Using the theme

To use the theme extract the main downloaded zip file.

After extracting you will find a folder named similar to theme name. That folder is the production ready ( live site ready ) theme. After the required setup you will make a zip of this folder's content ( all files and folders within this folder ) and upload it to your ghost site.

To set up the theme properly with several setting options, please read through the documentation.

Please edit theme files using a proper code editor. There are lots of free and opensource code editor available. You can choose any of those, some popular free code editor Visual Studio Code , Atom


Light and dark mode

This theme comes with toggle-able light and dark mode. This option let your user choose whether they prefer dark color or light color. There preference will be saved in their browser locally. Whenever they visit your site in future, they will see their preferred mode.

By default the theme is in light mode, which means when user visit the site for first time, they will see the light mode.

If you want to make the default mode to dark then go to site design settings options. there is an option to select Default theme mode.

Choose dark option there for enabling dark mode.

If you want to hide the theme toggle switch (sun/moon) icon for your user then you can also do that. Disable Show theme mode switcher icon option and that icon will be hidden.


Changing navbar behavior

By default the navigation behavior is sticky, means it become visible when you scroll up the page.

If you do not want this behavior and want the navigation bar scroll normally with the page then you can change it from the site design option.

In site design settings options, there is an option to select Navigation bar type.

Choose normal option there for setting the navigation bar behavior normal scrolling.

Logo settings

This section describe instruction to setup image logo. If you do not use image logo then site title will be shown at the place of logo and you can skip this section.

As this theme has option to toggle dark and light mode. You have to provide, 2 different logo for 2 different mode.

I recommend to make your logos in svg format, but the format is not absolute requirement.

  • At first prepare 2 version of your logo ( each for dark background and light background ).
  • Go to ghost dashboard and then Settings > design.
  • Under brand section you will see the Publication logo option.
  • Upload the logo which is made for light background ( i.e. dark color logo for light background).
  • Now close the brand section and open Site-wide section. There is an option named Logo for dark mode.
  • Upload the second logo ( light logo for dark background ) there.

Intro section on home page

This theme comes with a custom intro section. Which will be shown on home page.

You can hide this section entirely or modify it from the dashboard under settings option.

Go to site design setting options and expand the homepage settings options section.

  • To hide the intro section entirely Turn off the Show home hero section option.
  • Add any text in Home hero title option. It will be shown as the title of this section.
  • By default the Site description from brand section shown as the description in the intro section. You can override that by adding different text in the Home hero description override option text box.

Add your cover image from the brand section settings option. Add your publication cover image. That Image will be shown on the home page hero area.

Although you can use any size of image for your cover. but it is recommended to use 10:11 ratio sized image. it ensures no image part will be cut out. for example if your image width is 1000px the height should be 1100px.


API key for search function

You have to generate an API key to use in the theme. Without the API key the search function will not work. Please follow theses steps.

  • Go to your admin dashboard and visit "Settings > Integrations" setting page.
  • Scroll Below and click on the "Add custom integration" button.
  • Give it a name ( anything you want, it does not matter). You can just name it "search"
  • Save that and copy the "Content API key".
  • Now open "api-key.hbs" file which is located in partials folder.
  • Remove everything in that file and paste the API key you have copied from your admin dashboard.
  • Make sure there is no blank space or new line before or after your content API key. Save the file.

API key for search


To add the your social links in footer please follow the steps below.

From your ghost dashboard, Go to general setting page and scroll down. In social account option, you can add Facebook and Twitter link there. This Facebook and twitter will be linked with the icons in footer.

There is no option to add other social links directly from dashboard. Following are the steps to add other links.

  • open widget-social-links.hbs file located in partials folder.
  • From line number 12, you can add different social links. Replace the # for each href value with your own profile links.
  • If you want to add other social links or want to remove one then copy or remove one of those lines.

The code in widget-social-links.hbs file, where you will add your links, will look like below.

