To enable automated receipts, you will need to login to your Stripe account, and toggle Successful payments on, in your Customer emails settings.

Note that Stripe only sends receipts for successfully completed payments. If the member’s payment fails or their card is declined, a receipt would not be sent.

When enabled, you can send the following notifications to your members directly from Stripe:

• Payment confirmation notifications
• Failed payment notifications
• Trial ending reminders
• Renewal reminders
• Expiring card notifications

You can find more documentation on setting up automated emails in Stripe within Stripe’s documentation.

Getting Started

In order to use the Stripe Tax integration, Stripe Tax must first be enabled and setup from within your Stripe Dashboard, prior to the beta being turned on in Ghost.

Step 1: Enable Stripe Tax

Navigate to the Tax section of the Stripe Dashboard, and click “Get started →”

Step 2: Select a preset product tax code

Once you’ve entered the setup screen, you’ll be prompted to review your product tax code category.

From here, you can choose the product tax code that makes the most sense for your business. The default will always be set to “General - Electronically Supplied Services.”

Step 3: Add a registration

If you’ve exceeded a threshold in a certain state, province, or country, you’ll need to register with the local tax authority prior to adding your registration to Stripe.

How do I know where to register?
If you’re setting this up, you may already know one or two places where this will be required, but figuring out the rest isn’t always easy. Stripe helps you identify the correct places based on your past transactions with their Thresholds tool:

Once done, you can add your registration(s) to Stripe from the Tax dashboard:

Step 4: Contact Ghost to turn on the integration

For Ghost(Pro) customers, once everything is setup within your Stripe account, contact support@ghost.org and our team will manually enable the integration on your account.

I’m a developer, self-hosting my own Ghost instance. How can I try out the beta?

Once the above setup steps have been taken to enable the Stripe Tax add-on in Stripe, those self-hosting Ghost can enable the beta integration in their config.production.json file by adding "stripeAutomaticTax": true in the labs object:

{
    ...
    "labs": {
        "stripeAutomaticTax": true
    }
}

How do I know it’s working?

Once enabled, members going through Stripe Checkout will see an additional field to enter their address. If they live in a location in which you’re registered to collect tax, it will be automatically calculated at the appropriate rate for any active tier in Ghost:

Reporting

Once the integration is up and running, you’ll be able to access reporting for each of your registered jurisdictions directly inside Stripe in the Tax section of the dashboard.

Stripe Tax FAQ

You can enable the Tips & Donations feature from the  Settings → Growth → Tips & Donations area within Ghost Admin.

From there, you’ll be able to set a suggested amount for individuals to tip, and can set a custom currency.

Once you've configured your suggested amount and currency, the payment link can be shared across your entire publication. For example, you can use your custom payment link within a button card, a custom header, as an email call to action, or you can even include your payment link within your site navigation.

Tips & donations can be made by non-members, as well as existing members.

When a tip is received the publication owner, as well as any administrators role staff who have this email notification enabled in their staff user profile would receive an email.

Requirements

Stripe requires, among other things, that:

• Tips are given in exchange for goods or services
• Tip buttons must be displayed next to or following content
• Tips or donations are not accepted for content that contains any of the following (this list is not exhaustive):
  • Adult content and services: Content that contains nudity or explicit sexual acts (e.g. nude images, adult audio/video/live chat)
  • Intellectual property or proprietary rights infringement: Copyright-infringing content (e.g. leaked music albums)
  • Unlawful violence and violent extremism: Content that a) encourages, promotes or celebrates unlawful violence or physical harm to persons or property; or b) engages in, encourages, promotes or celebrates unlawful violence toward any group based on race, religion, disability, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, or any other immutable characteristic
• Tips or donations or other type of transaction is not accepted to facilitate the sale of goods and services in the following categories (although content about these goods and services is permissible, such educational content):
  • Gambling: Stripe does not support payments for gambling (e.g. entry into a poker tournament), but does support monetization of content about gambling (e.g. a ticketed digital event about poker strategy)
  • High-risk businesses: Stripe does not support payments for goods and services related to high-risk businesses (e.g. payment for timeshares), but does support monetization of content about these businesses (e.g. paid content about how to buy a timeshare)
  • Multi-level marketing and get rich quick schemes: Stripe does not support payments that enable end-users to participate in multi-level marketing and get rich quick schemes (e.g. payment in exchange for entry into a pyramid scheme), but does support monetization of content about these businesses (e.g. content about how to sell MLM products)
  • Regulated or illegal products and services: Stripe does not support payments that enable end-users to receive regulated or illegal goods and services (e.g. payment in exchange for cannabis, weapons, and others), but does support monetization of content about these products and services (e.g. content about how to build a greenhouse)

There are regional variations to Stripe’s policies, please familiarize yourself with their policies to ensure that you do not accept tips or donations for anything prohibited or restricted.

