Customizing your brand and design settings
·As discussed in the introduction post, one of the best things about Ghost is just how much you can customize to turn your site into something unique. Everything about your layout and design can be changed, so you're not stuck with yet another clone of a social network profile.
How far you want to go with customization is completely up to you, there's no right or wrong approach! The majority of people use one of Ghost's built-in themes to get started, and then progress to something more bespoke later on as their site grows.
The best way to get started is with Ghost's branding settings, where you can set up colors, images and logos to fit with your brand.
Any Ghost theme that's up to date and compatible with Ghost 4.0 and higher will reflect your branding settings in the preview window, so you can see what your site will look like as you experiment with different options.
When selecting an accent color, try to choose something which will contrast well with white text. Many themes will use your accent color as the background for buttons, headers and navigational elements. Vibrant colors with a darker hue tend to work best, as a general rule.
Installing Ghost themes
By default, new sites are created with Ghost's friendly publication theme, called Casper. Everything in Casper is optimized to work for the most common types of blog, newsletter and publication that people create with Ghost — so it's a perfect place to start.
However, there are hundreds of different themes available to install, so you can pick out a look and feel that suits you best.
Inside Ghost's theme settings you'll find 4 more official themes that can be directly installed and activated. Each theme is suited to slightly different use-cases.
- Casper (default) — Made for all sorts of blogs and newsletters
- Edition — A beautiful minimal template for newsletter authors
- Alto — A slick news/magazine style design for creators
- London — A light photography theme with a bold grid
- Ease — A library theme for organizing large content archives
And if none of those feel quite right, head on over to the Ghost Marketplace, where you'll find a huge variety of both free and premium themes.
Building something custom
Finally, if you want something completely bespoke for your site, you can always build a custom theme from scratch and upload it to your site.
Ghost's theming template files are very easy to work with, and can be picked up in the space of a few hours by anyone who has just a little bit of knowledge of HTML and CSS. Templates from other platforms can also be ported to Ghost with relatively little effort.
If you want to take a quick look at the theme syntax to see what it's like, you can browse through the files of the default Casper theme. We've added tons of inline code comments to make it easy to learn, and the structure is very readable.
<article class="article ">
<h1></h1>
<img src="" alt="Feature image" />
The Businessman & The Fisherman
·
An American businessman took a vacation to a small coastal Mexican village on doctor’s orders. Unable to sleep after an urgent phone call from the office the first morning, he walked out to the pier to clear his head. A small boat with just one fisherman had docked, and inside the boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish.
“How long did it take you to catch them?” the American asked.
“Only a little while,” the Mexican replied in surprisingly good English.
“Why don’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?” the American then asked.
“I have enough to support my family and give a few to friends,” the Mexican said as he unloaded them into a basket.
“But… What do you do with the rest of your time?”
The Mexican looked up and smiled. “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take a siesta with my wife, Julia, and stroll into the village each evening, where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life, señor.”
The American laughed and stood tall. “Sir, I’m a Harvard M.B.A. and can help you. You should spend more time fishing, and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. In no time, you could buy several boats with the increased haul. Eventually, you would have a fleet of fishing boats.”
He continued, “Instead of selling your catch to a middleman, you would sell directly to the consumers, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village, of course, and move to Mexico City, then to Los Angeles, and eventually to New York City, where you could run your expanded enterprise with proper management.
The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, señor, how long will all this take?”
To which the American replied, “15-20 years, 25 tops.”
“But what then, señor?”
The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right, you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You would make millions.”
“Millions señor? Then what?"
“Then you would retire and move to a small coastal fishing village, where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take a siesta with your wife, and stroll in to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”
</article>
See? Not that scary! But still completely optional.
If you're interested in creating your own Ghost theme, check out our extensive theme documentation for a full guide to all the different template variables and helpers which are available.