Theme settings guide
Highness, setting by setting.
Highness is an image-led theme for fashion, beauty and culture magazines. It has twenty controls in Ghost Admin: the editorial mood, the type style, the accent palette, the density and lead treatment of the homepage, the cover-story, shopping, runway and newsletter blocks, and the article sidebar. Every setting has a default that already looks right, so most sites only change a few.
Where the settings live
The twenty settings are in Ghost Admin, in one place:
Settings→Design & branding→Customize→Theme
Ghost groups them into Site wide, Homepage and Post, the three groups used below. Your title, description, logo and icon live one tab over, in Ghost’s own Brand settings, and custom fonts are on the Typography tab.
Changes preview live and nothing goes public until you press Save.
First hour
Just activated the theme? These steps make it look like the demo.
- Name the publication. Under Brand, set your title and description. The title becomes the large masthead, and it is scaled down automatically so even a long name stays on one line.
- Build the navigation. The primary navigation is the plain text row at the top, so keep it short: Home, About and a couple of key pages. Put Contact, Privacy and similar links in the secondary navigation, which becomes the footer’s Information column.
- Create your desk tags. Make public tags such as fashion, beauty, culture, shopping, wellness and runway. The homepage desks and the section bar are built from them. See Tags and sections.
- Feature your best stories. Open a post, switch on Feature this post in its settings, and do it for three to five. They become Top Stories.
- Pick a cover story. Add the internal tag #cover-story to one post, after its main tag. Set the Issue label and, if you like, an Issue cover image.
- Choose a mood, a type style and a palette. Under Theme, try the three editorial moods, then Editorial Serif, Modern Luxe or Minimal Newsroom, then an accent palette. The demo uses Sharp Magazine, Editorial Serif and Crimson Ink.
- Turn on members under Settings → Membership if you want the newsletter panel, a paywall and comments. Highness styles all of them.
All twenty settings
Each setting is listed with its internal key, its control type and its default.
Site wide
Applies across the whole site.
Luxury Restraint uses a warmer ivory paper, a deep oxblood accent and more generous spacing for a quieter, more luxurious feel. Sharp Magazine is the default: crisp cream paper and strong contrast. Culture Pop adds a playful pink tint to the paper and the light panels.
Where it appears: every page.
A palette chosen under Accent palette takes priority over the colours in Luxury Restraint and Culture Pop, so the two settings combine cleanly.
Editorial Serif sets headlines in Bodoni Moda, Modern Luxe in Instrument Serif and Minimal Newsroom in Newsreader (semibold). Article text and decks are always Newsreader, and labels, navigation and buttons are always Instrument Sans.
Where it appears: every page: the masthead, headlines and decks.
If you choose heading or body fonts in Ghost’s Typography settings, those override the preset’s display (heading) or text (body) role.
Crimson Ink is the default. Electric Chartreuse is a bright lime for a bolder look, Gallery Blue a cool electric blue and Classic Mono a black-and-white page with no colour at all.
Where it appears: category labels, links, badges, the cover-story and newsletter panels, and focus rings.
Text and button colours adjust automatically, so every palette keeps WCAG AA contrast, including on the dark masthead.
Sharp keeps square image corners, the default. Soft radius gives images and cards softly rounded corners.
Where it appears: story cards, feature images and in-article images.
Turns the masthead and navigation bar ink-black with light text. The rest of the page stays light.
Where it appears: the masthead, primary navigation and section bar.
This is not a dark mode: the page below the header is always light.
Shows a small Gallery chip on cards, and in the article header, for any story tagged gallery.
Where it appears: story cards and article headers.
Switch it off if you do not want image stories flagged.
A short positioning line in the footer, under your publication name.
Where it appears: the footer.
Leave it blank and your site description is used.
Homepage
Controls the homepage only.
Compact tightens the spacing between homepage sections for a denser front page. Balanced is the default. Spacious opens the page up with generous gaps between sections.
Where it appears: the homepage.
Image-led gives the lead story a large photograph above its headline. Text-led sets the headline first and the picture smaller. Split editorial puts the lead’s image and text side by side.
Where it appears: the Top Stories lead at the top of the homepage.
Top Stories uses your Featured posts when there are any, and the newest posts otherwise. With only one story it switches to a split image-and-text hero on its own.
