Recently I moved my Ghost blog from OpenShift to Azure. After following some instructions on how to install Ghost in Azure (it's easy), I was disappointed to see it was a couple versions behind the latest.

Updating your app #

In my case, I downloaded the latest version of Ghost from Github. I logged in via FTP and updated the files. I toyed with the idea of doing this via the console, but without an unzip command I figured FTP was the best route.

Opening a console in Azure #

Having a console is so much faster than moving node_modules over FTP. To get one, go to https://<your-site-name>.scm.azurewebsites.net/ and open the Debug Console. Use cd site/wwwroot to get to your hosted content. In this directory, you should see at least see package.json if not a node_modules folder.

Installing Node packages #

From this point, you should make sure your website is stopped in the Azure console. If you do not stop the site, you will very likely run into errors with files already being in use.

From here, you have a couple options:

npm update is the standard method for updating an existing installation. Give it a try, and if it works then you're done. If not:
rmdir node_modules /s /q will delete the node_modules folder and give you a clean slate. npm install should work from here.

You can now start your site back up.

🎉

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