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Penang Documentation

Theme version: 1.3.2 — 17 November 2022 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're looking for Ghost hosting, I recommend Ghost(Pro).

Table of Contents

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 penang folder, you will find the penang.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 penang.zip theme file.
  5. Once uploaded, click Activate now to activate Penang.

Members / Subscriptions

Penang has different interface elements for membership feature.

  • Login In and Subscribe buttons in the header
  • Footer and Hero subscription forms
  • 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.

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

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

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

Click Save.

Embed the Subscribe Form in the Middle of a Blog Post

To add the Subscribe Form in the middle of a blog post, click on the + button and choose the HTML card.

Ghost HTML CARD

Then paste the following code into the editor field and save your post.

<form data-members-form="subscribe" class="c-subscribe-form">
  <div class="form-group">
    <label for="subscribe-email-footer" class="u-hidden-visually">Your email address</label>
    <input type="email" name="email" class="c-subscribe-form__input" id="subscribe-email-footer" placeholder="Your email address" data-members-email="">
    <button type="submit" value="Subscribe" class="c-btn c-btn--action c-subscribe-form__btn">Subscribe</button>
  </div>

  <div class="u-alert u-alert--success u-mt-16">Please check your inbox and click the link to confirm your subscription.</div>
  <div class="u-alert u-alert--invalid u-mt-16">Please enter a valid email address!</div>
  <div class="u-alert u-alert--error u-mt-16">An error occurred, please try again later.</div>
</form>
Subscribe Form Embed

You may be asking, how I got the form HTML code above? Well, you can copy it from your blog or the theme demo source code. You can do this by opening your browser DevTools and select the form element and copy it. Like the following screenshot.

Subscribe Form Embed Source Code

You can use Chrome DevTools or Firefox Developer Tools. To open the DevTools, right-click on an element on the page and choose Inspect, then the Elements panel will open. Also, you can press Command+Option+C (Mac) or Control+Shift+C (Windows, Linux, Chrome OS) to open the Elements panel.

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.

Colors

In this section, you will learn about:

  1. Accent color
  2. Dark mode

Accent Color

Change the Accent color from the admin Settings > Design > Brand > Accent color.

Penang use Accent color throughout the theme in button background, Ghost Portal button background, quotes border, and content link color.

Dark Mode

Penang will adapt to the reader operating system mode. The dark mode option is enabled by default. You can also switch between dark and light modes from the header icon.

Penang has three admin settings from which you can have more control over dark mode.

  1. Disable the dark mode entirely and only keep the website in light mode.
  2. Upload a logo to be visible when the dark mode is active.
  3. Add dark mode Accent color.

Go to your website admin Settings > Design > Site design > Site-wide to show dark mode settings.

Penang Ghost CMS Theme Dark Mode Settings

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.

Home Tags Navigation

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

Penang Tags Menu

If you want to remove the tags navigation, copy and paste the following CSS code into the Ghost admin Code Injection Site Header.

<style>
  .c-tags-list { display: none; }
</style>

If you want to only show specific tags, open the partials/index-tag-list.hbs and replace line 2 with the following line after replacing each TAG_SLUG with your tag Slug.

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

Ghost Theme Tag Setting 
{{#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. No spaces between the comma and the next 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. Instead, use the following method.

In this method, we get each page separately. For example, to get the design and coding tags, the partials/index-tag-list.hbs will look like.

<div class='o-grid__col o-grid__col--full'>
  <div class='c-tags-list-wrap'>
    <ul class='c-tags-list o-plain-list dragscroll'>
      {{#get 'tags' filter='slug:[design]'}}
        {{#foreach tags}}
          <li><a href='{{ url }}'>{{ name }}</a></li>
        {{/foreach}}
      {{/get}}

      {{#get 'tags' filter='slug:[coding]'}}
        {{#foreach tags}}
          <li><a href='{{ url }}'>{{ name }}</a></li>
        {{/foreach}}
      {{/get}}
    </ul>
  </div>
</div>

Home Hero

Home Hero

The hero section shows the site Publication cover and the site description. You can edit them from the Ghost admin General settings admin page.

Publication Cover

  • Settings > Design > Brand > Publication cover

Site Description

  • Settings > Design > Brand > Site description

You can add normal HTML tags to the description like links or headings. The theme will automatically render them on the browser. For example, the demo description is the following:

<h1>Hello, <br>I’m Penang </h1><p>Create a subscription Ghost blog with a beautiful & minimalist design.</p>
Site Description

The website’s title, which appears on the header, will not automatically visible in the hero description/tagline. Instead, you can add it as part of the blog description, like the example above.

If you want to add the above HTML/hero description in the theme file, open the partials/hero.hbs theme file using a code editor and add your custom description instead of file line 5.

Remove Home Hero Section

If you want to completely remove the Hero section, open index.hbs file and remove line 4 {{> hero }}.