Where to get help

All policies and agreements related to payments that you receive are made directly between you and Stripe. Ghost is not a party to these transactions. If you need help or support with tips & donations, you should contact Stripe support directly.

When placing TK (or tk ) within a post or page in Ghost, Ghost will highlight any usage of TK within the margins of the editor, as well as provide a warning, if it looks like you're about to publish a post that's missing additional content.

Enabling the Additional Payment Methods (beta) in Ghost → Settings → Labs will allow you to select more payment methods your members can use from within your Stripe Dashboard. You must enable the setting in Ghost first in order to use this feature.

Why set up additional payment methods

Different payment methods are popular in different parts of the world. In the US it's common to pay for things online with a credit card. In The Netherlands almost nobody uses credit cards, people there prefer iDEAL, a payment system that connects directly to their bank account. In China, AliPay and WeChat Pay are much more popular payment methods than any other.

Unsurprisingly, when a site supports the payment method their customers are most accustomed to and comfortable with, their conversion rates tend to be much higher.

If your audience is predominantly based in a specific region, you will likely want to make sure you support that region's most popular payment methods.

If your audience is international, you may want to consider supporting a wide range of payment methods to appeal to lots of different regions.

How to set up payment methods in Stripe

First, visit the payment methods settings in your Stripe dashboard, here:
https://dashboard.stripe.com/settings/payment_methods

Ensure that you're editing settings for "Ghost" using this dropdown:

Scrolling down, you'll find payment methods compatible with Ghost can be enabled and will automatically start working on your site.

Payment methods which are not compatible with Ghost are marked as Blocked.

Payment method compatibility

Some quick notes on compatibility for payment methods in Ghost.

Non-recurring payment methods

Ghost is not able to support payment methods that don't support recurring payments, such as Bank Transfers, PayNow, Swish, and Crypto Currencies.

Recurring payment methods

When there is a "Recurring payments" setting (eg. iDEAL/Bancontact), you must enable it for these methods to work.

They will also only show up in a checkout session if the Tier being sold is in a compatible currency. Usually this is EUR, but you can click on each payment method in the Stripe Dashboard to discover which currencies it supports.

For example, adding /rss/ to most URLs on your Ghost publication produces an automatically generated rss feed, for example:

• Main post index - https://demo.ghost.io/rss/
• Author archive - https://demo.ghost.io/author/lewis/rss/
• Tag archive - https://demo.ghost.io/tag/fiction/rss/

If your site is in Private Site Mode, the RSS feed is not publicly available, however, you can retrieve a private RSS feed URL from within Ghost Admin in the Settings →  General →  Make this site private area.

Further Reading

Official Ghost + Custom RSS Integration

Ghost comes with automatic always-on RSS feeds for your site content - but fully supports custom RSS for when you need to add extra functionality!

Ghost - The Professional Publishing Platform

How to make a podcast RSS feed in Ghost

Ghost includes automatic RSS feeds for your content out of the box, but you can also easily create a custom feed for your podcast with routes and templates.

TutorialsTeam Ghost

You can connect a custom domain purchased from Squarespace to your Ghost(Pro) publication by creating DNS records within your Squarespace account. Once activated, an SSL certificate will be provisioned for your domain, and renewed each year automatically.

If you own a domain through Squarespace, the following steps below will help explain how you can map your domain to your Ghost(Pro) publication.

Step 1: Access Domain DNS Settings

The first step to activating your custom domain with your site is to sign in to your Squarespace account.

Once logged in click Domains, and select the domain you’d like to configure with your Ghost(Pro) site, then click Edit DNS from the domain dashboard to access your DNS records for the domain.

Step 2: Create DNS Records

In the DNS Settings area of your Squarespace account, you'll want to make sure there aren't any Squarespace defaults set. If you don't intend to also host a site with Squarespace, then you will need to delete those first.

Once that's done, you can click on the Add Record button in the Custom Records area, to create a new DNS record.

You will need to create the following two DNS Records:

Note: The A record will automatically redirect the http and https root domain to the subdomain you configure.

Step 3: Activate the Custom Domain

Login to your publication's Ghost Admin area, and go to the Ghost(Pro) > Domain settings.

Click Setup, and enter your custom domain into the custom domain field, then click Activate, to activate your custom domain.

Run the migration

The Mailchimp migrator allows you to quickly import members from your Mailchimp to your Ghost publication. You can access the migrator tool from the Settings → Advanced → Import/Export area of Ghost Admin.

It's helpful to log in to your Mailchimp account before running the migration in Ghost Admin.

1. Export subscribers

Next, it's time to import your Mailchimp subscribers. Click Open Mailchimp Audience, and click Export Audience.

Once downloaded, select Click or drag file here to upload and navigate to the text download, and click Continue.

