Brief Documentation

Install the theme

Follow the steps below to upload the theme:

1. Log in to your publication admin section at yoursite.com/ghost/
2. Go to Settings > Design ( yoursite.com/ghost/#/settings/design/ )
3. Click Change theme ( yoursite.com/ghost/#/settings/design/change-theme )
4. Click Upload theme and select the brief.zip file.
5. After the upload is complete, under Installed themes click Activate

Routes setup

Follow the steps below to upload the routes.yaml file (this is a separate step from theme upload)

1. Log in to your publication admin section at yoursite.com/ghost/
2. Go to Settings > Labs ( yoursite.com/ghost/#/settings/labs )
3. Under Beta features click on Upload routes file button and select the file from the root directory of the theme.

Custom settings

The theme comes with custom design settings, which are accessible from the Ghost Admin panel. To view and edit these settings go to Settings > Design & Branding ( yoursite.com/ghost/#/settings/design/)

Custom settings are defined in the package.json file. These settings are placed under three categories:

1. Site-wide settings
2. Homepage settings
3. Post settings

Here's a preview of the available settings:

Homepage

The homepage is defined by the home.hbs file and it has several sections based on the theme design settings:

• hero
• subscribe section
• logos section
• content section
• featured issues
• reviews section
• latest issues

Hero

To customize the hero section you have the following options in theme settings:

1. Hero headline: Add text directly in the setting to display your desired headline. Use HTML to emphasize key phrases or include links for better engagement.

2. Hero subheading: Set the supporting text for the headline. Like the headline, this subheading can also include HTML, making it easy to style and add links.

3. Hero text alignment

   • left — Aligns the headline and subheading to the left for a more traditional layout.
   • center — Centers the text for a balanced, modern look.

4. Hero cover image style (using the site cover image)

   • left-side — Displays an image on the left, with text on the right.
   • right-side — Displays an image on the right, with text on the left.
   • none — Removes the image for a text-only hero section.

5. Hero subscribe style

   • inline — Adds a subscription form directly within the hero section for seamless signups.
   • section — Places the subscription form in a dedicated section for a more prominent call-to-action.
   • none — Removes the subscription form entirely from the hero section.

Subscribe section

To activate the subscribe section you have to fulfill the following:

1. Choose the section option from the Hero subscribe style in the design settings
2. Create a page with the slug home-subscribe and add your content and featured image (or without a feature image, in which case you should set the custom excerpt field)

Logos section

To active the logos section:

1. Create a new page with the slug home-logos
2. Add the logos using the image card

If you want to invert the logo colors on the dark theme you can add this in code injection:

<style>
  [data-color-scheme="dark"] [data-logo-list] { filter: invert(1); }
</style>

Content section

To active the content section:

1. Create a new page with the slug home-content
2. Add your content and featured image

Featured issues

The featured issues section can be activated from the Design settings > Show featured issues. When enabled the section is rendered and all featured posts are removed from the Latest issues section to avoid duplication.

Reviews section

To active the reviews section:

1. Create a new page with the slug home-reviews
2. Add reviews using the Product card

Latest issues

By default, the latest issues section is enabled, but it can be deactivated from the Design settings > Show latest issues.

When enabled, this section includes the most recent posts, and a sidebar alongside which has recommendations and a subscribe form.

The recommendations can be disabled from the Design settings > Show recommendations.

Post templates

The theme comes with 2 custom post templates, these templates can be selected from the Post Settings menu:

• custom-post-email-format.hbs — a post template with a narrow content
• custom-post-web-format.hbs — a post template with wide feature image

Custom templates

The theme comes with a couple of custom page templates, these templates can be selected from the Page Settings menu, under Template:

• custom-template-subscibe.hbs — subscribe page
• custom-template-newsletters.hbs — newsletters page
• custom-template-membership.hbs — membership page
• custom-template-signin.hbs — sign in page
• custom-template-signup.hbs — sign up page

Newsletters page

The newsletters page will automatically render the newsletter cards based on the newsletters you have created in your Ghost Admin > Email newsletters > Newsletters:

The colors, and symbol you can see on the demo can be controlled from code injection. For this you have to target each individual card, which can be done based on the newsletter slug. The slug is generally a lowercase hyphenated version fo the newsletter title, except for the default newsletter for which the slug will be default-newsletter.

Here's how we set the colors and symbols on the demo:

<style>
  article[data-newsletter-slug="default-newsletter"] {
    --accent-bg: palegreen;
    --accent-text: hsl(120 93% 6% / 1);
  }
  article[data-newsletter-slug="design-pulse"] {
    --accent-bg: #dccef8;
    --accent-text: hsl(240deg 66.67% 6%);
  }
  article[data-newsletter-slug="creative-fusion"] {
    --accent-bg: khaki;
    --accent-text: hsl(54deg 76.92% 6%);
  }
  
  [data-newsletter-slug="default-newsletter"] [data-newsletter-symbol] {
    display: block;
    --symbol-newsletter: "👨‍💻";
  }
  
  [data-newsletter-slug="design-pulse"] [data-newsletter-symbol] {
    display: block;
    --symbol-newsletter: "🎨";
  }
  
  [data-newsletter-slug="creative-fusion"] [data-newsletter-symbol] {
    display: block;
    --symbol-newsletter: "💥";
  }
</style>

Archive collection

The theme comes with a custom /archive/ collection, which lists all your posts. To active it you must upload the routes.yaml file.

