Sanctuary, setting by setting.

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 and Homepage — the two groups used below. Your logo, publication icon, cover image and accent colour live one tab over, in Ghost's own Brand tab, and navigation is under Settings → Navigation.

Every setting has a sensible default and sections hide themselves until they have content, so the theme never shows an empty block. Treat the settings as refinements rather than a setup checklist.

First hour

Just activated the theme? These steps make it look like the demo. None is required for the theme to work.

1. Brand it. Under Brand, upload your logo and publication icon, add a cover photograph, and pick a mid-to-dark accent colour. The accent drives links, buttons, panels and the footer.
2. Enter your service times in Service schedule, and your Livestream url if you stream.
3. Write your hero: a short heading and subheading, and a hero photograph if you do not want to use your cover.
4. Create the pages from the table below, each with its template. A page that matches the slug picks its template up automatically.
5. Add a few sermons tagged sermon, and optionally events, testimonies and news. See Sermons and Ministries, events & plans.
6. Set up navigation. The primary menu becomes the header menu and the footer's Explore list. The secondary menu becomes the call-to-action buttons in the header, such as Give pointing to /giving/.
7. Upload the routes file for clean addresses like /sermons/. See Beyond the settings.
8. Set your Form endpoint before you go live, so the prayer and volunteer forms work.

All twenty settings

Use the search box to jump to a setting — it matches names, descriptions and placements as you type.

No setting matches that search. Try a shorter word, or clear the box to see all twenty.

Look and feel

Light and open

Pages sit on white with soft stone-coloured bands, so photography and your own content do the work. Headings use a sturdy book serif and body text a friendly humanist sans, chosen to be easy to read for every age in a congregation.

Accent colour

Set your main colour under Brand, in Settings → Design & branding. Everything follows it: links, buttons, tinted panels, focus rings and the footer. Choose a mid-to-dark colour; a very pale accent such as bright yellow or a pastel will read poorly against a white page. The default is a deep lake blue with a gold secondary.

Photography first

The homepage opens with a full-width photograph and a plain white welcome card, followed by a service times strip, so visitors see when you meet before they scroll. Bright photographs of real people from your own church work best. Dark or heavily cropped images make the whole site feel heavy.

No motion tricks

Nothing animates on scroll, nothing is hidden without JavaScript and hover effects are limited to small colour and shadow changes.

How the homepage builds itself

Each layout is a different running order. Sections appear only when their content exists, so a new site never shows an empty block. If you reorder anything in your own copy, keep tinted and white bands alternating.

What feeds each section:

• Latest sermons — posts tagged sermon or #sermon.
• Ministries — pages tagged ministry.
• Upcoming events — posts tagged event. Ghost has no event date field, so put the date and time in the post's Excerpt, for example Saturday 20 September · 14:00.
• Stories — posts tagged testimony. Put the person's name in the title and their words in the excerpt, so the quote is attributed to them rather than to the staff account that typed it up.
• Latest news — every post without a special tag. Sermons, reading plans, events, testimonies and prayer posts are excluded.
• Welcome — a page with the slug welcome.
• Newsletter — Ghost's own signup, shown only when memberships are on and open to sign-ups.

Each layout has its own look, so the quickest way to choose is to try all four in the Design preview.

Service times and the live badge

Enter your weekly services in Service schedule, using this compact form:

Day HH:MM Name @ Campus; Day HH:MM Name @ Campus

For example: Sunday 09:30 Traditional @ High Street; Sunday 11:00 Contemporary @ High Street; Wednesday 19:30 Prayer @ Online. The @ Campus part is optional.

• The theme builds service cards for the homepage, the Service Times page and the footer, and a next-service banner.
• With a Livestream url, it shows a We're live badge from the start of a service until 105 minutes later.
• Times are your church's local times. The theme works them out in your site timezone (Settings → General), so a visitor watching from abroad sees the badge at the right moment, with a short zone label such as (GMT) beside the times.
• Your publication language decides the format: en-GB prints 18:30 and en-US prints 6:30 PM. Enter the schedule in 24-hour form either way.
• For directions, a map or campus details, write them in the content of the Service Times page. It renders above the generated cards, where it reads as your welcome rather than an afterthought.

