Portal

Drop-in script to make the bulk of Ghost membership features work on any theme.

Usage

Ghost automatically injects Portal script on all sites running Ghost 4 or higher.

Alternatively, Portal can be enabled on non-ghost pages directly by inserting the below script on the page.

<script defer src="https://unpkg.com/@tryghost/portal@latest/umd/portal.min.js" data-ghost="https://mymemberssite.com"></script>

The data-ghost attribute expects the URL for your Ghost site, which is the only input Portal needs to work with your site's membership data via Ghost APIs.

Custom trigger button

By default, the script adds a default floating trigger button on the bottom right of your page which is used to trigger the popup on screen.

Its possible to add custom trigger button of your own by adding data attribute data-portal to any HTML tag on page, and also specify a specific page to open from it by using it as data-portal=signup.

The script also adds custom class names to this element for open and close state of popup - gh-portal-open and gh-portal-close, allowing devs to update its UI based on popup state.

Refer the docs to read about ways in which Portal can be customized for your site.

Develop

Run Portal within the Ghost monorepo with:

yarn dev --portal

Alternatively, use yarn dev --all to load Portal and other supported apps/services, see dev.js for more information.

To run Portal in a standalone fashion, use yarn start and open http://localhost:3000.

Build

To create a production minified bundle in umd/portal.min.js:

yarn build

Test

To run tests in watch mode:

yarn test

Ghost e2e browser tests

Portal is primarily tested via Ghost's e2e browser tests. In order to test against your local changes rather than the last published package on npm you need to have the local portal build being served and to configure Ghost to use the local URL.

1. Run yarn dev in ghost/apps/portal to serve the local portal build on http://localhost:4175/portal.min.js
2. Run the Ghost e2e tests in ghost/core, providing an ENV variable to override the portal URL:

   portal__url=http://localhost:4175/portal.min.js STRIPE_ACCOUNT_ID=acct_xxx STRIPE_PUBLISHABLE_KEY=pk_test_xxx STRIPE_SECRET_KEY=sk_test_xxx yarn test:browser:portal
   

Release

A patch release can be rolled out instantly in production, whereas a minor/major release requires the Ghost monorepo to be updated and released. In either case, you need sufficient permissions to release @tryghost packages on NPM.

If you're releasing new code that should not immediately go live always use a minor or major version when publishing.

In order to have Ghost's e2e tests run against the new code on CI or to test the new code in staging, you need to publish to npm following the Minor / major release process below.

Patch release

1. Run yarn ship and select a patch version when prompted
2. Merge the release commit to main

Minor / major release

1. Run yarn ship and select a minor or major version when prompted
2. Merge the release commit to main
3. Wait until a new version of Ghost is released

JsDelivr cache

If the CI doesn't clear JsDelivr cache to get the new version out instantly, you may want to do it yourself manually (docs). Typically, you'll need to open https://purge.jsdelivr.net/ghost/portal@~${PORTAL_VERSION}/umd/portal.min.js and https://purge.jsdelivr.net/ghost/portal@~${PORTAL_VERSION}/umd/main.css in your browser, where PORTAL_VERSION is the latest minor version in ghost/core/core/shared/config/defaults.json (code)

Copyright & License

Copyright (c) 2013-2025 Ghost Foundation - Released under the MIT license.