Keeps the Latest list pinned beside Top Stories while the reader scrolls, on wide screens.
Where it appears: the Latest rail on the homepage.
The rail skips stories already shown in Top Stories and hides itself when it has nothing left to list.
Shows the Shopping desk, a boxed section for product roundups and buying guides, with a service badge on each card.
Where it appears: the homepage, between Beauty and Culture.
It lists posts tagged shopping. Switching it off hides the block; shopping posts still appear on their tag page.
Shows the newsletter panel at the foot of the homepage.
Where it appears: the homepage, above the footer.
It appears only when memberships are on and the reader is not already a member. The footer version is hidden while the homepage one is showing, and on the 404 page.
Shows the Runway & Lookbook block: one large lead beside a grid of up to five stories.
Where it appears: the homepage, after the desk sections.
It collects posts tagged runway, lookbook, street-style, weddings or jewellery, and is hidden if none exist.
The heading of the newsletter panel.
Where it appears: the newsletter panel.
The panel is hidden from signed-in members, and when signups are off or invite-only.
The short line under the newsletter heading.
Where it appears: the newsletter panel.
The small label above the homepage’s “Top Stories” title.
Where it appears: the top of the homepage.
Clear it and the label reads “Top Stories”.
The small label above the cover-story headline, for example The Seasonal Issue or The Winter Issue.
Where it appears: the cover-story module.
Clear it and the label reads “Cover story”.
Optional cover art for the cover-story module, such as a picture of your magazine cover. Upload a portrait image of about 1000 × 1300 px.
Where it appears: the cover-story module.
Without one, the cover story’s own feature image is used.
Post
Controls individual articles.
Shows a sidebar beside each article with share links, the latest stories and the story’s sections.
Where it appears: articles.
On tablets and phones the sidebar sits below the article instead of beside it.
Editorial Grid shows related stories as image cards. Minimal List shows them as a plain list of headlines.
Where it appears: “Keep reading” at the end of each article.
Related stories come from the article’s primary tag, and the block is hidden if that tag has no other stories.
How the homepage builds itself
Blocks with nothing to show disappear. From top to bottom:
- Top Stories: up to five Featured posts, or your newest posts if none are featured, in the Hero treatment you chose, with a Latest rail beside them.
- The cover story: the latest post tagged #cover-story, with cover art, the Issue label and a link in. Hidden if no post carries the tag. It is left out of every list below it.
- Desk sections: Fashion, Beauty, Shopping (if Show shopping module is on), Culture and Wellness, each a lead story beside a stack.
- Runway & Lookbook: one large lead and a grid, if Show runway module is on.
- The Power desk: a text-only strip of stories tagged power, work, money, relationships or self.
- More stories: a button to Ghost’s paginated archive (/page/2/, /page/3/ and so on) once you have more posts than fit on the homepage.
- The newsletter panel: if Show newsletter CTA is on.
Templates and pages
Highness includes extra layouts. A tag layout is used automatically by the tag with that slug. A post or page template is chosen in the editor: open the post’s settings (the gear icon), then pick it from the Template menu.
| Layout | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Runway tag page | Used by the tag runway: an image-led archive of runway and show reports. |
| Lookbook tag page | Used by the tag lookbook: a wider, more photographic archive. |
| Lookbook (post template) | Choose Lookbook for a post that needs a wider, more image-led reading experience, with running text kept to a comfortable line length. |
| Featured page | An optional page at /featured/ that lists your featured stories. To enable it, upload the included routes.yaml in Settings → Labs → Routes. The theme works fully without it. |
Other tag, author and archive pages are created by Ghost and designed by Highness. Author pages show the author’s photo, name and story count.
Writing for Highness
- Featured stories. Featured posts lead the homepage. Without any, the newest posts take their place.
- Excerpt. A post’s Excerpt is the deck under the headline and the text on large cards. Without one, Ghost’s automatic excerpt is used.
- Primary tag. The first tag is shown above the headline and used to choose the stories under “Keep reading”. For the cover story, add #cover-story after the main tag so the main tag stays the visible one.
- Gallery posts. Tag a post gallery to show the Gallery label on cards and in the article header. For an image count, add a reader-facing tag such as 12 Images or 18 Looks.
- Shopping and service. Tag product roundups and buying guides shopping. They get a service badge on cards and an “Editor’s pick” label on the article, and Ghost’s product cards are styled for commerce.