Sermons

Ghost has posts, pages, tags and authors, so a sermon is a post:

Add a sermon

1. Create a post and write the title.
2. Add the tag sermon (public), or #sermon (internal) if you uploaded the routes file. The theme detects either and shows the sermon layout, so you do not have to choose a template.
3. Add the series as the first tag, then any book or topic tags.
4. Put the passage in the Excerpt.
5. Add an audio card for the recording, which becomes the player and download, and an embed card for video if you have it.
6. Set the author to the speaker, add a feature image and publish.

A series is a public tag with a name, description and feature image, set under Settings → Tags. Its page is the series landing view. The sermon archive offers Speakers and Series & topics chips, scoped to sermons: a speaker appears only if they have preached, and the tags used for ministries, events and prayer never show up as sermon topics.

Ministries, events and reading plans

Ministries

Create a page for each ministry, tag it ministry, add a feature image, choose the Ministry template, set the author to the leader and put the meeting time and place in the Excerpt. The Ministries page lists them in a grid.

Events, news and stories

Posts tagged event feed the homepage events section, with the date taken from the Excerpt. Posts with no special tag are your news. See How the homepage builds.

Reading plans

Create a plan as a page or post tagged reading-plan (or #reading-plan with the routes file) and choose the Reading Plan template. Use a heading for each day. A Print this plan button and a print stylesheet are included.

Forms and prayer

Ghost cannot store form submissions, so the prayer and volunteer forms send to an endpoint that you set in Form endpoint:

1. A webhook (recommended). Paste an https:// address from a forms service such as Formspark, Formspree or Basin, or a Make or Zapier webhook. The form submits in the background and shows an inline confirmation, with no page reload.
2. Email. Paste mailto:[email protected] and the form opens the visitor's email app, pre-addressed, with a readable plain-text body.

Every form includes a consent checkbox, a link to your /privacy/ page and a hidden field that deters spam bots. Plain http:// endpoints are refused, because these forms carry personal details.

The prayer wall

The Prayer page can show a public wall built from posts tagged prayer. Requests arrive through the form, you review them, and you publish only approved ones as short posts with that tag. Keep them anonymous unless you have clear permission, and never publish sensitive personal details. Visitors can tap I prayed, which is remembered in their own browser only.

Giving

The Giving page assembles three things:

1. Your content. Write the introduction, then add your provider's buttons with Ghost button cards (for example CAF, Stripe or Give a Little), plus bank details and text-to-give instructions as ordinary content.
2. Recurring giving. If you have created paid tiers under Settings → Membership → Tiers and connected Stripe, they appear with monthly and yearly Give buttons through Ghost's Portal. Without Stripe connected, no tier is shown.
3. UK Gift Aid. With Show gift aid on, a standard explainer with a link to your declaration form.

This keeps your existing giving provider in charge of the money while still offering native recurring giving through Ghost and Stripe. Sanctuary never handles a payment itself.

Members, newsletter and accessibility

• The newsletter signup uses Ghost's own members flow, shows a confirmation or Ghost's error beneath the field, and is hidden entirely unless memberships are enabled and open to sign-ups. The homepage ends with a signup band, and other pages carry one in the footer.
• Search is Ghost's built-in search, opened from the header and the 404 page. Native Ghost comments appear on posts once enabled, and the footer offers Sign in / Account when memberships are on.
• The text size and contrast control sits in the header of every page and is remembered per browser. It is always on, with no setting to remove it, because congregations skew older and it is the control visitors actually use.
• The theme targets WCAG 2.1 AA: semantic landmarks, a skip link, keyboard-navigable menus with visible focus, AA-contrast colours, 48px touch targets and reduced-motion support.

Beyond the settings

Troubleshooting

Still stuck?

Email [email protected] with your Ghost version, the Sanctuary version, the page URL and a screenshot. If you have customised the theme, say what you changed. I aim to reply within two business days, and support covers installation, documented settings and confirmed defects.

For installation, updates and licensing, see the main documentation. For release notes, see the changelog.