Vanu Documentation

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

API key for search function

After release of Ghost API version 2, we have to generate an API key and set that key in our theme. Without this the search, custom author archive and custom tag archive functionality will not work. Please follow the steps below.

Go to your admin dashboard and visit "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. Save the file.

Configure disqus comment

To enable disqus you need disqus_shotrname for your site. To setup the disqus comment properly 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 open "disqus-comment.hbs" file which is located in partials folder. At line number 7 you will see below code

var disqus_shortname = 'example';

replace that example with your own shortcode. It will look like below.

var disqus_shortname = 'yourDisqusShortnameHere';

Now save the file.

Disabling shadows

In this theme box shadow used in various places such as post cards, tag cards etc.

If you want to disable these shadows in all place in your site you can do this easily. Follow steps below.

Open default.hbs file. At line number 2 you will see the following code.

<html lang="{{@site.locale}}">

Add data-shadow-disable in that line. So the code will become like this.

<html lang="{{@site.locale}}" data-shadow-disable>

Save the file.

To add the actual social links to the icons in header area below search button, please follow the steps below.

open social-links.hbs file located in partials folder.
Now replace the # for each href value with your own profile links.
If you want to add other social links or want to remove one, please see all the available icons in "partials > icons" folder.

The social-links.hbs file will look like below.

<div class="social-icons-wrap">
    <ul class="social-icons">
        <li><a href="#">{{> icons/twitter}}</a></li>
        <li><a href="#">{{> icons/facebook}}</a></li>
        <li><a href="#">{{> icons/instagram}}</a></li>
        <li><a href="#">{{> icons/dribbble}}</a></li>
        <li><a href="#">{{> icons/behance}}</a></li>
    </ul>
</div>

Members

Ghost introduced Members feature in Ghost version 3.0.0. This members feature is fully supported by this theme.

From Ghost version 4.0.0 Members are always enabled by default. If you are using old version of Ghost then You can enable this member feature from the lab page in your ghost dashboard.

Before Uploading the theme to your site you have to edit the text ( key points ) in your free, monthly and yearly pricing plan. Please follow the steps below to edit the key point you want to show in your pricing table.

You will find following 3 files within the theme which are located in partials/members folder within the theme folder. These are three files for 3 different pricing plan.

pricing-table-free.hbs
pricing-table-monthly.hbs
pricing-table-yearly.hbs

Open First file and start editing. Starting from line number 11 in each file you will see those key points in each line one after one. See example as below.

<li>{{>icons/check-mark}} Access to all free private posts</li>
<li>{{>icons/check-mark}} Weekly updates with new content</li>
<li>{{>icons/check-mark}} Support independent publishing</li>
<li>{{>icons/check-mark}} No card details required</li>

Keep on edit those sample text to add you own text. you can add as many line as you want.

When you are done with editing a file. Save that file and continue with the next file. Follow the same instruction to edit all files. Finish editing these files and you are ready to go to the next step.

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 Settings > 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 file 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 vanu.demo.json file there. This file is located in demo data folder in main download folder.

To add links to you static page 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 Settings > lab page in your admin dashboard.
Add a label and the URL and save it.
Now the theme will show newly added link in navigation.

Featured post slider

At home page there is a slider which shows featured posts. By default it shows 5 featured posts ordered by latest published date.

Normally you don't need to change or setup anything for this. But if you want to change the number of featured post in the slider then open follow steps below

Open featured-post-slider.hbs file located in partials folder and then at the beginning you will see this line of code.

{{#get "posts" limit="5" include="authors" filter="featured:true"}}

Change the number 5 to the number, how many post you want to show there.

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.

Go to "new page" To create a new page
Add a Title ( example: Authors or Authors Archive or any thing else you want)
Open post settings panel by clicking on the gear icon at top right corner of the page.
You can add an post image or keep it blank as it is.
Below that there is an 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.

Featured image in post

Ghost supports featured/cover image in post natively, and this theme handle that nicely. Recommended image size is, minimum 1024px 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

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 Theme color 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.

/*=====================================================
    Colors
=====================================================*/
/* Theme Colors */
$primary-color: #FB3C3B;
$secondary-color: #F7B413;
$bg-color: #F2F2F6;
/* Color used for text */
$text-dark: #222831;
$text-light: #AEAEAE;
$text-normal: #393E46;
/* Other colors */
$shadow-color: rgba(#0C0C5E, 0.1);
$border-color: #E5E5E6;
$white: #ffffff;
$black: #000000;
$success: #0ca910;
$error: #f0134d;

/*=====================================================
    Fonts
=====================================================*/
$sans-serif: 'Montserrat', sans-serif;

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 3.0.0 - March 28, 2021

Updated Ghost engines and API to v4
Replaced deprecated @site.lang with new @site.locale
Removed hard coded $ symbol and @price.currency_symbol helper, both are 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 public preview above the subscription CTA.
Improve account page, Now shows full account information.
Replaced hard coded footer navigation with secondary navigation.
Fixed image being stretched in post content.
Updated language (translation) file en.json.
Made tables auto wrap in a responsive div using javascript.
Removed visibility=all from foreach loop.
Updated all dev dependency.
Improved slider style and fixed small CSS issue. Was showing extra space.
Added option for disabling all shadow in entire theme.
Removed site cover image from search background.
Added loading spinner to pricing table button.

V 2.0.0 - November 28, 2019

Replaced deprecated {{code}} helper with {{statusCode}} helper.
Updated API uses to v3.
Updated search functionality to use API v3.
Added new Membership feature.
Modified Subscription widget to use new members feature.
Added new custom pages Account, subscribe, Sign in pages.
Custom Call to action for membership and paid membership in single post.
Added extra translation.
Removed google+ share link.

V 1.3.0 - September 26, 2019

Added CSS to support bookmark card.

V 1.2.0 - June 24, 2019

Removed deprecated siema slider plugin and added new tiny-slider plugin.

V 1.1.0 - April 10, 2019

Reorganized page layouts for large screen ( mostly css changed, and some template markup ).
Changed deprecated {{lang}} helper to new {{@site.lang}}

V 1.0.0 - March 19, 2019

Initial release

On this page

Using the theme

API key for search function

Configure disqus comment

Disabling shadows

Members

Installation

Navigation links

Featured post slider

Author and tag archive

Featured image in post

Theme translation

Theme customization

Detail customization prerequisite

How to change color or CSS

Changelog

V 3.0.0 - March 28, 2021

V 2.0.0 - November 28, 2019

V 1.3.0 - September 26, 2019

V 1.2.0 - June 24, 2019

V 1.1.0 - April 10, 2019

V 1.0.0 - March 19, 2019

Vanu Documentation

On this page

Using the theme

API key for search function

Configure disqus comment

Disabling shadows

Adding social links

Members

Installation

Navigation links

Featured post slider

Author and tag archive

Featured image in post

Theme translation

Theme customization

Detail customization prerequisite

How to change color or CSS

Changelog

V 3.0.0 - March 28, 2021

V 2.0.0 - November 28, 2019

V 1.3.0 - September 26, 2019

V 1.2.0 - June 24, 2019

V 1.1.0 - April 10, 2019

V 1.0.0 - March 19, 2019