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Krabi Documentation

Current Version:1.1.0 — 22 March 2021 Changelog →

Theme Editing & Tools

Edit the theme files mentioned here with your text editor of choice. For example, you can use Visual Studio Code ↗ or Sublime Text ↗.

Once you finish making your changes, zip the theme files, and upload the final zip file to your Ghost website.

If you are looking for Ghost hosting, I recommend Ghost(Pro) ↗.

Watch the following short video tutorial about theme editing.

Table of Contents

Theme Installation

The first step is to unzip the downloaded package. Inside the new directory krabi, you will find the zipped theme and a documentation file.

Follow these steps to upload the theme to your website:

  1. Log in to your Ghost website admin (example.com/ghost).
  2. Click the settings icon ( ) at the bottom of the left hand side.
  3. Go to Themes.
  4. Scroll down to the INSTALLED THEMES section.
  5. Click Upload a theme.
  6. Select the theme file (krabi.zip).
  7. Once uploaded, click Activate now to activate the theme immediately. If you want to activate it later, click Close.

Upload the routes.yaml File (⚑ Required)

The routes.yaml file is required for member sign up, and subscription flows.

To upload the file, follow these steps:

  1. Unzip the krabi.zip theme file.
  2. Go to the Labs page in Ghost admin (/#/settings/labs).
  3. Scroll down to the Routes section and click the Upload routes YAML button.
  4. Select and upload the routes.yaml file inside the theme folder.

Upload a routes file in Ghost

Note: upload routes.yaml after uploading the theme zip

There will already be a default routes.yaml file uploaded to Ghost. You need to upload your theme’s routes.yaml to override the default.

Do this separately after uploading your theme zip file.

Create a New Content API Key (⚑ Required)

To enable certain features, like Search, you’ll need to create a new Content API Key. Follow these steps to create your key.

In the left-side menu of your Ghost admin, click Integrations then + Add custom integration.

Add new Ghost Custom integrations

Give the new integration a name, like “Search”, and click Create.

Name for the Ghost Custom integrations

A new content API Key will be created. When you hover over it, a Copy button will appear. Click the button to copy the key to the clipboard.

Copy Ghost Custom integrations Content API Key

Next, click Code injection from the left-side admin menu.

After replacing the API_KEY value with your API Key, add the following code to the Site Header box:

<script>
  var search_api_key = 'API_KEY';
</script>

It should look like this:

Inject Ghost Custom integrations Content API Key

Click Save.

Members / Subscriptions

Make sure to Upload the routes.yaml file.

Krabi has different user interface elements for membership feature.

  • Log in and Subscribe buttons in the header
  • Sidebar and Footer subscription forms
  • A post subscription form
  • Call to action section on the post page to encourage visitors to subscribe if the post is for members only

If the user is already logged in, all the forms will be hidden automatically.

Remove ‘Log in’ and ‘Subscribe’ from Header

To remove Log in and Subscribe from the header, open the partials/header.hbs file and remove lines 30 to 36. This will also remove the Account and Log out links.

Remove ‘Public’, ‘Members’ and ‘Paid’ Labels from Post Card

Open the partials/post-card.hbs file and remove lines 23 to 27.

Once you finish, zip the theme files, and upload the final zip file to your Ghost website.

Or, copy and paste the following CSS code into the Ghost admin Code Injection Site Header.

<style>
  .c-post-card__visibility { display: none; }
</style>

Remove Subscribe Form From Sidebar

To remove the Subscribe form from the header, open the partials/sidebar.hbs theme file and remove line 2.

Once you finish, zip the theme files, and upload the final zip file to your Ghost website.

To remove the subscribe box from site footer, open the partials/footer.hb theme file and remove lines from 18 to 23.

Once you finish, zip the theme files, and upload the final zip file to your Ghost website.

Remove Subscribe Form From the Article Page

To remove the subscribe box on the article page. Open the post.hbs file and remove lines from 28 to 38.

Once you finish, zip the theme files, and upload the final zip file to your Ghost website.

Edit Plan Features

To edit plan features, edit the partials/member-plans.hbs file.

Subscription plans in krabi

The free plan column will be visible to guest users when they visit the /subscribe/ page.

To remove this column, open the partials/member-plans.hbs file and remove lines 2 to 17.

Clicking the Free button will direct the user to /signup/.

Subscription plans in Krabi

If logged-in users try to subscribe to a plan from their account page, only the monthly and yearly plans will display.

Subscription plans in Krabi

Membership Troubleshooting Tips

If for any reason the subscribe form does not work, or there is an error message, the following tips might help:

  1. If you are self-hosting your website, make sure to set up the mail config ↗. After doing that, restart your Ghost server.

  2. The website config URL should match the URL used to access the website, as described in the Ghost docs ↗.

Enter the URL that is used to access your publication. If using a subpath, enter the full path, https://example.com/blog/. If using SSL, always enter the URL with https://..

For more information about Members, connecting Stripe, and setting the package price, check the official Ghost documentation ↗.

You can add, edit, delete, and reorder menu links on your Ghost blog in the NAVIGATION section (Admin > Settings > Design).

Ghost navigation menu

To include a static page on your navigation menu, follow these steps.

First, type the page’s name as you’d like it appear on your menu in the label field.

Ghost label field

Next, click on the item’s URL. The blog URL will already be auto-populated. Add the page slug after the final /. When you’re satisfied with your page configurations, click the blue Save button to add the page to the navigation menu.

Header Tags Menu

The tags menu will automatically show all the blog tags in alphabetical order.

Krabi Tags Menu

Remove Latest Tab

If you want to remove the Latest tab, open the partials/tags-list.hbs file and remove lines 7 to 9.

