Ghost MailConfig Gateway

** MailConfig** is a powerful, non-destructive side-car plugin for Ghost CMS that elegantly injects a fully visual Email Transport configuration dashboard directly into the native Ghost Admin panel—without ever altering a single line of Ghost's core source code.

Features

• ** 100% Core Safe**: Utilizing a clever "Ghost Adapter" architectural hook, MailConfig registers itself natively on Ghost boot. It never overwrites, hacks, or damages core application files, keeping your environment completely update-safe.
• ** Premium Visual Interface**: Ditch manual JSON editing. Enjoy a breathtaking, SaaS-styled frosted glass dashboard built directly into the Ghost admin settings modal.
• ** Zero Configuration Setup**: Just type npm install and Ghost is instantly hooked. A smart postinstall script strictly validates the Ghost installation directory and automatically modifies the Ghost routing layer for you.
• ** Dynamic Data Sync**: Live two-way binding. The dashboard safely parses and writes directly to your config.development.json or config.production.json seamlessly.
• ** Smart State Management**: Includes an auto-detecting status indicator (red/green dot in the sidebar), secure password visibility toggles, and state-aware "dirty-checking" buttons that only activate when modifications happen.

Installation & Usage

1. Install the Plugin

Navigate to your active Ghost installation root folder (where your config.production.json lives) and run:

npm install @sakthi10122004/mailconfig@latest

Note: Our strict installer will verify that you are in a valid Ghost root folder. If you aren't, the installation will abort to protect your file system.

2. Restart Ghost

After a successful installation, gracefully restart your Ghost instance to allow the engine to mount the new MailConfig adapter:

ghost restart

3. Configure Your Mail Transport

• Open your browser and navigate to your Ghost Admin interface.
• Open your Settings sidebar.
• Click the newly injected Mail Transport option near the bottom of the navigation pane.
• The sleek modal will overlay. Select your provider (Custom SMTP or Mailgun), punch in your credentials, and hit Save Configuration.

That's it! Your Ghost environment is now configured for outgoing transactional mail.

4. Uninstallation

Modern versions of npm (v7+) no longer automatically run uninstall scripts for dependencies. Because MailConfig hooks into your configuration, you must manually run the cleanup command before uninstalling the package, otherwise Ghost will fail to boot due to a missing scheduling adapter.

To cleanly remove the plugin, run the following commands in your Ghost root directory:

# 1. Clean the configuration files
npx mailconfig-cleanup

# 2. Uninstall the package
npm uninstall @sakthi10122004/mailconfig

# 3. Restart Ghost
ghost restart

Architecture & Under the Hood

Ghost naturally hardcodes its mail management inside the server startup sequence. To bypass this, MailConfig operates in three distinct phases:

1. The Post-Install Injector (scripts/postinstall.js): Runs during NPM install, locating your Ghost root folder and secretly appending "scheduling": { "active": "mailconfig" } into your active configuration.
2. The Adapter Hook (src/adapter.js): When Ghost boots, it unknowingly invokes our Scheduling adapter. Our adapter hijacks the internal Express instance by walking the Node cache tree and mounts our custom API namespace /ghost/mailconfig/.
3. The Frontend Injector (src/frontend-inject.js): By hooking http.Server.prototype.emit, the plugin intercepts the index.html payload being served to the Ghost Admin dashboard and dynamically injects a tiny JavaScript block. This script dynamically attaches the new Mail Transport button inside the Ghost frontend using DOM Mutation Observers.