Two student newspaper websites built with Ghost

A campus newspaper can publish news, opinion, arts and sport on the same day. A list of recent posts shows what is new. It does not give editors much room to choose the story that should lead the front page.

Epigram and The Stanford Review use Ghost with Tripoli. Both separate featured stories from a Latest column and organize further coverage by subject. Their front pages show how a student team can make room for both.

Epigram

Epigram is the University of Bristol’s independent student newspaper. Its menu gives each desk a place of its own, from News and Comment to Arts and Sport. A reader can go straight to campus news, film reviews or sport.

The front page still brings those desks together. A large feature sits in the center, with supporting stories on the left and recent posts on the right. This lets a selected feature remain prominent while the Latest column shows work from other desks.

Further down, subject sections give readers another way into the archive. The news desk keeps its own section even when a feature leads the site. Choosing the lead does not change how posts are grouped.

This layout gives each desk a route from the homepage. The team can choose a lead story even when another desk has just posted. The theme provides the base layout. Epigram has added its own colors, links and content.

Theme: Tripoli.

The Stanford Review

The Stanford Review is Stanford’s independent newspaper. Its menu separates Opinion, News, Satire and Review Recommends. Those labels tell readers what kind of work to expect before they open an article.

Its front page separates selected stories from the latest posts. The large lead and two supporting stories have their own space. The Latest column has a separate set of dated articles. The same post does not have to lead both views.

The subject sections continue below the opening. A reader can follow News or Opinion to find more from that desk. Those sections give older stories a route from the homepage too.

The same base layout looks different here. The Review’s masthead, images and menu labels give it its own identity. You can keep that structure while choosing type and colors for your paper.

Theme: Tripoli.

Choosing your front page

Try the Tripoli demo if your paper needs a chosen lead and a separate list of new posts. Scroll down to see its tag sections. Check it with your own mix of long headlines, stories without images and articles from several authors.

Before setting up the sections, agree which subjects the team will maintain. Ghost uses tags to group posts into archives. Tripoli’s documentation explains how to show tag sections on the homepage. A small set of useful desks gives the next student editor a clearer structure to maintain.