Change the Wording or URL on the Latest Tab

If you want to change the wording on the Latest tab, open the partials/tags-list.hbs file and change line 8 link text. So, for example, if you want to replace Latest with Home, you can do the following.

<a href='/' class='c-tags-list__link'>Home</a>

As shown above, the Latest tab URL will point to the homepage. If you want to point to another page, change the link href attribute / value to your new URL. For example.

<a href='/topics' class='c-tags-list__link'>Home</a>

Show Specefic Tags

If you want to only show specific tags, open the partials/tags-list.hbs and replace line 4 with the following line after replacing each TAG_SLUG with your tag Slug.

{{#get 'tags' limit='all' filter='slug:[TAG_SLUG, TAG_SLUG, TAG_SLUG]'}}

So, if you have tag slugs like tech-vc, design, coding, it should be like:

{{#get 'tags' limit='all' filter='slug:[tech-vc, design, coding]'}}

Note the Comma (,) separating each slug.

Note

If the tag is empty with no posts, it will not be visible. Add the tag to any post, and it will appear.

This way does not guarantee to get the same tags in the same order as you added the slugs. Probably a Ghost issue.

Show List of Pages Instead of Tags

If you want to show a list of static pages instead of the tags, open and edit the partials/tags-list.hbs theme file.

Instead of the current tags loop code, remove all the Handlebars lines and use the existing HTML markup to add your pages as list items.

So instead of the following code.

{{#get 'tags' limit='all'}}
  <div class='c-tags-list-wrap'>
    <ul class='c-tags-list o-plain-list dragscroll'>
      <li class='c-tags-list__item'>
        <a href='/' class='c-tags-list__link'>{{t 'Latest' }}</a>
      </li>
      {{#foreach tags}}
        <li class='c-tags-list__item'>
          <a href='{{ url }}' class='c-tags-list__link'>{{ name }}</a>
        </li>
      {{/foreach}}
    </ul>
  </div>
{{/get}}

Your code might look like the following.

<div class='c-tags-list-wrap'>
  <ul class='c-tags-list o-plain-list dragscroll'>
    <li class='c-tags-list__item'>
      <a href='/productivity/' class='c-tags-list__link'>Productivity</a>
    </li>
    <li class='c-tags-list__item'>
      <a href='/career/' class='c-tags-list__link'>Career</a>
    </li>
  </ul>
</div>

Remove Tags Menu

If you want to remove the entire tags list, open the default.hbs and default-wide.hbs files and remove line 12 from both of them.

Similar to Header Navigation, you can add the footer navigation from the SECONDARY NAVIGATION section (Admin > Settings > Design).

Make sure to create a new Content API Key.

The theme uses ghostHunter.

The search goes through the Post title and the content. It supports only Posts, not Pages.

The supported languages are German, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, Finnish, Dutch, Turkish, and Danish.

If you have a large amount of content on your website, the search might become slow.

The issue is that Ghost does not have a built-in search feature ↗ so, to solve this and add search, a third-party library is used. In this case, the ghostHunter ↗ library.

This solution works well for most websites, but if the content is too large, it becomes a bit slow as the search happens on the user browser side, and all the data will be loaded before the search is happening.

There are currently two solutions:

1. Search only on the post title and ignore the content

This will improve search performance and reduce the loaded content. If this sounds fine, download this app.min.js ↗ file and replace it with your theme assets/js/app.min.js.

For reference, what I did was removing the post text from the request API in the assets/js/ghosthunter.js theme file. So line 108 becomes the following.

var url = site_url + "/ghost/api/v4/content/posts/?key=" + search_api_key + "&limit=all&fields=id,title,excerpt,url,published_at,feature_image";

Instead of.

var url = site_url + "/ghost/api/v4/content/posts/?key=" + search_api_key + "&limit=all&fields=id,title,excerpt,url,published_at,feature_image&formats=plaintext";

This is done in the theme development mode to generate the final app.min.js file loaded in the theme.

2. Using another search tool

Use another tool like Google Search, Elasticsearch, or Algolia. I have not tried them out, but here are a few resources at Ghost ↗.

Pages

Manage pages for Tags, Authors, and Contact from the Pages section of Ghost admin.

Tags Page

Follow these steps to create the Tags page:

  1. From the Ghost admin Pages section, create a new page and give it a title, like “Tags”.
  2. From Page settings, select the Tags template.
  3. Publish the page.
  4. To add the page to the navigation, please check the Navigation section above.

Ghost Tags Page

Note for Self-hosters

If you are self-hosting your website, you may need to do a server restart. This should get the Tags option to show up in the Template dropdown.

Authors Page

To create the Authors page:

  1. Create a new page and give it a title, like “Authors”.
  2. From Page settings, select the Authors template.
  3. Publish the page
  4. To add the page to the navigation, please check the Navigation section above

Ghost Authors Page

Note for Self-hosters

If you are self-hosting your website, you may need to do a server restart. This should get the Authors option to show up in the Template dropdown.

Contact Page

To create the Contact page:

  1. Create a new Page and give it a title, like “Contact”.
  2. Add your content and the contact form code using Formspree ↗ as a service. Please check the code example below.
  3. Publish the page.
  4. To add the page to the navigation, please check the Navigation section above.
<form action="https://formspree.io/your@email.com" method="POST">
  <input type="text" name="name" placeholder="Name">
  <input type="email" name="_replyto" placeholder="Email">
  <textarea name='message' placeholder="Message"></textarea>
  <input class='c-btn' type="submit" value="Send">
</form>

For more information, check out How to Add a Contact Form to Your Ghost Blog.

