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Melaka Documentation

Theme version: 1.2.0 — 05 January 2023 Changelog

Theme Editing & Tools

Edit the theme files mentioned here with a code editor. I recommend Visual Studio Code or Sublime Text. Don’t use TextEdit on Mac.

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

If editing the routes.yaml file, make sure to upload it after every change you make.

Watch the following short video tutorial about theme editing.

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

Table of Contents

Theme Installation

The first step is to unzip the downloaded package by double-clicking it on Mac or by right-clicking and selecting “Extract All” in Windows.

Inside the new melaka folder, you will find the melaka.zip theme file and an online 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 Design > Change theme.
  4. Click Upload theme and select the melaka.zip theme file.
  5. Once uploaded, click Activate now to activate Melaka.

Members / Subscriptions

Melaka has different interface elements for membership feature.

  • Login In and Subscribe buttons in the header
  • Footer subscription form
  • 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 Membership Components from the Theme

If you want to disable membership from your website, you can do the following from the website admin. After doing this, all the theme/website membership elements like header links and forms will be removed.

  1. Go to your Ghost admin Settings > Membership > Subscription access
  2. Select Nobody
  3. Click Save

Remove ‘Log In’ and ‘Subscribe’ from Header

Add the following CSS code into the Ghost admin Code Injection Site Header.

<style>
  .c-header .is-membership { display: none; }
</style>

Click Save. That’s all.

This will also remove the Account link, visible if logged in.

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

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.

Remove Ghost Portal

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. First, ensure you run the latest version of Ghost.

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

  3. 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.

Dark Mode

The dark mode is automatically activated based on the Operating System mode. Also, the visitor can switch between dark and light mode from the header button.

Disable Dark Mode

To disable Dark Mode, do the following steps.

Disable Light Mode

To disable the Light Mode and make Dark Mode the default, do the following steps.

  • Make sure that you run the Theme Development mode.
  • After you run gulp, open the assets/sass/settings/__all.scss file and remove line 7 (@import 'colors';)
  • Open the assets/sass/settings/_colors-dark.scss file and replace the file content with the following code.
:root {
  --color-brand:   #51bbf6;
  --color-white:   #FFFFFF;
  --color-dark:    #010101;
  --color-text:    #FFFFFF;
  --color-gray:    #E5EFF5;
  --color-error:   #ED5F74;
  --color-success: #1BA672;
  --color-border:  #383B40;
  --color-border-dark: #383B40;

  --bg-color: #1F2023;
  --bg-gray:  #27292D;
  --bg-white:  var(--color-white);
  --bg-card:   #27292D;
}

$light-mode: true !default;
$dark-mode:  false !default;

Remove the Header Dark Mode Switch Button

If you want to remove the header dark mode switch button. Open the partials/header.hbs file and remove lines from 36 to 41.

Add Different Logo Images for Light and Dark Modes

➊ Add the Logo Files to the Theme

In your theme, add two different logo files inside the /assets folder, one for light mode and the other for the dark mode. Please name each file as follows:

  • light-logo.png to be visible for light mode.
  • dark-logo.png to be visible for dark mode.

➋ Change header.hbs file

Open the partials/header.hbs theme file and replace lines from 10 to 16 with the following code snippet.

<a href='{{ @site.url }}' class='c-logo'>
  <span class='u-hidden-visually'>{{ @site.title }}</span>
</a>

➌ Add Custom CSS Code

Using Ghost Code Injection admin tool, add the following CSS code to the Site Header section.

<style>
  :root {
    --logo-image: url('/assets/light-logo.png');
  }

  @media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {
    :root:not([data-user-color-scheme]) {
      --logo-image: url('/assets/dark-logo.png');
    }
  }

  [data-user-color-scheme='dark'] {
    --logo-image: url('/assets/dark-logo.png');
  }

  .c-logo {
    width: 48px;
    height: 48px;
    display: block;
    background-size: contain;
    background-position: center;
    background-repeat: no-repeat;
    background-image: var(--logo-image);
  }
</style>

Click Save.

Logo Note

  • You might want to change the logo width and height by changing the value of 48px to match your logo preference and to get the best result.
  • If the logo image has a large white space around it, trim that space with a photo editing app for better results.
  • You will probably need to remove the browser cache for things to take effect.
  • This way will ignore the logo uploaded from the Ghost admin and the theme now will use the logos located in the theme.

You can add, edit, delete, and reorder the navigation menu in Ghost Admin from the Settings → Navigation page.

Ghost navigation menu

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.

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 satisfied with your page configurations, click the Save button.

Secondary Navigation / Footer

Like Header Navigation, you can add the footer navigation links from the Ghost admin Settings → Navigation > SECONDARY NAVIGATION.

Melaka uses the Ghost Native Search.

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. Click Publish to publish the page.
  4. To add the page to the navigation, please check the Navigation section.
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. Click Publish to 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. Click Publish to publish the page.
  4. To add the page to the navigation, please check the Navigation section.
<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 comes with Ghost Native Comments integration. You can turn the comments on from your Ghost admin Settings > Membership > Commenting.

Learn more about Ghost comments.

Ghost developer documentation for comments.

The theme file for Ghost comments partials/comments/ghost.hbs.

Home Page Posts by Tag

Melaka Ghost theme Home Page Posts by Tags

You can add many tag sections to the homepage; each section will show the recent four posts by the tag. To set this up:

  1. Go to the Ghost admin Settings > Design > Site design > Homepage
  2. In the Tag slugs for home sections input, add all the Tags Slug you want to include separated by (,). No spaces between commas.
Ghost Theme Tag Setting

To get the Tag Slug, you can find it on each Tag page from the admin.

