Table of Contents
- Theme Installation
- Upload the routes.yaml File (⚑ Required)
- Members / Subscriptions
- Navigation
- Search
- Tags Page
- Disqus
- Posts Per Page
- Google Analytics
- Update Favicon
- Responsive Tables
- Social Sharing Icons
- Footer Social Media Icons
- Theme Translation
- Syntax Highlighting
- Theme Deploy with GitHub Actions
- Code Injection
- Footer Copyright
- AMP
- Zip Theme Files
- Theme Update
Theme Installation
To begin, unzip the downloaded package by double-clicking it on a Mac or by right-clicking and selecting “Extract All” on Windows.
Inside the new maxima folder, you will find the maxima.zip theme file and an online documentation file.
Follow these steps to upload the theme to your website:
- Log in to your Ghost website admin (example.com/ghost).
- Click the settings icon ( ) at the bottom of the left-hand side.
- Go to Design > Change theme.
- Click Upload theme and select the maxima.zip theme file.
- Once uploaded, click Activate now to activate Maxima.
Upload the routes.yaml File (⚑ Required)
To upload the file, follow these steps:
- Unzip the maxima.zip theme file.
- In your Ghost admin, click the settings icon ( ) at the bottom of the left-hand side.
- Go to the Labs.
- Scroll down to the Routes section and click the Upload routes YAML button.
- Select and upload the
routes.yamlfile inside the theme folder.
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.
Upload the routes.yaml file separately after uploading your theme zip file.
Members / Subscriptions
Make sure to Upload the routes.yaml file.
Maxima has different interface elements for membership feature.
- Login In and Sign Up buttons in the sidebar
- A post subscription form
- If the post is set to Members Only, a Call to Action section on the Post page to encourage visitors to subscribe
Remove ‘Log in’ and ‘Subscribe’ from Header
To remove Log in and Subscribe from the header, open the partials/header.hbs theme file using a code editor and remove lines 39 to 44. This will also remove the Account and Log out links, visible if logged in.
Once you finish, zip the theme files, and upload the final zip file to your Ghost website.
Remove Ghost Portal / The Bottom Right Button
This is the Ghost Portal button; you can disable it from the Ghost admin. More information at Portal Look and feel.
Membership Troubleshooting Tips
If for any reason the subscribe form does not work, or there is an error message, the following tips might help:
First, ensure you run the latest version of Ghost.
If you are self-hosting your website, make sure to set up the mail config. After doing that, restart your Ghost server.
The website config URL should match the URL used to access the website, as described in the Ghost docs.
Enter the URL you use 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://..
If you still have an issue using Ghost Pro, please get in touch with the Ghost team. If you use any self-hosting provider, please get in touch with them for help.
There is nothing to do from the theme side. Also, you can try the original theme demo to double-check that everything is working fine.
For more information about Members, connecting Stripe, and setting the package price, check the official Ghost documentation.
Navigation
You can add, edit, delete, and reorder the navigation menu in Ghost Admin from the Settings → Navigation page.
To include a static page on your navigation menu, follow these steps.
First, type the page’s name in the label field as you’d like it to appear on your menu.
Next, click on the item’s URL. The blog URL will already be auto-populated. Add the page slug after the final /. When satisfied with your page configurations, click the Save button.
Search
To enable 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.
Give the new integration a name, like “Search”, and click Create.
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.
Next, go to the Ghost admin Code Injection page. Access it from admin Settings > Advanced > Code Injection.
After replacing the CONTENT_API_KEY value with your Content API Key, add the following code to the Site Header box:
<script>
var search_api_key = 'CONTENT_API_KEY';
</script>
It should look like this:
Click Save. That’s it. Go and test your search now.
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.
ghostHunter Slow Search
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 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,url,created_at,feature_image";
Instead of.
var url = site_url + "/ghost/api/v4/content/posts/?key=" + search_api_key + "&limit=all&fields=id,title,url,created_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.
Tags Page
Follow these steps to create the Tags page:
- From the Ghost admin Pages section, create a new page and give it a title, like “Tags”.
- From Page settings, select the Tags template.