Comments

The theme supports comments from Disqus, Commento, and CommentBox.

If you display comments for logged in users only, they will need to login/register into the comment system again. As you know, Ghost has no comment system, and these are third-party tools that are not integrated with and not part of Ghost.

For questions or issues about the commenting systems here, please contact their authors or check out their documentation.

Disqus

To enable Disqus ↗ as a comments system, open the partials/disqus.hbs file. Replace the aspirethemes-demos value with the disqus_shortname variable to match your Disqus account shortname.

var disqus_shortname = 'aspirethemes-demos';

So, if your Disqus shortname is exampleone, the final code above should be:

var disqus_shortname = 'exampleone';

Once you finish, zip the theme files, and upload the final zip file to your Ghost website.

From the theme side, that’s all you need to set up Disqus. If you have any issues with comments not loading, make sure you have registered your website with Disqus (Step 1) ↗.

If you still have issues, check the Disqus troubleshooting guide ↗.

Disable Disqus

To disable Disqus comments, open the post.hbs theme file and comment or delete the line containing the {{> disqus}} text (line 38).

Once you finish, zip the theme files, and upload the final zip file to your Ghost website.

Disable Disqus Recommendations

Checkout the Disqus Recommendations ↗ documentation.

Disable Recommendations

If you have any issue with Disqus redirecting to any advertising pages, please disabled Tracking and Affiliate Links from your Disqus account.

Check out Keegan Leary’s blog post about this issue at https://keeganleary.com/disqus-is-evil-trash/ ↗.

Also, be aware of Disqus trackings. Check out https://supunkavinda.blog/disqus ↗.

So, you might want to use another commenting system.

Thanks for sharing, Keegan!

CommentBox

To enable CommentBox ↗ as a comments system, open post.hbs file and replace line 38 replace with {{> commentbox}}.

The next step is to create a CommentBox account. From the dashboard, create a new project by filling your site information. You will then receive a Project ID.

Copy that Project ID, open the partials/commentbox.hbs file, and replace the my-project-id value with it. That’s it.

Commento

To enable Commento ↗ as a comments system, open the post.hbs file and replace line 38 with {{> commento}}.

The next step is to create a Commento account and register your domain ↗ with it.

Show Comments for Signed-in Users Only

If you want to show comments for only signed-in users, open the post.hbs file and replace line 38 ({{> disqus}}) with the following code.

{{#if @member}}
  {{> disqus}}
{{/if}}

You can read more about Ghost visibility choices at Content visibility.

Show Authors

The theme lets you control how and where you show authors.

The sidebar Authors section shows three authors ordered by post count.

To remove this section, open the partials/sidebar.hbs file and remove line 8 ({{> sidebar-authors }}).

Article Author

The article page will show Author info in two places.

  • In the top header, under the title, and near the social sharing icons. To remove, open the partials/post-header.hbs file and remove lines 25 to 33 and lines 35 to 36.
  • Under the blog article content. To remove, open the post.hbs file and remove lines 23 to 25.

Posts Per Page

You can control how many posts display per page from the package.json file.

"config": {
  "posts_per_page": 8
}

The theme default value is set to 8 posts per page.

If other posts share the same tags, related posts will be visible at the bottom of a post.

Google Analytics

To integrate Google Analytics, I recommend using the Google Analytics ↗ integration by Ghost.

Update Favicon

You can change the favicon in Ghost from Admin > General > PUBLICATION IDENTITY > Publication icon.

Update Ghost CMS favicon

Responsive Tables

Responsive tables are required and essential for adding tabular content and allowing tables to be scrolled horizontally. You can make any table responsive across all viewports by wrapping a table with .responsive-table, for example:

<div class='responsive-table'>
  <table>
    ...
  </table>
</div>

Social Sharing Icons

You can customize and update a post’s social media sharing icons from the partials/share.hbs theme file.

Sidebar social media links are placed in the partials/sidebar-social-icons.hbs file.

Ghost supports adding Facebook and Twitter profile URLs from the admin panel. Go to General > Social accounts and add your URLs. This will update Facebook and Twitter URLs within the footer social media section.

Ghost CMS Social Media Accounts

For other social accounts, the theme uses Evil Icons ↗ to provide simple and clean icons. Here you can find a list of the social media icons to use:

Facebook

<span data-icon='ei-sc-facebook' data-size='s'></span>

GitHub

<span data-icon='ei-sc-github' data-size='s'></span>

Instagram

<span data-icon='ei-sc-instagram' data-size='s'></span>

LinkedIn

<span data-icon='ei-sc-linkedin' data-size='s'></span>

Odnoklassniki

<span data-icon='ei-sc-odnoklassniki' data-size='s'></span>

Pinterest

<span data-icon='ei-sc-pinterest' data-size='s'></span>

Skype

<span data-icon='ei-sc-skype' data-size='s'></span>

SoundCloud

<span data-icon='ei-sc-soundcloud' data-size='s'></span>

Telegram

<span data-icon='ei-sc-telegram' data-size='s'></span>

Tumblr

<span data-icon='ei-sc-tumblr' data-size='s'></span>

Twitter

<span data-icon='ei-sc-twitter' data-size='s'></span>

Vimeo

<span data-icon='ei-sc-vimeo' data-size='s'></span>

VK

<span data-icon='ei-sc-vk' data-size='s'></span>

Youtube

<span data-icon='ei-sc-youtube' data-size='s'></span>

As mentioned above, Ghosts supports adding only Twitter and Facebook links from the admin. But the theme comes with other social icons in the sidebar. Edit or update these in the partials/sidebar-social-icons.hbs file. For example, here’s the Instagram code block:

<li class='c-social-icons__item'>
  <a href='#' aria-label='Instagram' target='_blank' rel='noopener'>
    <span class='c-social-icons__icon' data-icon='ei-sc-instagram' data-size='s'></span>
  </a>
</li>

The code above contains the ICON code from the above list and the social media link (a) within a list element (li).