<li><a href="#">Instagram</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Dribbble</a></li>
<li><a href="#">Behance</a></li>

Normally you do not have to change the copyright text. But if you want to change or edit the copyright text then follow the following steps.

  • Go to design setting option in your ghost dashboard.
  • Under Site-wide section you will see an option named Copyright text override.
  • Add any text there to override the default copyright text.

Members

Go to Settings > Membership and create membership tires. Those tires will be shown on the sign up page as pricing table.


Installation

Ones the necessary configuration is done, make a zip of the modified theme folder.

Now login to your admin area and go to Design. In that page scroll down and you can find "Upload a theme" button. Upload the theme zip which you have created while ago. After finishing upload, activate the theme.

You also have to upload another file routes.yaml in your ghost site to work all the membership related page correctly.

Go to lab page in your dashboard, scroll down and you will see an option for routes. There is a button to upload routes YAML and a link below that button to download the routes.yaml which is being used currently. Download that file and and keep as a backup.

In the downloaded zip you will find a routes.yaml file which comes with this theme and specific for this theme.

Upload that file. Using "upload routes YAML" button.

routs yaml upload

Please note, if you are using self hosted Ghost then may be a you need to restart ghost to take effect the new routes file. If you are using Ghost (pro). then you don't need to do anything here.

If you want to install the demo data to make your site as the preview then you can go to your-site-url/ghost/settings/labs/ and then import the saima.ghost.demo.json file there. This file is located in demo data folder in main download folder.

Importing the demo document may miss images. In that case delete the missing images and upload your own images from dashboard.


Single post setting options

In this theme there are few option for single post. Go to Site design settings option and then expand Post section.

  • Disable Show share buttons to hide share buttons below the post content.
  • Disable Show author info card* to hide the author info card below the post content.

Disqus shortname option is required for Disqus comment. If you don't want to show comment option then just keep this option text box blank and comment will be disabled.

If you want to show the comment as the demo site and setup the Disqus comment then you need to put your disqus shortname in the above mentioned Disqus shortname option text box.

To setup and get the disqus shortname please follow the steps below.

  • Go to disqus.com and sign up.
  • After log in go to admin dashboard.
  • Then follow the instruction and add your website there.
  • At the time of adding your site you will get a disqus shortname, copy that.
  • Now put that shortname in the Disqus shortname option text box.

To add links to you static pages please follow the steps below.

  • Create a new page in your dashboard.
  • Copy the URL for this page from the page settings panel.
  • Go to Design page in your admin dashboard.
  • Add a label and the URL and save it.
  • Now the theme will show newly added link in navigation.

Author and tag archive

In this theme there are 2 custom template for Tag archive and Author Archive. To use those template please follow the steps below.

  • Create a new page
  • Add a Title ( example: Authors or Authors Archive or any thing else you want)
  • Open page settings panel by clicking on the gear icon at top right corner of the page.
  • You can add an page image or keep it blank as it is.
  • Below that there is a dropdown selectable option called "template". Choose "author Archive" template option there.
  • Now save and publish the page.
  • Copy The "post-URL" and use it to create a menu link in design page in your admin area, as you normally do for other static page.
  • Save it and visit your site. If you did everything right then you will see your newly created link in your menu bar. Open to see all available author list.

For Tag archive page follow the same steps as author archive setting. At step 6 choose "Tag archive" option from dropdown select option. Then Follow all the remaining steps and you will be able to add a tag archive page in you site.


Post archive

This theme has 2 custom page template for post archive. One of those separates group of post by year and another separates post by month. You can use any of theme. To use those template please follow the steps below.

  • Create a new page
  • Add a Title ( example: "Archive" or "Post Archive" or any thing else you want).
  • You can keep the content area blank or add anything you like to add.
  • Open page settings panel by clicking on the gear icon at top right corner of the page.
  • You can add an image or keep it blank to this page.
  • Scroll down the panel you will see there a dropdown selectable option called "template". Choose "Post Archive Monthly" or "Post Archive Yearly" template option there.
  • Now save and publish the page.