- Click Publish to publish the page.
- To add the page to the navigation, please check the Navigation section.
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.
Disqus
To enable Disqus as a comments system, open the partials/disqus.hbs theme file using a code editor. 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, copy and paste the following CSS code into the Ghost admin Code Injection Site Header.
<style>
#disqus_recommendations, #disqus_thread { display: none; }
</style>
Disable Disqus Recommendations/Ads
Checkout the Disqus Recommendations documentation.
Disqus Issues
If you have any issue with Disqus redirecting to any advertising pages, please disable Tracking and Affiliate Links from your Disqus account.
Check out Keegan Leary’s blog post about this issue at https://www.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!
Posts Per Page
You can control how many posts to display per page from the theme package.json file. Open that file using a code editor and change the posts_per_page value from 16 to a number.
"config": {
"posts_per_page": 16
}
The theme default value is set to 16 posts per page.
Once you finish, zip the theme files, and upload the final zip file to your Ghost website.
Google Analytics
To integrate Google Analytics, I recommend using the Google Analytics integration by Ghost.
Update Favicon
You can change the favicon from the Ghost admin Settings > Design > Site design > Brand > Publication icon.
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.
Footer Social Media Icons
Footer social media links are placed in the partials/footer.hbs file.
Ghost supports adding Facebook and Twitter profile URLs from the admin panel. Go to Settings > General > Social accounts and add your URLs. This will update Facebook and Twitter URLs within the footer social media section.
Available Social Media Icons
The theme uses Evil Icons to provide simple and clean icons for other social accounts. Here you can find a list of the social media icons to use:
<span class='c-social-nav__icon' data-icon='ei-sc-facebook' data-size='s'></span>
GitHub
<span class='c-social-nav__icon' data-icon='ei-sc-github' data-size='s'></span>
<span class='c-social-nav__icon' data-icon='ei-sc-instagram' data-size='s'></span>
<span class='c-social-nav__icon' data-icon='ei-sc-linkedin' data-size='s'></span>
Odnoklassniki
<span class='c-social-nav__icon' data-icon='ei-sc-odnoklassniki' data-size='s'></span>
<span class='c-social-nav__icon' data-icon='ei-sc-pinterest' data-size='s'></span>
Skype
<span class='c-social-nav__icon' data-icon='ei-sc-skype' data-size='s'></span>
SoundCloud
<span class='c-social-nav__icon' data-icon='ei-sc-soundcloud' data-size='s'></span>
Telegram
<span class='c-social-nav__icon' data-icon='ei-sc-telegram' data-size='s'></span>
Tumblr
<span class='c-social-nav__icon' data-icon='ei-sc-tumblr' data-size='s'></span>
<span class='c-social-nav__icon' data-icon='ei-sc-twitter' data-size='s'></span>
Vimeo
<span class='c-social-nav__icon' data-icon='ei-sc-vimeo' data-size='s'></span>
VK
<span class='c-social-nav__icon' data-icon='ei-sc-vk' data-size='s'></span>
Youtube
<span class='c-social-nav__icon' data-icon='ei-sc-youtube' data-size='s'></span>
Languages
Maxima ships with many languages already. But if you’d like to add another one, you’ll be able to do that too.
Theme Translation
Maxima supports Ghost i18n and comes with German, Italian, Spanish, French Finnish, Portuguese Dutch, Turkish and Danish translation.
To use a language other than English, go to your Ghost admin Settings > General > PUBLICATION INFO and enter the ISO Code into the Publication Language field.
The following is a list of the available theme languages with the code to use.
dafor Danishdefor Germanydufor Dutchenfor Englishesfor Spanishfifor Finnishfrfor Frenchitfor Italianptfor Portuguesetrfor Turkish
Add a New Language Translation
If the theme does not have a translation for your language, follow the following steps to add a new language translation.
- Create a new file using a code editor in the theme’s locales folder with the ISO Language Codes code. Foe example, if the new language is Japanese, the ISO code will be
jaand the file name will beja.json. - In the same locales folder, open the
en.jsonfile and copy its content into your new language file. - Start translating, as shown in the following Edit Translation section.