Next, replace your Instagram full URL with the link href value. If your Instagram URL is:

https://www.instagram.com/ghost/

Then the new code will be:

<li class='c-social-icons__item'>
  <a href='https://www.instagram.com/ghost/' aria-label='Instagram' target='_blank' rel='noopener'>
    <span class='c-social-icons__icon' data-icon='ei-sc-instagram' data-size='s'></span>
  </a>
</li>

If you want to remove Instagram altogether, you can delete all the code blocks, the li, a, and the icon.

Languages

Krabi comes in many languages already. But if you’d like to add another one, you’ll be able to do that too.

Theme Translation

Krabi supports Ghost i18n ↗ and comes with Arabic, German, Italian, Spanish, French, Finnish, Portuguese Dutch, Turkish, and Danish translations.

To use a language other than English, go to Admin > General > PUBLICATION INFO > Publication Language and enter the ISO Code ↗.

  • ar for Arabic
  • da for Danish
  • de for Germany
  • en for English
  • es for Spanish
  • fi for Finnish
  • fr for French
  • it for Italian
  • nl for Dutch
  • pt for Portuguese
  • tr for Turkish

Ghost Publication Language Setting

Add a New Language

To add a new language, follow these steps.

  1. Create a new file in the theme’s locales folder with the language ISO Code ↗ code. So, if the new language is Arabic, the new file name will be ar.json.
  2. Copy the en.json file content into your new file and start to translate, as shown in the following section.
  3. Go to Admin > General > PUBLICATION INFO > Publication Language and enter the language code (ar in this example).

Edit a Translation

To improve or edit a translation in a specific available language, you can open the language file in the locales folder:

|____locales
| |____ar.json
| |____da.json
| |____de.json
| |____en.json
| |____es.json
| |____fi.json
| |____fr.json
| |____it.json
| |____nl.json
| |____pt.json
| |____tr.json

For example, the German translation file looks like this:

{
  "Loading": "Wird geladen",
  "More Posts": "Weitere Artikel",

  "Recent Posts": "kürzliche Artikel",
  "Featured Posts": "Beliebte Beiträge",
  "Page Not Found": "Seite nicht gefunden",
  "You might also like": "Das könnte Sie auch interessieren:",
  "Latest": "Neueste",
  "Authors": "Autoren",
  "Navigation": "Navigation",
  "Newsletter": "Newsletter",
  "Published with {ghostLink} & {themeLink}": "Veröffentlicht mit {ghostLink} & {themeLink}",

  "Share on Twitter": "Auf Twitter teilen",
  "Share on Facebook": "Auf Facebook teilen",
  "Share on LinkedIn": "Auf LinkedIn teilen",
  "Share on Pinterest": "Auf Pinterest teilen",
  "Share via Email": "Per E-Mail teilen",
  "Copy link": "Link kopieren",
  "Link copied to clipboard": "Link in die Zwischenablage kopiert",

  "Search": "Suche",
  "Search {siteTitle}": "Suche {siteTitle}",
  "Type to Search": "Suchbegriff(e) eingeben",

  "Paid": "Bezahlt",
  "Members": "Mitglieder",
  "Public": "Öffentlichkeit",

  "Account": "Konto",
  "Log in": "Einloggen",
  "Log out": "Ausloggen",
  "Continue": "Fortsetzen",
  "Subscribe": "Abonnieren",
  "Subscribe Now": "Abonniere jetzt",
  "Your email address": "Deine E-Mail-Adresse",
  "{siteTitle} Newsletter": "{siteTitle} Newsletter",
  "Please check your inbox and click the link to complete the login.": "Bitte überprüfen Sie Ihren Posteingang und klicken Sie auf den Link, um die Anmeldung abzuschließen.",
  "Please check your inbox and click the link to confirm your subscription.": "Bitte überprüfen Sie Ihren Posteingang und klicken Sie auf den Link, um Ihr Abonnement zu bestätigen.",
  "Please enter a valid email address!": "Bitte geben Sie eine gültige E-Mail-Adresse ein!",
  "An error occurred, please try again later.": "Ein Fehler ist aufgetreten. Bitte versuchen Sie es später erneut.",

  "Already have an account?": "Hast du schon ein Konto?",
  "Don't have an account yet?": "Sie haben noch keinen Account?",

  "This post is for paying subscribers only": "Dieser Beitrag ist nur für zahlende Abonnenten",
  "This post is for subscribers only": "Dieser Beitrag ist nur für Abonnenten",
  "This page is for paying subscribers only": "Diese Seite ist nur für zahlende Abonnenten",
  "This page is for subscribers only": "Dieser Seite ist nur für Abonnenten",

  "Join the newsletter to receive the latest updates in your inbox.": "Treten Sie dem Newsletter bei, um die neuesten Updates in Ihrem Posteingang zu erhalten",

  "Choose your subscription": "Wählen Sie Ihr Abonnement",
  "Unlock full access to {siteTitle} and see the entire library of members-only content & updates.": "Schalte den vollen Zugriff auf {siteTitle} frei und sieh dir die gesamte Bibliothek mit Inhalten und Updates nur für Mitglieder an.",
  "Subscribe to {siteTitle}": "Anmelden bei {siteTitle}",
  "Choose this plan": "Wählen Sie diesen Plan",
  "Monthly": "Monatlich",
  "Yearly": "Jährlich",
  "Free": "Frei",

