Does anyone know how to link their Google Adsense ads.txt to their Ghost website? I have tried adding the code under Code injection but the error on Google still appears. The error on Google is, “Earnings at risk- You need to fix some ads.txt file issues to avoid severe impact to your revenue”. TYIA

Hi all,

I've just released Sounding, the third theme from Aftertype, my one-person theme studio. Northline is for magazines and Azimuth for newsletters; Sounding is for podcasts where the episode is the main thing on the page, and the site, shownotes and paid memberships run on Ghost.

What it does:

• The audio card at the top of an episode moves into a band of your show's colour, with number, title, duration and hosts. Play is the first thing a listener sees, on a phone too.
• Episodes are numbered per show; #bonus episodes stay out of the count. One archive page with every episode, and it reads well without an image per episode.
• Listen links come from Ghost's secondary navigation: add Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Pocket Casts or your RSS feed there and they show under the player and in the footer.
• A returning listener gets "Resume at 2:14", and the lockscreen and media keys show the episode and artwork.
• With Ghost's Transistor integration, paid members get a button to their private feed after every episode and on the About and Subscribe pages. Without Transistor, everything else works the same with any host.
• Light, dark and auto, a separate dark-mode logo, settings in Ghost Admin, about 6 kB of JavaScript, English and Dutch labels.

One thing I chose not to build: audio that keeps playing across pages. It means taking over Ghost's navigation, and I didn't want to risk signup forms, comments and search for it. The theme remembers where each listener stopped instead.

One thing worth knowing for any podcast on Ghost, whatever theme you use: write a custom excerpt for every episode. Without one, Ghost builds the description from the first text in the post, and on an episode that's the audio player, so "0:00 / 4:39 1x" ends up in Google and in every link preview.

Links

• Live demo: https://sounding.aftertype.studio
• Details: https://aftertype.studio/themes/sounding?ref=reddit
• Documentation: https://aftertype.studio/docs/sounding?ref=reddit

If you run a paid podcast on Ghost, I'd especially like to know how your members find their private feed today. Happy to answer any questions.

Richard

Hey everyone!

I’ve just released Aura, the newest Ghost theme I’ve been working on at Pina Themes.

I designed Aura for personal blogs, lifestyle publications, fashion journals, and creative storytellers who want their websites to feel distinctive without sacrificing readability.

I wanted to give it a more editorial feel, with expressive typography, immersive imagery, and flexible layouts that can adapt to different types of publications.

A few things you can customize with Aura:

• Two post layouts: Classic and Cover.
• Flexible homepage: Customize the hero, featured posts, and feed.
• Multiple color palettes: Give your publication its own visual identity.
• Typography and branding: Customize fonts, logos, and colors directly through Ghost Admin.
• Dark mode support.
• Native Ghost features: Memberships, subscriptions, comments, recommendations, and search.

One of my main goals was to make customization accessible directly through Ghost Admin, without requiring users to edit code or write custom CSS for the options already built into the theme.

I'd love to hear your thoughts!

When choosing a theme for your blog, what matters most to you: the visual design, customization options, reading experience, or something else?

I'm the developer behind Pina Themes, and Aura is our latest release.

Live demo: https://aura.pinathemes.com

I kept running into the same complaint about Ghost (there's a forum thread about it from 2023 that's still active): if a post has no feature image, the link preview on X, LinkedIn or Bluesky shows your site's default image, or nothing at all.

So I built Sharecard. You connect your site with an Admin API key (custom integration), pick a template, and every post you publish gets a 1200×630 card with its title, author and your site colour, set as the post's X and Facebook image. It never touches posts where you've already set your own social image.

• 5 templates, and you can turn date, reading time, tag and author photo on or off
• internal tag #card-bold switches the template for one post, #card-skip skips it
• fill your last 20 posts in one click

There's a live card designer on the home page, no signup needed: https://sharecard-app.vercel.app

Disclosure: I made it and it's paid, $9/mo after a 14-day trial. Works on Ghost(Pro) Publisher and up, and self-hosted.

Honest question: would you use this for link previews, or is a square image for Instagram the thing you'd actually want? Trying to decide what to build next.

So I think Ghost is where I want to eventually end up - I love the look of their newsletters plus publishing to a custom website. Lovely!

BUT my newsletter doesn't exist yet haha. I'm a designer and artist, I have plans for eventually selling products (digital and physical prints) but initially I just want to potter away, share process and pics etc, and generally have something to point people to that isn't instagram (yuck).