2. Review

Ghost will confirm the number of subscribers that will be imported to your publication. If satisfied, click Import subscribers to begin the import of your data.

After a few moments, you'll see a confirmation message, confirming that your data was successfully migrated to your Ghost site.

If you encounter issues, and you're a Ghost(Pro) customer, reach out to our support team for further advice, or head to the forum for community support if you're self-hosting.

Run the migration

The Medium migrator allows you to quickly import content and members from your Medium to your Ghost publication. You can access the migrator tool from the Settings → Advanced → Import/Export area of Ghost Admin.

It's helpful to log in to your Medium account before running the migration in Ghost Admin.

1. Enter your Medium URL

To start the migration process, enter the public URL to your Medium, and click Continue.

2. Export content

Next, click Open Medium Settings, and click Download your information. A link to download the export will be sent to your email.

3. Upload content

Once your export has been downloaded, return to the migrator window in Ghost Admin, and select Click or drag file here to upload, and navigate to the zip file you downloaded from Medium, once uploaded click Continue.

If you're unsure of where the file was saved, check your Downloads folder.

4. Export subscribers

Next, it's time to import your Medium subscribers. Click Open Medium Audience stats, and click Export this list.

Once downloaded, select Click or drag file here to upload and navigate to the text download, and click Continue.

5. Review

Ghost will confirm the number of posts and members that will be imported to your publication. If satisfied, click Import content and subscribers to begin the import of your data.

After a few moments, you'll see a confirmation message, confirming that your data was successfully migrated to your Ghost site.

6. Verification and manual checks

The importer will make a post in Ghost for all posts and comments in your Medium export. The importer will try to sort posts and comments, based on the following rules:

• If a piece has only one paragraph, treat it as a comment
• If a piece of any length has an image, treat it as a post
• Otherwise, treat the piece as a post
• All pieces that are treated as comments will be saved as drafts
• All posts that were drafts in Medium, will be drafts in Ghost
• All posts that were published in Medium will be published in Ghost

You should check that comments and posts were sorted correctly. Possible comments that have been saved as drafts will be tagged #Medium Possible Comment.

If you encounter issues, and you're a Ghost(Pro) customer, reach out to our support team for further advice, or head to the forum for community support if you're self-hosting.

Using Ghost(Pro) as a Headless CMS does come with some limitations, and would require a more technical background to rebuild features that come “out of the box” with a standard Ghost(Pro) site.

For example, you would need to rebuild structured data, sitemaps, tag & author archives, AMP templates and custom routing.

Other limitations to consider when using Ghost(Pro) as a Headless CMS:

• Portal is not available to be used for subscription management with a headless setup
• “View in Browser” links contained in email newsletter templates will always lead to the ghost.io site
• Unsubscribe links contained in email newsletters will always lead to the ghost.io site
• A headless setup requires a custom theme, to not expose content to search. You can find an example of a theme for use with a headless setup here.
• You will not benefit from Ghost(Pro)’s CDN, provided via Fastly.

These limitations aren’t listed to sway you away from using Ghost(Pro) as a headless CMS, but more so to make sure you are aware of the work involved to use Ghost in this manner.

If you're unsure of the technical aspect required to setup your Ghost(Pro) site in a headless environment, checkout our Expert Directory.

This list will reflect shortcuts available on your current operating system. If you move between devices (for example from Windows to MacOS) please keep in mind that the shortcuts will change.

A shortcut may not be available if you have made settings changes on your device that override the expected defaults.

Create recommendations

Go to the Settings → Membership → Recommendations area in Ghost Admin, and click Add recommendation.

In the “Add recommendation” box, enter the site address you’d like to recommend to your audience, and click Next.

You can customize the title and the description for your recommendation.

The recommendations pop up will be displayed whenever a new member signs up on your publication, and can be launched by going directly to https://<yoursite.com>/#/portal/recommendations in the browser.

This URL also be copied, and used as a link in your site navigation, to give readers quick access to sites you recommend. See additional methods for opening the recommendations window in our theme documentation.

When recommendations are added to your site, you can also view simple stats to see how they are performing—as well as who is recommending you.

How it works

When viewing an article on a website, you can click the Ghost icon from within the browser toolbar, and the link will be captured as a Bookmark card within a new draft post in Ghost Admin.

You can optionally add notes to each Bookmark you insert, and your notes will appear as text within the editor, alongside your Bookmark card.

Once you publish a post containing Bookmarks added via the extension, a new draft post will be created automatically when adding new links via the bookmark tool in the future. This makes the process of curating links for a weekly roundup newsletter simple and efficient.

If you need help getting the Ghost Bookmarker setup, check out our integration guide, here:

Official Ghost + Ghost Bookmarker Integration

An official Chrome extension to curate links from around the web and send them to your Ghost site.

Ghost - The Professional Publishing Platform