  "Welcome back!": "Willkommen zurück!",
  "Log in to your account again.": "Melden Sie sich erneut in Ihrem Konto an.",
  "Send login link": "Anmeldelink senden",

  "Nice, you're a subscriber!": "Schön, dass Sie Abonnent sind!",
  "Your subscription will expire on": "Ihr Abonnement läuft am ab",
  "Your plan": "Dein Plan",
  "Card": "Karte",
  "Expires": "Läuft ab",
  "Next bill date": "Nächstes Rechnungsdatum",
  "Edit billing info": "ERechnungsinformationen bearbeiten",
  "You have an active {siteTitle} account with access to all posts.": "Sie haben ein aktives {siteTitle} Konto mit Zugriff auf alle Posts.",
  "You're a subscriber to free members updates": "Sie sind Abonnent der kostenlosen Mitgliederaktualisierungen",
  "You are subscribed to free updates from {siteTitle}, but don't have a paid subscription to read all the posts.": "Sie haben kostenlose Updates von {siteTitle} abonniert, haben jedoch kein kostenpflichtiges Abonnement, um alle Beiträge zu lesen."
}

Each line consists of a left key ("More Posts") and a right value ("Mehr Artikel").

The key is plain English that exists in all translation files and should not be changed. You should change only the value.

If you have any suggestions to improve a current translation or add a new language, please contact me.

RTL

RTL means a right to left. Turning on RTL makes the theme readable for languages written from right to left, like Arabic or Hebrew.

To enable the RTL option, open the partials/head.hbs file and change line 8 to {{> compiled/inline-css-rtl }}.

Save the file and upload the theme to your Ghost blog.

Syntax Highlighting

You can add a fenced code block by placing triple backticks ``` before and after the code block. For example:

```
pre {
  background-color: #f4f4f4;
  max-width: 100%;
  overflow: auto;
}
```

This will produce the following gray look:

Krabi Ghost Theme Syntax Highlighting

To highlight a code block, add the language alias like css or js to the code block. For example, the CSS code in the previous example will wrap between ```css and ``` as follows:

```css
pre {
  background-color: #f4f4f4;
  max-width: 100%;
  overflow: auto;
}
```

This will produce the following colored look:

Krabi Ghost Theme Syntax Highlighting with prismjs

To add inline code, wrap the text between two backticks ` `.

Prism

Krabi ships with Prism.js ↗, a lightweight, robust, and elegant syntax highlighter.

The initial Prism package ↗ includes some languages, like Markup, CSS, C-like, and JavaScript.

You can add support for more languages. For example, to add support for PHP, get the PHP component script from Prism CDN ↗.

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/prism/1.13.0/components/prism-php.js"></script>

From the side admin menu, go to Code Injection and add the script to the Site Footer section. Be sure to click Save.

Krabi Ghost Theme Syntax Highlighting Code Injection PHP Prism

Theme Deploy with GitHub Actions

Krabi comes integrated with the Deploy Ghost Theme ↗ Github action.

Krabi Documentation GitHub Actions

I have written about this at How to Deploy Your Ghost Theme Using Github Actions. All you need to do is follow steps 1 and 2.

The Deploy Ghost Theme action is developed by Ghost and works with any Ghost install whether you self-host Ghost or using Ghost Pro.

Code Injection

Another choice for customization is to use the Ghost Code Injection settings in Ghost admin.

For a CSS example, you can use the following code in the Site Header section to change the logo color and font size.

<style>
  .c-logo__link {
    color: #4550E5;
    font-size: 32px;
  }
</style>

Watch the following short video about Ghost Code Injection, how it works, and how to use it.

Changing Colors with CSS Variables

Using Code Injection, you can change the theme colors with CSS Variables.

For the list of available theme color variables, check out the assets/sass/settings/colors.scss theme file. It will look like this:

:root {
  --color-brand:   #5869DA;
  --color-white:   #FFFFFF;
  --color-dark:    #000C2D;
  --color-text:    #000C2D;
  --color-gray:    #687385;
  --color-error:   #CC3C64;
  --color-success: #07815C;
  --color-border:  #EAECEE;

  --bg-gray:         #F5F7F9;
  --bg-gray-darker:  #EDEFF1;
  --bg-dark:         #12245A;
  --bg-white:        var(--color-white);

  --color-code-inline: var(--color-text);
  --bg-tag-list:       linear-gradient(to left, var(--bg-white), rgba(255, 255, 255, 0));
}

For example, if you wanted to change the theme’s brand color, you’d change #5869DA in this case. You can copy the color variable to Code Injection > Site Header and assign it your new color, as in the following example.

<style>
  :root {
    --color-brand: red;
  }
</style>

The result will look like this:

Krabi Ghost Theme Changing Colors with CSS Variables

The variable --color-brand is used for buttons, links, and link hovers. In the above example, we changed the color to be red. You can override this for any other variable.

If, for example, you want to add a color that’s not in the available theme variables or add another style to a new element, you can create a new variable and give it a name and value.

We can extend the previous example to add a new color for the logo color and assign that variable to the .c-logo__link class.

<style>
  :root {
    --color-brand: red;
    --color-logo: blue;
  }

  .c-logo__link {
    color: var(--color-logo);
  }
</style>

The logo will then have a blue color.

Krabi Ghost Theme Changing Colors with CSS Variables

Customize Image Height

If you want to customize the height of the images on the home page or the article page, you can use the following CSS code.

For a single post image, the theme default value is 56.25%. You can change this value to match your preference.