Ghost Theme Tag Setting

You might end up with the Slugs as:

politics,covid,technology

× No spaces between commas.

Home Tags Cards

The home page tags cards section shows 4 tags ordered by how many posts in each tag.

To remove this section, go to the Ghost admin Settings > Design > Site design > Homepage and disable Enable home tag cards section option.

Theme file for this section is partials/index-tag-cards.hbs.

Home Page Authors

The home page Authors section shows 3 authors ordered by name.

To remove this section, go to the Ghost admin Settings > Design > Site design > Homepage and disable Enable home authors section option.

To change the visible Authors number, open the partials/index-authors.hbs file and change the limit from 3 to the number you want to show.

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 10 to a number.

"config": {
  "posts_per_page": 10
}

The theme default value is set to 10 posts per page.

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

Related posts section will be visible at the bottom of a post if other posts share the same tags as the current post.

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 links are placed in the partials/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 Theme Social Accounts

Melaka supports adding Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest URLs. Go to Settings > Design > Site-wide

If you want to add new social media links not available in the theme or Ghost settings shown above, you can do that in the partials/social-icons.hbs file. You will find the icon’s code that comes with the theme in the Available Social Media Icons section.

For example, to add a new social line for Instagram, your code will be like:

<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>

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:

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>

Languages

Melaka ships with many languages already. But if you’d like to add another one, you’ll be able to do that too.

Theme Translation

Melaka supports Ghost i18n and comes with Arabic, 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.

  • ar for Arabic
  • da for Danish
  • de for Germany
  • du for Dutch
  • en for English
  • es for Spanish
  • fi for Finnish
  • fr for French
  • it for Italian
  • pt for Portuguese
  • tr for Turkish
Ghost Publication Language Setting

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.

  1. 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 be ja.json.
  2. In the same locales folder, open the en.json file and copy its content into your new language file.
  3. Start translating, as shown in the following Edit Translation section.
  4. Go to your Ghost admin Settings > General > PUBLICATION INFO and enter your language ISO code into the Publication Language field. For example, ja.
  5. 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
| |____ar.json
| |____da.json
| |____de.json
| |____du.json
| |____en.json
| |____es.json
| |____fi.json
| |____fr.json
| |____it.json
| |____pt.json
| |____tr.json

For example, the German translation file looks like this:

{
  "Loading": "Beladung",
  "More Posts": "Mehr Artikel",

  "Recent Posts": "kürzliche Artikel",
  "Featured Post": "Featured Artikel",
  "Page Not Found": "Seite nicht gefunden",
  "Load Comments": "Bemerkungen",
  "You might also like": "Sie könnten daran interessiert sein",
  "Tags": "Stichworte",
  "Authors": "Autoren",
  "Navigation": "Navigation",
  "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": "Teilen Sie per E-Mail",
  "Copy link": "Link kopieren",
  "Link copied to clipboard": "Link in die Zwischenablage kopiert",

  "Search": "Suche",
  "Search {siteTitle}": "Suche {siteTitle}",
  "Type to Search": "Tippe um zu suchen",
  "Enable dark mode": "Schakel de donkere modus in",

  "Account": "Konto",
  "Log in": "Einloggen",
  "Log out": "Ausloggen",
  "Continue": "Fortsetzen",
  "Subscribe": "Abonnieren",
  "Your email": "Deine E-Mail-Adresse",
  "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 ",
  "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",
  "This page is for subscribers on the ": "Diese Seite ist für Abonnenten der ",
  "Upgrade your account": "Aktualisieren Sie Ihr Konto",

  "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"
}

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.

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.

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

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:

Melaka 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:

Melaka Ghost Theme Syntax Highlighting with prismjs

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

Melaka 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.

Melaka documentation Ghost CMS Theme GitHub Actions

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.

Changing Colors with CSS Variables

Using Code Injection, you can change the theme colors for the light and dark modes with CSS Variables.

For a list of available theme variables, check:

  • Light theme: assets/sass/settings/colors.scss
  • Dark theme: assets/sass/settings/colors-dark.scss

Don’t change the colors in these files; use it only as a reference for the available CSS Variables and instead use Code Injection as mentioned below to change the colors.

Suppose you want, for example, to change the theme background and brand colors. You can copy the color variable and add it inside each code block like in the following example.

The brand color is the colors shown in buttons and content links.

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

  @media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {
    :root:not([data-user-color-scheme]) {
      --bg-color: green;
      --color-brand: red;
    }
  }

  [data-user-color-scheme='dark'] {
    --bg-color: green;
    --color-brand: red;
  }
</style>

Notice that we duplicated the variable for dark mode in two blocks.

In the above example, we changed the color for the light mode to red and green for the dark mode. You can override this for any other variable.

If, for example, you want to add another color that is not available in the available theme variables and wants to 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 {
    --bg-color: red;
    --color-brand: red;
    --color-logo: blue;
  }

  @media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {
    :root:not([data-user-color-scheme]) {
      --bg-color: green;
      --color-brand: red;
      --color-logo: gold;
    }
  }

  [data-user-color-scheme='dark'] {
    --bg-color: green;
    --color-brand: red;
    --color-logo: gold;
  }

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

The logo will have blue color for the light mode and a gold color for the dark mode.

Customize Images Height

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

<style>
  .c-post-card__image-wrap {
    padding-top: 120%;
  }
</style>

The theme default value is 120%. So, you can increase or decraese this value as needed.

You can add the code in Ghost Code Injection section.

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.

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.

Ghost theme zip on macOS

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