- Photo credits. The feature image caption accepts links, so credits such as “Photo by … on Unsplash” display correctly.
- Members-only stories. Add the Public preview divider in the editor to choose where the free opening ends. Readers see it, then Ghost’s prompt to subscribe or sign in, styled to match the theme.
Every editor card is styled: image (regular, wide and full), gallery, bookmark, callout, toggle, button, product, file, audio, video, signup, header, embed, quotes, code, tables and dividers.
Recommended image sizes
| Image | Recommended |
|---|---|
| Feature image | 2400 × 1600 px (3:2) at least. Shown wide at the top of an article and cropped to portrait on cards, so keep the subject in the central third. |
| Inside-article photographs | Landscape 3:2 or portrait 4:5, up to 2000 px wide. Ghost resizes them. |
| Issue cover image | About 1000 × 1300 px, portrait. Optional; shown in the cover-story module. |
| Author profile image | 1200 × 1200 px (1:1), shown on author pages and in the author box after each article. |
| Publication logo | Optional. The masthead is set in type from your site title, so a logo is not required. |
Members, comments and search
Highness uses Ghost’s native memberships, so there is nothing extra to install.
- Portal. The Subscribe, Sign in and Account links use Ghost’s Portal. They appear only when memberships are on, and signed-in members see Account instead.
- Newsletter panel. Subscribes readers without leaving the page. It is hidden from members and when signups are off or invite-only.
- Paywall. Members-only and paid stories show the free preview, then Ghost’s own prompt, restyled to match the theme.
- Comments appear under each article when they are enabled in Ghost.
- Search opens from the button in the header, and from the mobile menu, and uses Ghost’s built-in search.
Beyond the settings
Fonts
Bodoni Moda, Instrument Serif, Newsreader and Instrument Sans are bundled with the theme and loaded from your own site, so Highness makes no request to a font service. They are Latin and Latin Extended subsets, which cover English and most European languages with accents. For Greek, Cyrillic or Vietnamese, add the subsets you need to partials/fonts.hbs. If you choose a heading or body font under Typography, Ghost loads it from Bunny Fonts and Highness switches to it cleanly. Leave Typography on “Theme default” for no third-party requests at all.
Small changes
For small tweaks, such as extra CSS, use Ghost’s Code Injection under Settings → Advanced so theme updates stay easy. Do not remove {{ghost_head}}, {{ghost_foot}} or the asset helpers. Ghost depends on them.
Updating
Download your current theme as a backup, upload the new ZIP, check the homepage, one article and one section page, then activate it. Ghost asks whether to overwrite the existing theme; say yes. Your settings are kept, and new settings take their defaults. If you have edited the theme’s files, keep a copy of your changes and reapply them.
Troubleshooting
The cover-story block is missing
Add the internal tag #cover-story (type it in the Tags field) to a published post. A public tag named cover-story also works. With no such post, the block is hidden.
A homepage section is missing
Each desk shows posts with its tag, so check that the tag exists, is public and has at least one published post. Shopping and Runway & Lookbook also have their own on/off settings.
The section bar is missing, or is missing a tag
It needs at least two public tags with published posts. Internal tags (those starting with #) and the gallery and lookbook format tags are never shown, and the bar lists at most ten tags, most-used first.
Top Stories shows my newest posts, not my favourites
Feature the posts you want: open each one and switch on Feature this post in its settings.
There are no Subscribe or Sign in links
Turn on memberships under Settings → Membership → Access and allow anyone to sign up. The links and the newsletter panel are hidden when members are off, when signups are invite-only, and from signed-in members.
There is no /featured/ page
It is optional. Upload the included routes.yaml under Settings → Labs → Routes to enable it.
The masthead looks too small
Very long publication names are scaled down so they fit on one line. A shorter title keeps the masthead larger.
I cannot find the theme settings panel
Highness must be the active theme, not merely uploaded. Activate it under Settings → Design & branding → Change theme, then reload Ghost Admin. Custom settings appear under Customize → Theme.
Still stuck?
Email [email protected] with your Ghost version, the page URL and a screenshot. If you have customised the theme, say what you changed. Support covers installing Highness, its documented settings and confirmed defects, and replies usually arrive within two business days.
For installation, updates and licensing, see the main documentation. For release notes, see the changelog.