.c-post-image-wrap:after {
  padding-bottom: 56.25%;
}

For the homepage cards, the theme default value is also 56.25%.

.c-post-card__image-wrap {
  padding-top: 56.25%;
}

The full code in Code Injection would be:

<style>
  .c-post-image-wrap:after {
    padding-bottom: 56.25%;
  }

  .c-post-card__image-wrap {
    padding-top: 56.25%;
  }
</style>

Customize Logo Size

If you are using an image as a logo (instead of the site name) and want to change the logo size, use the following code in Code Injection.

<style>
  .c-logo__img {
    max-height: 32px;
  }
</style>

The default value is 32px, so you can increase this value to match your preference.

If the logo image has a large white space around it, trim that space with a photo editing app for better results.

Changing Colors with CSS Variables

Using Code Injection, you can change the theme colors with CSS Variables.

For the list of available theme color variables, check out the assets/sass/settings/colors.scss theme file. It will look like this:

:root {
  --color-brand:   #5869DA;
  --color-white:   #FFFFFF;
  --color-dark:    #000C2D;
  --color-text:    #000C2D;
  --color-gray:    #687385;
  --color-error:   #CC3C64;
  --color-success: #07815C;
  --color-border:  #EAECEE;

  --bg-gray:         #F5F7F9;
  --bg-gray-darker:  #EDEFF1;
  --bg-dark:         #12245A;
  --bg-white:        var(--color-white);

  --color-code-inline: var(--color-text);
  --bg-tag-list:       linear-gradient(to left, var(--bg-white), rgba(255, 255, 255, 0));
}

For example, if you wanted to change the theme’s brand color, you’d change #5869DA in this case. You can copy the color variable to Code Injection > Site Header and assign it your new color, as in the following example.

<style>
  :root {
    --color-brand: red;
  }
</style>

The result will look like this:

Krabi Ghost Theme Changing Colors with CSS Variables

The variable --color-brand is used for buttons, links, and link hovers. In the above example, we changed the color to be red. You can override this for any other variable.

If, for example, you want to add a color that’s not in the available theme variables or add another style to a new element, you can create a new variable and give it a name and value.

We can extend the previous example to add a new color for the logo color and assign that variable to the .c-logo__link class.

<style>
  :root {
    --color-brand: red;
    --color-logo: blue;
  }

  .c-logo__link {
    color: var(--color-logo);
  }
</style>

The logo will then have a blue color.

Krabi Ghost Theme Changing Colors with CSS Variables

Center Post Page

akash.at Post Content Center
An example of the method at akash.at ↗

To center the blog post content and remove the sidebar, follow these steps.

  1. Duplicate the default.hbs file and give it another name, for example, default-post.hbs. Then, remove lines 17 to 19.
  2. In the post.hbs file, change the first line to {{!< default-post}}.

That’s all that you need to do. The post will be centered automatically.

If you want to center the individual pages too, in step number 2 edit the page.hbs. Change the first line to {{!< default-post}}.

In case you want to add a wide and full-width style to images, you can add the following CSS code to the Code Injection (Site Header) section.

<style>
  .kg-width-full {
    width: auto;
  }

  @media (min-width: 40em) {
    .kg-width-full .kg-image {
      max-width: 100vw;
      pointer-events: none;
    }
  }

  @media (min-width: 64em) {
    .kg-width-wide {
      width: 100vw;
      max-width: 1140px;
      padding-left: 40px;
      padding-right: 40px;
  }}
</style>

Add Custom Homepage

Follow the next steps to add a custom homepage to your website instead of showing the recent blog posts.

You can also Watch the following video.

Create the home.hbs File

In the root of your Krabi theme, create a new file, and name it home.hbs.

Next, copy the following code to it.

{{!< default}}

{{#page}}

<article class='c-{{ post_class }}'>
  {{> post-header }}

  <section class='c-content'>
    {{ content }}
    <br>
  </section>
</article>

{{/page}}

Once you finish, zip the theme files, and upload the final zip file to Ghost.

Update and Upload the Routes File

Copy the following code to the theme routes.yaml file and then upload it.

routes:
  /subscribe/: members/subscribe
  /signup/: members/signup
  /signin/: members/signin
  /account/: members/account
  /:
    data: page.home
    template: home

collections:
  /blog/:
    permalink: /blog/{slug}/
    template: index

taxonomies:
  tag: /tag/{slug}/
  author: /author/{slug}/

That’s all for this step.

To know what’s going on in the above code, we tell Ghost to do the following:

  • Use the home template file for the homepage instead of the index file.
/:
  data: page.home
  template: home
  • Using collections, make the posts available at the /blog/ URL and use the index template file.
collections:
  /blog/:
    permalink: /blog/{slug}/
    template: index

Create the Homepage

In Ghost admin, create a custom homepage as a Ghost Page.

Make sure that the Page URL setting is home.

Krabi Ghost Theme Custom Homepage Setting

Add your content and publish the page.

Now, go to your website homepage, and you should see the homepage becomes the static page you created like the following examples.

Like the regular theme page view, upload a page feature image, and it will be visible first.

Krabi Ghost Theme Custom Homepage

Or skip it and the title will come first.

Krabi Ghost Theme Custom Homepage

Add the Blog Item to the Navigation

After moving the posts to the /blog/ URL you may be asking: How can I access this URL without typing it in the browser bar?

You can add it as a Navigation item.

Krabi Ghost Theme Blog Navigation Item

One more thing you might want to change is removing the Latest tab item in the header tags bar. It is no longer describes the destination page, which is the homepage with the latest posts by default. It is now a custom page.

