the only way to figure out is by trying!
Today I took the decision!
It's about time.

My Notebook

This blog will be like my personal notebook with some interesting ideas (or maybe not so much interesting after all); but I need to hear your opinion, dear reader, because only by sharing ideas we can grow as humans!

Let's Go!