Featured image in post

Ghost supports featured/cover image in post natively, and this theme handle that nicely. Recommended image size is, minimum 1140px wide.


Theme translation

This theme supports translation. Please follow the steps below to translate this theme in your language.

  • Within theme folder, there is a folder named "locales". In that folder by default you will find a file named "en.json". This is the default file for English language and you have to use this file to create your own language file.
  • make a copy of en.json and give a name following this format [language_code].json ( example: for French fr.json for German i.e. Deutsch de.json for Russian ru.json etc. )
  • If you are not sure about what is you language code then you can visit this wiki page and see. Use the two letter (ISO 639-1) code.
  • Now open the newly created <your_language>.json file in text editor. You will see "KEY": "VALUE" format in each line.
  • In English language KEY and VALUE are same. Now you read the left part of the : i.e. KEY part and change the tight part i.e. VALUE part to your own language.
  • After finishing the translation Save the file and upload the theme to your site.
  • Go to your admin area, Visit "General setting" page and change the "publication Language" option. By default there is "en" for English. Add your own language code there in place of "en" and save the settings.
  • Visit your site, If everything goes right, you will see all the theme related text in your site is in your translated language.

If you translate the theme in any language, then please consider to share ( feel free to send me via email ) that language file. I will add that file to the theme, so that it will available to other users.


Theme customization

If you need to add only small CSS then you can add using Ghost's Code Injection feature. In "blog header" box you can add CSS like below example. replace the CSS with your own CSS between the <style> tag.

<style>
.header-wrapper .text-logo {
color: #076eff;
}
</style>

Detail customization prerequisite

This theme is built using Gulp to compile JavaScript and CSS. CSS is written in SCSS. So if you want to modify the theme color, styles or appearance or anything you want to customize, before doing that you need to setup development environment setup.

Please follow all the steps below one by one to do it.

You need to have installed node js and gulp installed in your local machine.

  • If you don't have NodeJS installed in your machine then visit nodejs.org and download and install latest LTS version of NodeJS.
  • After installing NodeJS open a command prompt or terminal. Then type node -v. If it shows a version number then NodeJS is installed correctly. Also enter this command npm -v to see npm ( comes with node js) is installed properly.
  • After installing node js you need to install Gulp CLI globally in your machine. So in your terminal or command prompt enter this command. npm install gulp-cli -g. It may take some time, it will install Gulp CLI globally in your machine. Now you have done the environment setup.
  • At this point go to the development theme folder. In downloaded zip there is a folder named "development". Within that folder you will see a folder named as the theme name. Enter in that folder and run command prompt / terminal here. Or you can navigate to this folder within already running terminal.
  • Now enter command npm install. It may take some time. It will install all the development dependency within the project. It may show some warning, don't worry those are OK.
  • At this time you are ready to modify theme, Run one more command gulp in the terminal. It will initially compile all files and star to watch file changes. Keep the terminal open and start customizing the theme.

How to change color or CSS

If you just want to change the accent color then you can do that from the dashboard. No need to edit theme files

In the theme folder you will find "assets > scss" folder which contains all the theme styles written in SCSS.

To change any style / css you need to modify here. In SCSS folder you will find a folder named "components" which contains a bunch of .scss files which are part of the whole theme's style. and all those files are imported in a specific order in "screen.scss" file located in "scss" folder root outside of "components" folder. please don't edit that file.

To change the other colors please follow the steps below.

  • Open the _color-and-font.scss file in your code editor.
  • Now you have to change the color hexcode (#xxxxxx) in this file and save the file.
  • If you have followed the above section of instruction ( Detail customization prerequisite), and already running terminal with the gulp command then the file changes will be detected and if there is no error in your file then it will be automatically compiled.

The _color-and-font.scss file looks like below.