Setting meta data

Here are the exact steps:

1. Change the routes file and add the data property:

  /archive/:
    controller: channel
    template: archive
    data: page.archive

2. Create a new page in your admin and make sure the page URL is archive
3. Re-upload the routes.yaml

Header

The header is defined in the partials/header.hbs and it renders your publication logo, primary navigation, and a CTA on the right by default it's the subscribe action, but from the designs settings you can add your own text and URL for this button.

Footer

The footer is defined in the partials/footer.hbs and it renders your publication logo, site description, a subscribe form, secondary navigation, social links, and finally copyright.

Post feed

You can set the Post feed style option in the theme settings. There are two options:

• detailed — the default option. This includes the feature image, detailed excerpts, and additional metadata for posts. Ideal for providing readers with more context and visual engagement.
• minimal — a clean and compact design that prioritizes simplicity, showing just the essentials—perfect for a modern, distraction-free look.

The style you choose will apply uniformly to the homepage, tag pages, and author pages, ensuring a consistent look across your site.

Color customization

You can change the main accent color from Settings > Design > Brand. The most important CSS configurations of the theme are defined as custom CSS properties, so you can easily overwrite them from Code Injection to change background colors, text colors, and more.

The theme comes with several color schemes, the default one can be set in the admin using the Default color scheme in Settings > Design > Site-Wide.

The included color schemes:

• system
• light
• dark

The default option is system which will be either the dark or light theme, depending on the user's preference.

It's possible to change the color schemes by changing the properties. This can be done by adding the following in Code Injection and adjusting the values.

To change the light theme:

<style>
  :root {
    --color-typography: hsl(0 0% 15%);
    --color-typography-tone: hsl(0 0% 30%);
    --color-typography-content: hsl(0 0% 20%);
    --color-typography-reverse: hsl(0 0% 95%);
    --color-background: hsl(0 0% 100%);
    --color-background-tone: hsl(0 0% 97%);
    --color-background-opac: hsla(0 0% 100% / 75%);
    --color-background-reverse: hsl(0 0% 12%);
    --color-border: hsl(0 0% 90%);
    --color-border-reverse: hsl(0 0% 20%);
  }
</style>

To change the dark theme:

<style>
  html[data-color-scheme="dark"]:root {
    --color-typography: hsl(0 0% 90%);
    --color-typography-tone: hsl(0 0% 70%);
    --color-typography-content: hsl(0 0% 80%);
    --color-typography-reverse: hsl(0 0% 15%);
    --color-background: hsl(0 0% 10%);
    --color-background-tone: hsl(0 0% 12%);
    --color-background-opac: hsla(0 0% 0% / 50%);
    --color-background-reverse: hsl(0 0% 98%);
    --color-border: hsl(0 0% 18%);
    --color-border-reverse: hsl(0 0% 92%);
  }
</style>

Some useful tools for choosing colors and gradients:

• Fuel HSL color picker
• Gradients | Components AI
• CSS Gradient Generator

Fonts

You can set the font family from the Admin section, going to Settings > Design > Site-wide. There are two options, one for the headings and another for the rest of the elements:

Headings & body font options the comes with:

• System
• Bodoni Moda
• Bricolage Grotesque
• DM Sans
• Funnel Sans
• Geist
• Hanken Grotesque
• Inter
• PT Serif
• Spectral

Dropdown menus

brief comes with a custom feature to create dropdown menus easily for your header navigation. All you have to do is add the minus sign (-) in front of the items in Settings > Navigation

Items having the - sign will be added as subitems to the previous navigation item. For example from the demo:

• - Membership, - Sign up and - Sign in will belong to the Members item

Ghost config

Some configurations in Ghost themes can be defined in the package.json file, including Posts per page, Image sizes, and Custom settings.

Posts per page

The posts_per_page defines the number of posts that appear in your collections until it's paginated. For example, the value of posts_per_page is used on the home page, tag, and author templates.

You can change it in the package.json file:

"config": {
  "posts_per_page": 12
}

Image sizes

Ghost can handle responsive image sizes, and this is defined in the package.json file, under the image_sizes property. You can change the default configuration by editing this file before uploading the theme.

"image_sizes": {
  "xxs": {
    "width": 30
  },
  "xs": {
    "width": 100
  },
  "s": {
    "width": 320
  },
  "m": {
    "width": 640
  },
  "l": {
    "width": 960
  },
  "xl": {
    "width": 1280
  },
  "xxl": {
    "width": 2000
  }
}

The sizes defined will be used to generate copies of images at the specified sizes when uploading images in your Ghost Admin.