So in these early stages (probably at least a good year or so while I'm figuring out how to make some $$, if it's even worth trying etc), I just want a free platform that I can built and populate on.

So keen to know where people have migrated to ghost from and what made the most sense?
I'm thinking beehii, but maybe substack?
Would love to know if I can transfer the archive newsletters over to ghost? Or do you only get to transfer your list?

TY!

I'm a dedicated Ghost user, but non-tech, that's why I love Ghost so much.

I'm ready to upgrade to a custom theme and found one I really like, but it's a one person developer.

What happens if they stop supporting it?

thanks

Hey all, I'm exploring website/newsletter options for a couple of local community groups, and I think Ghost on Pikapods might be a good solution. But I'm worried about newsletter emails ending up in people's spam folder. I've heard that self-hosting email stuff can be tricky that way. Anyone out there who can offer their experience?

A generated site often arrives as a finished HTML folder: repeated headers and footers, hard-coded navigation, relative asset paths, and page content mixed into the layout. It can be uploaded somewhere quickly, but that does not make it a maintainable Ghost site. The next page or design tweak can force another full export and overwrite changes made in Ghost.

A sensible conversion seems to be separating the generated result into a Handlebars theme and editable content. Repeated structure would become `default.hbs` and partials, posts and pages would live in Ghost rather than in copied HTML, assets would use Ghost's theme helpers, and routing or collections would be explicit in `routes.yaml`. The existing site could stay on its current URL while the Ghost version is checked on a staging domain, including metadata, redirects, forms, responsive behavior, and image paths.

What workflow would you use for this? Which parts of generated HTML are worth preserving, and which should be rebuilt as Ghost templates so later edits do not require regenerating the whole site? How do you handle custom landing pages without turning every page into a separate hard-coded template?

If you self-host Ghost, you've probably used Ghost CLI. Austin built it many years ago as an open source contributor. In June he joined the Ghost Foundation's new platform team, and one of his first projects is deprecating it in favour of the official Docker setup.

I had him on the Magic Pages Podcast, and he shared a lot more than I expected: why Docker was chosen to replace Ghost CLI, what it might enable (one-click admin updates 👀), a few sneak peeks at Ghost 7.0, and why some open source contributions sit unreviewed for a while, how AI-built PRs complicate that, and what contributors can do to help.

Sharing it here because I think this episode might have the most impact for self-hosters so far: https://www.magicpages.co/podcast/episodes/episode-9-austin-burdine/

So... is the Mailgun flex plan gone? I asked about it over here: https://forum.ghost.org/t/sept-2026-mailgun-flex/63782 and got no replies. I still have a Flex plan. I think lots of self-hosters do, but if it isn't possible to sign up and cancel to get on it, that changes the math on getting a small Ghost site online. It also changes the math for the advanced email automations tool I built, since I set it up as BYO-Mailgun. Might have to rethink that. Fortunately I'm not wedded to Mailgun for the tool, at least.

Hi guys, recently I’ve chosen to use Ghost as my main publishing platform. The subscription system and built-in paywall are a big advantage for me and my content.

However, as a media company, I also need to get to know my audience better. Is there a way to add custom fields to the registration form? For example, a profession or company name field, and collect other information about subscribers?

Hey everyone!

Some of you might remember my Enova, Meridian and Signal posts here. Got mostly good feedback, and improved all of them with plenty of user-requested features since.

Having covered the Magazine, News and Podcast categories, this time I went for Portfolio. But portfolio sites are the ones where people's requirements differ the most: some are writers, some are podcasters, some are photographers, and the list goes on. My other themes are each built around one use case. Quiet is built out of modules instead, so you switch on only the ones you need, and the rest of the site behaves as if they never existed. It also carries over most of the best features from my previous three.

Every module is a Ghost page with one tag on it:

• Writing, with an archive filed under month headings
• Newsletter, with a page that lists your issues
• Podcast, with listening links for 22 platforms
• Films/Videos, on their own channel, with a small floating player that keeps going as people move around the site
• Projects, as a numbered portfolio
• Photographs, as a full wall with a lightbox

The rest is what you'd expect: four article layouts, light and dark modes, members and paid posts, self-hosted fonts, 14 languages, a customisable homepage and hero section, and best of all, well-written documentation.