/*=====================================================
Fonts
=====================================================*/

$font-body: 'Open Sans', sans-serif;
$font-heading: 'PT Serif', serif;
/*=====================================================
light theme Colors
=====================================================*/

$theme-light: (
body-bg: #ffffff,
theme-color: var(--ghost-accent-color),
light-bg-color: #F7F8FB,
text-color-normal: #3D4452,
text-color-dark: #1A202B,
text-color-light: #a1a6b1,
border-color: #E8E9EB,
error: #ff073a,
success: #28a745,
shadow: -8px 8px 0 rgba(0,0,0,.08),
white: #FFF,
black: #000,
);
/*=====================================================
dark theme colors
=====================================================*/

$theme-dark: (
body-bg: #12181b,
theme-color: var(--ghost-accent-color),
light-bg-color: #1f2529,
text-color-normal: #c2c3c7,
text-color-dark: #EBEBEC,
text-color-light: #929399,
border-color: #353746,
error: #eb4559,
success: #28a745,
shadow: -8px 8px 0 rgba(255,255,255,.12),
white: #FFF,
black: #000,
);
/*=====================================================
black and white as scss variable
=====================================================*/

$black: #000;
$white: #fff;
/*=====================================================
WARNING: please do not edit below this line,
incorrect coding may break the theme
=====================================================*/

:root {
@each $name, $value in $theme-light {
--#{$name}: #{$value};
}
}
[data-theme="dark"] {
@each $name, $value in $theme-dark {
--#{$name}: #{$value};
}
}

After modifying the theme css when you are done and want to install the final theme in your live site, do the following.

  • Go to running terminal ( terminal is navigated to development theme folder and running gulp command to watch the file changes )
  • Press Ctrl + C or Cmd + C in your keyboard to end the running task.
  • After ending running task enter this command, gulp build. This command will build the production ready ( live site ready ) theme package within a folder named "build".
  • After doing the gulp build if you need you can configure the theme options ( such as disqus shortname, social links etc ) then use this command gulp zip. It will make a folder named "dist" and make a zip of the contents of "build" folder within "dist" folder.
  • Now you can upload this newly created zip in your ghost admin panel.

Changelog

V 3.2.0 - November 30, 2023

  • Added option to show image in post list.

V 3.1.1 - November 28, 2023

  • Fixed small javascript issue.

V 3.1.0 - November 28, 2023

  • Added support for native search.
  • Fixed CSS for announcement bar.
  • Added support for page option.

V 3.0.0 - June 06, 2022

  • Removed deprecated API version in package.json
  • Removed deprecated helper.
  • Modified pricing table to support pricing tires with newly released helpers.
  • Updated minimum required Ghost version to 5.
  • Removed API version from package.json
  • Modified paid member CTA in post.

V 2.2.0 - January 15, 2022

  • Added support for all new cards available in the editor.
  • Added various custom settings so that those can be changed without editing theme files.
  • Updated the development dependency packages.
  • Added support for the theme accent color.

V 2.1.1 - March 23, 2021

  • Fixed image being stretched in post content.

V 2.1.0 - March 19, 2021

  • Added Custom page templates for monthly post archive and yearly post archive. this was requested by user Tom Lee.

V 2.0.0 - March 19, 2021

  • Updated all third party dependency and development dependency in the package.
  • Updated Ghost engines and API to v4
  • Replaced deprecated @site.lang with new @site.locale
  • Removed @price.currency_symbol helper replaced with new price helper to show currency symbol.
  • Removed @lab.members condition checking members are always enabled in Ghost 4.0.
  • updated single post view for properly showing the content preview above the subscription CTA.

V 1.1.0 - October 10, 2020

  • Removed Fuse Js and added searchinGhost plugin to improve search functionality.
  • Adder loading indication in membership related buttons.
  • Added new notifications.
  • Updated translation file.
  • Updated all dependency.

V 1.0.1 - May 20, 2020

  • Fixed navigation issue in mobile device.

V 1.0.0 - April 17, 2020

  • Initial release