Comments

The theme uses the native Ghost comment feature. The Native Comment System requires at least Ghost v5.9.0, you have to enable it from Settings > Membership > Access > Commenting.

Here are the options you can choose from:

• All members - Logged-in members
• Paid-members only - Only logged-in members with an active subscription
• Nobody - Disable commenting completely

Icons

The icons used in the theme are from Tabler Icons, the library consists of 5000+ icons. Only the icons used in the theme are included in the partials/icons directory in separate .hbs files.

Here are the steps to add new icons:

1. Go to Tabler Icons and click on the Icon you want to add, this will copy the code to your clipboard.
2. Go into the partials/icons directory and create a new file: your-icon.hbs
3. Open the new file and paste the copied code from the clipboard.
4. Save the file.

For using the icons inside the theme files, there is a special partial file partials/icon.hbs which accepts name and size as parameters.

Let's see an example and try to add a new icon. Assuming we want to add the icon camera and by clicking on the icon on the website, we get this code:

<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" class="icon icon-tabler icon-tabler-camera" width="24" height="24" viewBox="0 0 24 24" strokeWidth="1.5" stroke="#2c3e50" fill="none" strokeLinecap="round" strokeLinejoin="round">
  <path stroke="none" d="M0 0h24v24H0z" fill="none"/>
  <path d="M5 7h1a2 2 0 0 0 2 -2a1 1 0 0 1 1 -1h6a1 1 0 0 1 1 1a2 2 0 0 0 2 2h1a2 2 0 0 1 2 2v9a2 2 0 0 1 -2 2h-14a2 2 0 0 1 -2 -2v-9a2 2 0 0 1 2 -2" />
  <circle cx="12" cy="13" r="3" />
</svg>

The next step is to create a new file: partials/icons/camera.hbs and paste the copied code in the file. The new file must be of .hbs type, so we can use it into the theme files:

{{>icon name="camera"}}

Social links

Social links are shown in the footer by default. The basic social links that Ghost comes with can be edited from Settings > General settings > Social accounts:

• Facebook
• X(Twitter)

The theme also comes with the following list of social platforms:

• bluesky
• threads
• linkedin
• discord
• github
• instagram
• pinterest
• reddit
• telegram
• tiktok
• whatsapp
• youtube

To activate any of these platforms, add the following in your Admin Settings > Code Injection > Site footer. For example to activate GitHub:

<script>
  socials.github = 'https://github.com/brightthemes'
</script>

Social sharing

Social sharing is part of the post layout and the following is included:

• X(Twitter)
• Bluesky
• Facebook
• Linkedin
• Email
• Copy to clipboard

To add other social sharing options you need to edit the partials/social-share.hbs file.

Translations

By default, everything is in English (en.json), additionally, the theme comes with translations in:

• 🇩🇪 German (de.json)
• 🇪🇸 Spanish (es.json)
• 🇫🇷 French (fr.json)
• 🇮🇹 Italian (it.json)
• 🇳🇱 Dutch (nl.json)
• 🇵🇹 Portuguese (pt.json)

If you want to edit the translation in a specific language, you have to edit the corresponding translation file. The files are stored in the locales directory (inside the theme zip).

|__ locales
|   |__ de.json
|   |__ en.json
|   |__ es.json
|   |__ fr.json

If the language file for your language doesn't exist, you have to create it (make sure to use the correct language code) The best way is to copy the content en.json file in your new language file, then change the translations.

Theme development

If you want to make more advanced changes to the theme, or you want to implement your own components, you can take advantage of the developer-friendly setup of the theme.

All the assets are combined and minified for better speed and performance. To customize the theme make sure you have Node.js installed.

The theme is built with TailwindCSS and Alpine.js. The development environment is based on Vite, the tasks can ran with npm scripts.

This guide is assuming that you have installed Ghost locally. Add the theme directory inside Ghost's content/themes/ directory then move to the theme directory in your command line. Run the npm install command to install all the dependencies.

After that is done, you have access to run the npm scripts:

1. npm run dev (vite build --watch & vite) The dev script will start the development process, watching for changes and building. The vite.config.js file contains the main configuration for Vite.

2. npm run build (vite build) The build script will start the build process.

3. npm run test (gscan . --verbose) The test will test the theme using gscan the official Ghost test tool.

4. npm run zip The zip script will create a zip file in the dist directory.

Code Snippets

Frequently asked questions and useful snippets you can use to make some quick changes to your site.

How to change the logo size?

Go to the Admin, Settings > Code Injection and in the Site Header add, changing the values as needed:

<style>
:root {
  --logo-h-mobile: 28px;
  --logo-w-mobile: auto;
  --logo-h-desktop: 32px;
  --logo-w-desktop: auto;
}
</style>