- Go to your Ghost admin Settings > General > PUBLICATION INFO and enter your language ISO code into the Publication Language field. For example,
ja. - Click Save settings.
Once you finish, zip the theme files, and upload the final zip file to your Ghost website.
You may want to restart Ghost or deactivate and activate the theme again to make the new changes effective.
Edit Translation
To improve or edit a translation in a specific available language, you can open the language file using a code editor in the /locales/ theme folder:
|____locales
| |____da.json
| |____de.json
| |____du.json
| |____en.json
| |____es.json
| |____fi.json
| |____fr.json
| |____it.json
| |____pt.json
For example, the German translation file looks like this:
{
"Next": "Weiter",
"Previous": "Zurück",
" (Page %)": " (Seite %)",
"Page Not Found": "Seite nicht gefunden",
"Home Page": "Startseite",
"Featured Post": "Featured Artikel",
"Share on Twitter": "Auf Twitter teilen",
"Share on Facebook": "Auf Facebook teilen",
"Share on Pinterest": "Auf Pinterest teilen",
"Search": "Suche",
"Search {blogtitle}": "Suche {blogtitle}",
"Type to Search": "Tippe um zu suchen",
"Published with {ghostLink} & {themeLink}": "Veröffentlicht mit {ghostLink} & {themeLink}",
"Email": "E-Mail",
"Account": "Konto",
"Log In": "Einloggen",
"Subscribe": "Abonnieren",
"Enter your email below to join our newsletter": "Geben Sie Ihre E-Mail-Adresse unten ein, um unserem Newsletter beizutreten",
"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 post is for subscribers on the ": "Dieser Beitrag ist für Abonnenten der ",
"Upgrade your account": "Aktualisieren Sie Ihr Konto"
}
Each line consists of a left key ("Next") and a right value ("Weiter").
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.
Portal Text & Translation
There is no way to change or translate the Portal text or other parts of the website like Comments and Search labels. It is also not possible to translate the newsletter emails your subscribers receive. These are core Ghost components and not part of the theme layer; we can’t control them.
I suggest reaching out to the Ghost team ( support@ghost.org ); so they might work on this issue or have a workaround.
Multiple Languages Support
The theme supports Ghost translations for different languages, which means if you set the site language to French, some parts of the theme will change to French, for example, button labels.
On the other hand, having multiple languages on one website is not supported out of the box in Ghost, so the theme is.
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;
}
```
Will produce the following gray look:
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:
To add inline code, wrap the text between two backticks ` `.
Prism
The theme 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 by adding the Prism autoloader script, which will automatically load the languages you need. T do this, add the following script to the website admin Code Injection (Site Footer).
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/prism/1.28.0/plugins/autoloader/prism-autoloader.min.js" integrity="sha512-fTl/qcO1VgvKtOMApX2PdZzkziyr2stM65GYPLGuYMnuMm1z2JLJG6XVU7C/mR+E7xBUqCivykuhlzfqxXBXbg==" crossorigin="anonymous" referrerpolicy="no-referrer"></script>
Click Save.
Theme Deploy with GitHub Actions
Maxima comes integrated with the Deploy Ghost Theme Github action. The purpose of the GitHub action is to take the theme from the GitHub repo and send it to your website.
I have written about this in 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 software by Ghost and works with any Ghost install, whether you self-host Ghost or use 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.
Check out How to use Code Injection Ghost guide for more information.
Footer Copyright
You can update the footer copyright line information from the theme partials/footer.hbs file. Open and edit that file using a code editor.
AMP
Read more about AMP at Google AMP + Ghost
The theme didn’t have an AMP file; the Ghost default/core one will be in use instead. If you want to customize it, you can add the default Ghost template to the theme folder and customize it.
Zip Theme Files
You can compress it as a standard folder like any other folder on your computer. If you are on Mac, right-click on the theme folder to view the context menu. Then, click the Compress option.
Theme Update
You may wonder how I can update my theme to the latest 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. Code Injection is very helpful for adding custom CSS and tracking codes. Keeping your custom CSS code with Code Injection is always recommended.
Have any questions? Contact Ahmad