Change RSS Icon URL

Becuause we moved the posts to the /blog/ URL, the website RSS feed will now be accessed throght /blog/rss instead of /rss. So, we need to change the URL in the sidebar RSS icon. To do this, open the the partials/sidebar-social-icons.hbs theme file and change the URL for the RSS link from /rss to /blog/rss.

404: Page Not Found

In case you get the 404 message on the homepage, do the following:

  1. Go to Design > Installed Themes section in your Ghost admin.

  2. Then, activate another theme other than Krabi and activate Krabi again.

This should solve the issue.

Show Full Post Content Instead of an Excerpt on the Homepage

Open the partials/post-card.hbs file and replace line 32 with the following line.

<div class='c-content u-mt-16'>{{ content }}</div>

Remove Date from All Posts

To remove the date from all posts, add the following CSS code to Ghost Code Injection.

<style>
  .c-teaser__date,
  .c-post-card__date,
  .c-post-header__date,
  .c-search-result__date {
    display: none;
  }
</style>

Click Save.

This code will remove the date from the following:

  • Sidebar postcard
  • Home postcard
  • Post page
  • Search results

Add a New Sidebar Widget

If you want to add a new widget to the sidebar, use the following code as a widget’s skeleton.

To add it to the sidebar, copy and paste it in the /partials/sidebar.hbs theme file before line 9.

<div class='c-widget'>
  <div class='c-title-bar'>
    <h3 class='c-title-bar__title'>YOUR_TITLE</h3>
  </div>

  <div class='u-bg-white u-border u-border-radius u-p-32'>
    YOUR_CONTENT_HERE
  </div>
</div>

Here you have two content placeholders.

  • YOUR_TITLE: Replace this with your widget title
  • YOUR_CONTENT_HERE: Replace this with your widget content

If you don’t want to add a title, your skeleton looks like this:

<div class='c-widget'>
  <div class='u-bg-white u-border u-border-radius u-p-32'>
    YOUR_CONTENT_HERE
  </div>
</div>

Change Subscribe Box Background Icon

You can add your SVG icon to the theme /assets directory, then with CSS in Ghost Code Injection, add it as background as follow:

<style>
  .c-subscribe {
    background-image: url('/assets/icon.svg');
  }
</style>

This will override the current icon. You might also need to configure the background-position to match your icon size.

Remove Subscribe Box at the Bottom of a Post

To remove the subscribe form at the bottom of the post, open the theme post.hbs file and remove lines from 28 to 38.

Fixed Header

To make the header fixed on scroll, use the following CSS code in Ghost Code Injection.

<style>
  body {
    margin-top: 72px;
  }

  .c-header {
    position: fixed;
    top: 0;
    z-index: 3;
    width: 100%
  }
</style>

To make the header fixed only on large screens, use the following code instead.

<style>
  @media (min-width: 64em) {
    body {
      margin-top: 72px;
    }

    .c-header {
      position: fixed;
      top: 0;
      z-index: 3;
      width: 100%
    }
  }
</style>

You will probably need to increase the body margin-top to be more than 72px if you increased the Logo Size.

The result will look like this:

Krabi Ghost Theme Fixed Header

This will make the header fixed but not the tags menu.

Add Table of Content

To add a simple Table of Content (TOC) section on top of the article. Follow the following few steps.

1) Add the following code in Ghost admin Code Injection (Site Footer).

<script src='https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/tocbot/4.11.2/tocbot.js'></script>
<script>
  tocbot.init({
    tocSelector: '.toc',
    contentSelector: '.c-content',
    hasInnerContainers: true
  });
</script>

Krabi Ghost Theme Table of Content Code Injection

2) Open the post.hbs file and add the following before the {{ content }} line.

<div class='toc'></div>

The result will be like this.

Krabi Ghost Theme Table of Content

If you are using a Fixed Header, use the following code in Ghost admin Code Injection (Site Header) to fix the headings being hidden by the menu when you click any of the Table of Content links. Thanks Yeray!

Note that the scroll-margin-top CSS property has limited support on mobile, so it might not work. I would suggest making the header fixed only on large screens.

<style>
  .c-content h1,
  .c-content h2,
  .c-content h3,
  .c-content h4 { scroll-margin-top: 72px; }
</style>

You may want to adjust the 72px value, but it should work fine.

Open Post Links in a New Tab

To open the post links in a new tab, add the following script in the Code Injection Site Footer section.

<script>
  document.querySelectorAll('.c-post a').forEach(function (e) {
    if (e.hostname !== window.location.hostname) {
      e.target = '_blank';
    }
  });
</script>

Thanks Taylor.N for sharing this snippet!

Change Blockquote Style

If you think the blockquote style is a bit large, you can customize it with CSS. Use the following CSS code in Ghost Code Injection to make the font the same size as the content text.

<style>
  blockquote {
    font-size: 18px;
    line-height: 28px;
    box-shadow: 0 0 black;
    border-top: 0;
    border-left: 2px solid var(--color-brand);
    padding: 0;
    padding-left: 16px;
  }
</style>

The code will also remove the top and bottom border. Instead, it will add a left border.

The blockquote new style will be:

Krabi Ghost Theme Blockquote Style

Feel free to change the code to match your style.

Homepage Two Column Posts

To convert the homepage to two columns posts layout, use the following CSS code in Ghost Code Injection Site Header section.

<style>
  @media (min-width: 40em) {
    .js-grid {
      display: grid;
      grid-template-columns: repeat(2, 1fr);
      grid-column-gap: 40px;
    }

    .c-post-card__content {
      display: flex;
      flex-direction: column;
    }

    .c-post-card__title {
      font-size: 20px;
      line-height: 24px;
    }

    .c-post-card__excerpt {
      margin-bottom: 16px;
    }

    .c-post-card__meta {
      margin-top: auto;
    }
  }
</style>

The result will be.

