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Connect Ghost

How to connect your Ghost publication, what QuQi sends when it publishes there, and how to check it worked.

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QuQi publishes finished articles straight to your Ghost publication. The card is called Ghost and sits under Publishing on the Integrations page, second in the list after WordPress. Like every publishing destination, it takes your one publishing slot: articles publish to exactly one place.

START HERE You need an Admin API key, not the Content API key. Ghost shows both on the same screen and they look alike, so this is the one thing people get wrong. The Admin API key is the long id:secret pair.

Connect it

There is no sign-in popup and nothing to authorise. You paste two things and press Connect.

Open Integrations

Make sure you are on the right website, then press Set up on the Ghost card under Publishing. Only an owner or admin of the website can do this — everyone else can see the status but not change it.

Make a custom integration in Ghost

In Ghost Admin, go to Settings → Integrations and add your own integration. That screen is where both the API URL and the keys come from.

Paste the API URL

The address shown on your integration screen, like https://yoursite.ghost.io. If you paste your admin address with /ghost on the end, QuQi trims it for you, and it adds https:// if you left the start off.

Paste the Admin API key

The id:secret pair from the same screen — not the Content API key. The field is masked as you type, and a value that is not that pair is refused straight away, before QuQi calls your site at all.

Press Connect

The button reads Verifying… while QuQi calls your Ghost site to prove the credentials. Nothing is stored unless that call succeeds. When it does, the drawer closes — there is no blog, collection or site to pick afterwards.

GOOD TO KNOW Your Ghost site has to be reachable from the public internet. An install on localhost, on a .local or .internal address, or on a private network address is refused with “That API URL is not a reachable public address.” So is an address whose name does not resolve at all — a typo in the domain gives you that same message.

What QuQi sends to Ghost

When an article is published, QuQi sends Ghost the title, the full body of the article, the address it should live at, a short excerpt, and the meta title and description. Anything empty is simply left out.

The excerpt is trimmed to 295 characters with an ellipsis if it runs longer.
A cover image is only set on the Ghost post when it is already a full https:// or http:// address. A picture that still lives inside QuQi is left off, and the Ghost post gets no feature image.
Tags, authors and scheduled dates are not sent. Posts land untagged, under whatever author your Ghost integration writes as.

CAREFUL Posts go live immediately. QuQi sends them to Ghost as published, never as drafts, so read an article in QuQi before you publish it — and before you let autopilot publish on its own.

CAREFUL Publishing the same article to Ghost a second time makes a new Ghost post rather than updating the first one. Ghost has no update-in-place, which is why its article button always reads Publish to Ghost and never “Update on Ghost”. If you republish, tidy up the older post in Ghost yourself.

Checking it worked

Look at the Integrations page

A green Ghost connected. message, a green Connected pill on the card, and a line underneath showing your Ghost address next to your publication’s own title — QuQi read that title back from your site while verifying. The other publishing cards now show a padlock and In use: Ghost instead of a Set up button.

Publish one article by hand

Open a written article and press Publish to Ghost. You get a Published to Ghost. confirmation, and QuQi keeps the live link to the new post.

Open the post on your Ghost site

Follow that link and read it as your readers will. Check the pictures in the body in particular — see the note below.

GOOD TO KNOW Pictures inside the body of an article are sent to Ghost exactly as they are stored. If one of them points at an address inside QuQi rather than a full https:// one, it will not load on your Ghost site. Publishing through the QuQi WordPress plugin or the QuQi Shopify app fixes those addresses up; Ghost does not get that pass.

If a connection is refused

Nothing is saved when a connection fails, and the reason appears in the drawer where you were typing.

WHAT YOU SEEWHAT HAPPENEDWHAT TO DO

“Ghost rejected that Admin API key.” Ghost answered, but would not accept the key. Copy it again from Settings → Integrations in Ghost.

“That does not look like a Ghost Admin API key…” The value is not the id:secret pair. QuQi caught it without calling your site. Paste the whole pair, not just one half of it.

“No Ghost Admin API found at that address.” Something answered at that address, but it was not Ghost’s admin API. Use the API URL printed on your integration screen.

“Could not reach that Ghost site: …” The address resolved, but the site never answered — refused, timed out, or failed on TLS. Check that the site is up, and try again in a moment.

“Ghost answered HTTP …” Your site replied with something QuQi could not use. Try again in a moment, then check your Ghost site’s health.

A publish can fail later too, even from a connection that worked. When it does, the Ghost card turns to a red Error pill with the reason printed under it and a Reconnect button. Your credentials are kept, not wiped — if the reason is that Ghost refused the stored key, reconnect with a fresh one from Ghost.

How your credentials are held

Credentials are stored encrypted and never shown back to you, which the drawer says as you save. The secret itself is never sent to Ghost either: for each request QuQi signs a short-lived token from it, valid for five minutes, which is the way Ghost expects its admin API to be used.

A connection belongs to one website, not to your account, so a second website needs its own Ghost connection.

Disconnecting

Pressing Disconnect asks you to confirm, then QuQi stops publishing to that publication. It does not touch anything on the Ghost side: the custom integration you made, and its Admin API key, stay live in Ghost Admin until you delete them there yourself.

CAREFUL Letting an agent publish to Ghost on its own needs an active paid subscription. During the trial an agent run writes the article, saves it as a draft instead of publishing, and tells you that is what it did. On the free plan nothing is written at all: the run stops before the article exists and points you at the free trial.

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