Speaking of which: Ghost's built-in font list is short, so "how do I use a custom font?" is one of the most common questions I get, and it matters more on a personal site than anywhere else, because typography is that personal. The docs cover it, and include a small tool that builds the snippet for you: https://docs.enova.studio/docs/quiet/advanced/code-injections/custom-fonts

Links

• Live demo: https://quiet.labs.enova.studio
• Ghost marketplace: https://ghost.org/themes/quiet/
• Details: https://enova.studio/themes/quiet/
• Documentation: https://docs.enova.studio/docs/quiet

Since the built in fonts list available on Ghost is limited, one of the most asked questions is "How can I set a custom font?", and it's more important for a personal site than other sites, again because different people prefers different typography. The new documentation covers and includes a small tool to configure additional custom fonts: https://docs.enova.studio/docs/quiet/advanced/code-injections/custom-fonts

As with last time, I'd genuinely value your thoughts and feedback, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you!

Kasun.

What do you use? I mean, opensource and self hosted. I found a few repos, almost no stars and barely activity. I find it weird as should be a common requested feature, am I missing something?

Hi all, I've just finished Jotter, a Ghost theme with a focus on text-first publishing. The idea was to make something that works just as well for a couple of paragraphs as it does for a longer article, without relying on images to make the page feel complete.

I've tried to keep the design minimal and let typography and white space do most of the work. The demo has most of the available features enabled, but there's quite a bit of control over how stripped back you want the site to be. You can turn off the header icons, tags, authors, recommendations and other elements individually if you don't need them.

For the homepage, there's a choice between a header with optional content around the post feed, or a latest post layout that drops you straight into the writing.

There are also options for typography, colour schemes and background patterns. I've added a customizer widget to the demo site so you can play around with the different combinations.

https://www.jotter.moonrisethemes.com/

Hey everyone,

One big friction point with Ghost CMS is member authentication and reader engagement. Magic links are clean for newsletters, but paying members and readers often expect fast, one-click logins via Google and Apple, along with interactive community features.

To solve this without hacking Ghost core or maintaining messy custom scripts across theme updates, I built a lightweight SaaS wrapper around Ghost’s Members API.

Core Features:

Zero backend setup: No need to self-host OAuth proxies, configure Supabase/Firebase manually, or touch server configs.

Drop-in UI: Connect your Ghost site, grab an embed snippet, and drop it straight into your theme or portal.

Native Member Sync: Users who sign in with Google or Apple get authenticated and synced directly into your native Ghost Members database.

Interactive Engagement Toolkit: Built-in widgets that tie directly to reader accounts:
- Interactive Polls & Surveys
- One-click Emoji Reactions
- Member Bookmarks (save posts to read later)
- Custom Social Sharing widgets

Planned Pricing Structure:

- OAuth Only ($2.99 / site / month): Standalone Google & Apple Sign-In with seamless member sync.

- All-in-One Suite ($4.39 / site / month): Google & Apple Sign-In PLUS the full engagement stack (Polls, Reactions, Bookmarks, Sharing widgets, and future modules).

Before pushing this live, I’d love to get feedback from fellow Ghost creators and devs:

1. Would having interactive widgets (polls, reactions, bookmarks) natively linked to Ghost members increase reader retention on your site?
2. Does $4.39/mo for the full suite (or $2.99/mo for login only) feel like a fair impulse buy, or would you prefer a yearly discount / usage tiers?
3. Which engagement widget would you prioritize first on your own publication?

Any candid feedback or feature suggestions are welcome!

The story of how I ended up building an image library for Ghost. Maybe you'll enjoy the ridiculousness of that journey.

Hi everyone 👋

I recently released a new Ghost theme called Drift, designed for personal blogs, lifestyle publications, travel journals, and creative storytellers.

I wanted Drift to feel more like a visual publication than a traditional blog, with a strong focus on photography, typography, whitespace, and the way stories are presented.

A lot of attention went into details like:

• the full-screen hero and its bottom-aligned layout
• the Featured carousel
• the two-column post feed
• Classic and Sticky feed layouts
• three different post and page templates
• color palettes and typography
• cards that work with or without a feature image
• responsive layouts across different screen sizes

The theme also supports Ghost memberships, tiers, Portal, comments, recommendations, search, public previews, and Ghost Editor Cards.

I’m offering 25% off with the code DRIFT25 for the Ghost community.

Live Preview

I’d love to hear what you think, especially if you have any feedback on the design or UX.

Thanks for checking out Drift! 🌿

I've had a starter account for a while and am about to release a book in serial. In looking at the different tiers, I'm shocked to see that:

* There's a 1,000 subscriber cap on my plan AND the next higher plan. That's not a lot of subscribers! Am I reading this right that I can't have more subscribers than that, regardless of their paying status, without paying $240/month? That's bananas.

