Brief is a modern Ghost theme designed specifically for newsletter publishers and email-driven content creators. Whether you’re writing for a niche audience or managing multiple newsletters, Brief provides the tools you need to build a visually stunning and highly functional website.
With its clean design, versatile layouts, Brief ensures your newsletter stands out and delivers a seamless experience for your readers. Designed to maximize signups and engagement, it’s the ideal choice for publishers who want to grow their audience effortlessly.
From customizable homepage to dedicated newsletters and archive pages, Brief adapts to your needs, making it the perfect theme for any newsletter style or niche.
Customizable hero
The hero section of your homepage is your first impression, and Brief gives you full control to make it shine. This section is highly flexible, allowing you to tailor its appearance and functionality to suit your newsletter’s needs. You can customize key elements such as the text, layout, and subscription call-to-action directly from the theme settings.
- Text content and alignment
- Set a headline and subheading to grab readers’ attention. Both fields support HTML, so you can style your text or add links effortlessly
- Choose between left-aligned or center-aligned text to match the tone of your brand
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Cover image placement: Enhance the hero section with a cover image, displayed either on the left or right side, or opt for a clean look by hiding the image altogether.
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Subscription action: Add an inline subscription form for quick signups, a dedicated subscribe section for a prominent call-to-action, or hide the subscribe feature entirely if it’s not needed in the hero.
hese options let you create a hero section that fits seamlessly with your newsletter’s branding and engagement goals, whether you want a bold visual impact or a minimalistic introduction. The settings are intuitive and adaptable, ensuring your homepage stands out while meeting your audience’s expectations.
Subscribe section
Brief features a beautifully designed subscribe section that includes space for compelling content, an attention-grabbing image, and a built-in subscribe form. It’s the perfect way to highlight the value of your newsletter and encourage signups.
Logos section
Showcase your credibility and reputation by displaying logos of publications, companies, or organizations that have featured your work. For example, include a “Featured In” section or a “Read by people at” tagline to build trust with your audience.
Content section
Add extra depth to your site with a flexible content section. Use it to introduce yourself, share your story, or provide more context about your newsletter’s mission. This section pairs content on the left with an optional image on the right, giving it a polished, professional look.
Featured issues inbox
Highlight your best content with a dedicated section that displays featured posts styled as an email inbox. This layout mirrors the email experience, creating familiarity and encouraging readers to subscribe for more.
Reviews section
Build trust and credibility by featuring glowing reviews in an elegant slider. Share what your readers love about your content and why new visitors should subscribe.
Latest issues and sidebar
Keep your audience updated with a section showcasing your latest posts. Choose between detailed or simple post cards to display your issues. Alongside this, a sidebar adds extra functionality, with space for recommendations, featured content, or a sticky subscribe box to capture signups as readers scroll.
Subscribe template
Create beautiful, distraction-free subscribe pages with Brief’s dedicated template. Designed to maximize conversions, these pages remove the header and footer, focusing entirely on your content. Pair compelling text on the left with a striking feature image on the right to captivate your audience and drive signups.
Archive page
Give readers easy access to your entire library of issues with a clean, paginated archive page. This layout makes it simple for subscribers to revisit their favorite content or explore what they’ve missed.
Newsletters page
Showcase multiple newsletters with ease. Brief supports Ghost’s multi-newsletter functionality, providing a dedicated page to feature all your newsletters in one place. Below the newsletter cards, you can add additional content to provide context, highlight their differences, or share subscriber benefits.
Post templates
Brief offers two post templates tailored to fit different formats:
- Web Format: A classic blog-style layout for long-form articles or stories.
- Email Format: A minimalist layout designed for email-style posts, with no wide elements to mimic the look of an email.
Choose a default template for all posts or set specific layouts on an individual basis.
Membership page
Create a stunning membership page to showcase your free and paid tiers. Highlight the benefits of each and provide an intuitive way for readers to subscribe and support your newsletter.
In addition to the membership page, Brief includes beautifully designed sign-in and sign-up pages, ensuring a seamless and branded experience for your members as they join or log in.
Light & dark theme
Brief comes with both light and dark themes, designed to look great in any environment. By default, it adapts to the user’s system preferences, but you can change the default to a specific color scheme and readers can toggle between themes manually with an elegant switcher at the bottom of the site.
Native Ghost features
Take advantage of the native Ghost CMS features:
- Ghost Portal - to manage membership, subscriptions and account
- Native search - an easy way to provide a search function within your content (posts, tags, authors)
- Native comments - add a comment section to your posts with just a few clicks
- Custom settings - the theme comes with custom settings unique for this theme, making basic theme customization very easy
- Hide the page title and feature image - with this you can create landing pages consisting of header cards and sign up cards, or any other cards from the Ghost editor
Ghost Editor cards
Full support for the full range of editor cards in the Ghost editor:
- Markdown card
- Bookmark card
- Gallery card
- Image card with normal, wide, and full width
- GIF card
- Button card
- NTF embed
- Callout card
- Toggle card
- Alternative quote style
- Product card
- Audio card
- Video card
- File card
- Header card
- Signup card
- Check out the full style guide
Translations
Brief is translation ready. By default, everything is in English (en.json), but
the theme comes with translations in:
- 🇩🇪 German (
de.json) - 🇪🇸 Spanish (
es.json) - 🇫🇷 French (
fr.json) - 🇮🇹 Italian (
it.json) - 🇳🇱 Dutch (
nl.json) - 🇵🇹 Portuguese (
pt.json)
Extra features
- Dropdown menus - add submenus to the menu easily from your Ghost Admin navigation (no-code)
- Accessibility - the theme is validated against the Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG) passing all relevant rules and keyboard navigation throughout the theme is assured and color contrast recommendations are respected. Accessibility checks
- Performance optimization - WEBP image formats, image lazy loading, and more
- Membership & Subscriptions - full support for the membership feature, including membership tiers
- WEBP image converting - the theme converts images to
.webpformat for browsers that support it
Additional info
- The online documentation covers everything, starting from installation and configuration as well as customizing and theme development.
- You can set up automatic theme deployment using GitHub Actions. Follow our ghost theme deployment tutorial.
- Feel free to reach out if you have any feedback or need support. Twitter: @brightthemes_