Krabi Ghost Theme BHomepage Two Column Posts

This will be applied only to medium and large screens, but the mobile layout will be the same. The layout is not recommended for small screens due to the limited space.

If you want to apply this to mobile too, you can remove the second line starting with @media and the line before the end, the }.

Changing Theme Font

Krabi is using one font, Inter.

The theme loads Inter using Google Fonts in the theme partials/fonts.hbs file. It is then assigned it to the body element along with other system fonts as a backup as the following example.

body {
  font-family: 'Inter', -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif, 'Apple Color Emoji', 'Segoe UI Emoji', 'Segoe UI Symbol';
}

To change to any other font, you need to include the font on your theme or using Code Injection Site Header if you are using Google Fonts, for example.

For example, if you want to use the Roboto font from Google Fonts. Your code in Code Injection might be like this.

<link href='https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Roboto:wght@300;400;700&display=swap' rel='stylesheet'>

<style>
  body {
    font-family: 'Roboto', sans-serif;
  }
</style>

You need to change that to the buttons and input elements.

<style>
  .c-btn,
  input {
    font-family: 'Roboto', sans-serif;
  }
</style>

You might find the following posts useful as well:

Loading Custom Font

I assume that you have the font files and the initial @font-face CSS code for loading the font. Something similar to the following code.

@font-face {
  font-family: 'Atyp';
  src: local('Atyp Text Regular'), local('Atyp-Text-Regular'),
    url('AtypText-Regular.woff2') format('woff2'),
    url('AtypText-Regular.woff') format('woff'),
    url('AtypText-Regular.ttf') format('truetype');
  font-weight: 400;
  font-style: normal;
}

➊ Create a new folder in the theme under /assets and name it fonts, for example, then copy your font files there.

➋ Once you finish, zip the theme files, and upload the final zip file to your Ghost website.

➌ In Ghost admin Code Injection, add your @font-face code with the new font files path wrapped in the <style> element.

<style>
@font-face {
  font-family: 'Atyp';
  src: local('/assets/fonts/Atyp Text Regular'), local('Atyp-Text-Regular'),
      url('/assets/fonts/AtypText-Regular.woff2') format('woff2'),
      url('/assets/fonts/AtypText-Regular.woff') format('woff'),
      url('/assets/fonts/AtypText-Regular.ttf') format('truetype');
  font-weight: 400;
  font-style: normal;
}
</style>

This should load the fonts. Then you can use the font and do your styling for the body and so on.

Theme Development

If you are a developer and need to do heavy customization work, the theme uses Gulp ↗ to compile Sass ↗ and JavaScript. This improves the development flow and makes it much faster.

Note

Changing any hbs file, for example, the post.hbs file does not require being in development mode with gulp running. Just edit the file in your preferred editor and upload it.

First, make sure you have Node.js ↗, npm ↗, Gulp CLI ↗, and Bower ↗ installed. Check My Current Setup.

Run the following command in the theme root directory to install npm and bower dependencies.

npm install

To start Gulp, run:

gulp

This will compile Sass and JavaScript files and start watching changes as you edit files.

Gulp will produce two files:

➊ assets/js/app.min.js: The final main JavaScript file.

This file is generated from many other JavaScript files listed in the gulpfile.js file. Gulp will do all the work to create that file, so no manual work is needed.

Gulp will watch your changes in the assets/js/app.js or assets/js/ghosthunter.js (if exist) and will then generate the final app.min.js file.

➋ partials/compiled/inline-css.hbs: The final CSS file.

This file is generated from the assets/css/style-min.css file, which was generated by Gulp. It is used as an Internal CSS in the theme partials/head.hbs.

If you are working with Gulp, it’s recommended you avoid editing these files. Instead, do customizations in assets/sass for CSS or in assets/js/app.js JavaScript. This way, you can make sure the flow is going in the right direction and never lose any changes.

My Current Setup

In case you are wondering what my current environment set up is and which package versions I use, take a look at the following:

$ node -v
v10.16.0

$ npm -v
6.14.8

$ bower -v
1.8.8

$ gulp -v
CLI version: 2.2.0
Local version: 4.0.2

This environment works well for running Ghost and also for theme development.

I use macOS Big Sur.

Zip Theme Files

To create a zip file after your theme changes, you can use one of the following options.

Use one of the first two options if you are on a Theme Development mode.

Using the command line
zip -r krabi.zip krabi -x '*node_modules*' '*bower_components*'

This will exclude the node_modules and bower_components directories from the final zip file.

Using Gulp

If you are running gulp, you can type the gulp zip command to do this.

Using your computer program

You can compress it as a standard folder just like you do with any other folder on your computer. If you are on Mac, right-click on it to view the context menu. Then, click the “Compress” option.

Theme Update

You may be wondering: how can I update my theme to the latest theme version?

There are two choices:

  • Keep your current theme and replace only the changed files from the new version. You can find the modified files on the theme page Changelog
  • Use the latest version as a starting point and redo your theme changes and customizations

One way to reduce the need for redoing customizations is to use the Code Injection tool. This is very helpful for adding custom CSS and tracking code. Keeping your custom CSS code with Code Injection is always recommended.

Your feedback is very welcome ♥

I'm open to your feedback and to hear about your experience. If you have about one minute, please send your thoughts through this Google Form ↗.

Thank you for your time!

👋 Support

Have any questions? I'm here to help 😊

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Ahmad Ajmi
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