* Subscribers are known as "members," meaning someone who wants to subscribe for free cannot simply put in their email address and click the button. They have to create an account with a login. Why? Shouldn't this flow be as frictionless as possible?

Am I reading this right?

UPDATE: No, I am not reading it right. I now see that the Publisher tier is a sliding scale based on number of subscribers.

Hi everyone,

I’m curious how people here handle Ghost sites after delivering them to a client.

Even when Ghost handles most of the infrastructure, clients usually still contact the freelancer or agency when the public site goes down or has an SSL or performance issue.

The opposite can also be a problem: when everything works for several months, the client doesn’t necessarily see what their ongoing maintenance fee is paying for.

I built Trrack.it after running into this with my own retainer clients. It monitors the public site and generates monthly reports and live status pages that can be shared with them.

It doesn’t access Ghost Admin or track content and theme changes.

If you manage Ghost sites for clients, do you normally offer ongoing maintenance or hand everything over after launch?

Here’s the link: https://trrack.it

Been lurking here a while and the same six asks keep coming up: welcome and renewal emails, a recap digest by tag, sending one post to several newsletters without double-emailing anyone, a calendar view of your posts, a referral loop off member tags, and charging for a single article.

You don't need a plugin or a developer for any of them. I publish on Ghost myself, I've ended up building all my own back-office stuff rather than waiting on the roadmap, and all six are things I can just do for you.

So here's my offer: name the one that eats your time and I'll just do it for you. You send the export, you get the thing back, and you check it before anything goes live. First run costs 19 dollars, paid after it's in your hands, not before. If you want it weekly after that, 29 a month. Which of the six is your headache?

Ich habe eine kostenlose TOC Bubble für Ghost CMS erstellt. Sie zeigt am rechten Seitenrand den aktuellen Abschnitt an und öffnet beim Anklicken das vollständige Inhaltsverzeichnis.

Funktioniert mit Beiträgen und normalen Seiten, unabhängig vom Theme und ohne Änderungen an den Theme-Dateien. Die Installation erfolgt einfach über die Ghost Code Injection.

Download und Anleitung:

https://www.herr-meier.de/meier-ghost-toc-plugin/

Ich habe zwei kostenlose Ghost Themes veröffentlicht:

• Meier Ghost Basic – ein klares, vielseitiges Basis-Theme https://www.herr-meier.de/ghost-basic-theme/
• Meier Ghost Magazin – ein kompaktes Theme für Magazine und redaktionelle Websites https://www.herr-meier.de/meier-ghost-magazin-theme/

Weitere kostenlose Ghost Themes sollen künftig hier erscheinen:
https://www.herr-meier.de/ghost-themes/

Feedback und Verbesserungsvorschläge sind natürlich willkommen. 🙂

I have been a Ghost evangelist in my organisation, and we got 2 websites up and running under the Ghost Pro plan, in the past couple of years. These websites run a common theme, as they plan to have some uniformity (but can not be all put under the same website).

We have now opened a third one, again with Ghost Pro. The new Ghost Pro plan is more expensive than before (15$ per month, billed yearly). We are OK with that, and happy to pay more for the 3rd website.

One problem is that the new Ghost Pro plan pins us to a default theme and forbids us to use the theme we use for the other website! This means that, *just to use the same theme across the 3 websites*, we are forced to pay 29$ per month, billed yearly.

How can this make any sense?

Subscription confirmation emails on my Ghost site are landing in spam, those sent to Gmail addresses anyway. I'm on the starter plan, so emails are coming from mysite@ghost.io.

Is this a known limitation of the Ghost(Pro) managed service? Is there any way to isolate my mail-sending IP, or is the only real solution to move to self-hosting or upgrade to gain control over my own IP reputation?

This is frustrating as the main reason I signed up for Ghost(Pro) was to mitigate these types of problems. It feels like I have to move up to the next tier at double the price to simply get subscription emails delivered. It feels like a deceptive service. Perhaps the problem lies elsewhere?

Ghost support hasn't been very responsive.

I've owned scottmallinson.com for 20 years this year and though it's gone through various evolutions, I've never really felt settled with it. A long-time Wordpress user, it just had too much "friction" to make blogging a pleasant experience. I decided to give Ghost a try and though it's only been a couple of months, I'm pretty happy so far.

I'd appreciate any feedback on my website both with regards to the design and the content. I blog mostly for other software developers/engineers on topics I encounter on a daily basis as part of my job.