Changing Hero Background Color

To change the home hero background color, you can add the following CSS snippet to the Ghost admin Code Injection Site Header and replace YOUR_COLOR_HERE with your HTML color code, e.g., #942d76;

<style>
  .c-hero {
    background: YOUR_COLOR_HERE;
  }
</style>

Click Save.

If you want to change the color for dark and light modes, you can use the following code and and replace YOUR_LIGHT_COLOR_HERE and YOUR_DARK_COLOR_HERE with your color.

<style>
  :root {
    --hero-background: YOUR_LIGHT_COLOR_HERE;
  }

  @media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) {
    :root:not([data-user-color-scheme]) {
      --hero-background: YOUR_DARK_COLOR_HERE;
    }
  }

  [data-user-color-scheme='dark'] {
    --hero-background: YOUR_DARK_COLOR_HERE;
  }

  .c-hero {
    background: var(--hero-background);
  }
</style>

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

Replace Hero Subscribe Form with a Subscribe Button

To add a subscribe button to the Subscribe page as the header button instead of the form, do the following.

Open the partials/hero.hbs theme file using a code editor, and replace line 10 with the following:

<br><a href='#/portal/signup' class='c-btn c-btn--action'>{{t 'Subscribe' }}</a>

If you prefer a wider button, use the c-btn--full class. The code would be:

<br><a href='#/portal/signup' class='c-btn c-btn--full c-btn--action'>{{t 'Subscribe' }}</a>

Penang 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

Penang 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 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 12 to a number.

"config": {
  "posts_per_page": 12
}

The theme default value is set to 12 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 Settings > 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

Penang 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>

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

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

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

Theme Translation

Penang 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 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
  • 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 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
| |____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 Post": "Featured Artikel",
  "Page Not Found": "Seite nicht gefunden",
  "Load Comments": "Bemerkungen",
  "You might also like": "Das könnte Sie auch interessieren:",
  "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": "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",
  "Enable dark mode": "Schakel de donkere modus in",

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

  "Account": "Konto",
  "Log in": "Einloggen",
  "Log out": "Ausloggen",
  "Continue": "Fortsetzen",
  "Subscribe": "Abonnieren",
  "Your email address": "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.

RTL

RTL means 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 theme file using a code editor and change line 10 to {{> compiled/inline-css-rtl }}.

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

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:

Penang 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:

Penang 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.

Post Feature Image Size

An image width of (1320px × 742px) would fit the homepage cards and the post header.

You can also use an image with a double size (2640px × 1484px) for a high-resolution image preview.

Footnotes

Ghost has limited support for footnotes, which means it doesn’t support footnotes outside of the editor Markdown card. So, if your article content is in Markdown, this will work fine for you.

For creating a footnote, check out the Markdown Guide – Footnotes for more information about the syntax. You can check out how the theme renders this example in the demo. So, in your editor, you need to add a new Markdown card and your footnote inside.

The theme will render what the editor can do; the theme has no built-in footnotes support but Ghost. Check out this theme demo example.

Check out this Forum discussion for more information and probably some ideas and workarounds.

I have not done any work to support footnotes beyond the basic Ghost Markdown implementation, so I’m afraid I can’t give any advice here.

Theme Deploy with GitHub Actions

Penang 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.

Penang 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.

Customize Images Height

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

For the 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 75%.

.c-post-card__image-wrap {
  padding-top: 75%;
}

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: 75%;
  }
</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.

You may also need to increase the page top space if you have increased the logo size. This ensures the hero section height still intact.

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

The default value is 72px, so you can increase this value.

Remove Date from All Posts

To remove the date from all posts, add the following CSS code into the Ghost admin Code Injection Site Header section.

<style>
  time {
    display: none;
  }
</style>

Click Save.

This code will remove the date from the following:

  • Homepage postcards
  • Post page

Change Style Depending on the Screen Width

To change the style of any element depending on the screen size the thme provides 3 stages, the initial/mobile size, the medium size, and the large size. For examplle, if you want to change the color of the post title on the three different stages, use the following code.

<style>
  .c-post-header__title {
    color: gray;
  }

  @media (min-width: 40em) {
    .c-post-header__title {
      color: red;
    }
  }

  @media (min-width: 64em) {
    .c-post-header__title {
      color: green;
    }
  }
</style>

The title will start with gray on the mobile size, red on medium and green on large screens.

Three Columns Layout Display for Home Posts

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

<div class='js-grid__col o-grid__col o-grid__col--initial-grow o-grid__col--4-4-s o-grid__col--2-4-m o-grid__col--1-3-l js-post-card-wrap c-post-card-wrap {{ post_class }}'>

The result will look like this:

Penang Ghost Theme Three Columns Layout Display for Home Posts

If you want one column, use the following code.

<div class='js-grid__col o-grid__col o-grid__col--initial-grow o-grid__col--4-4-s js-post-card-wrap c-post-card-wrap {{ post_class }}'>

On the homepage, the theme shows the posts based on the Ghost default publishing order without creating a new section or separation for featured posts. To add a separate section for featured posts, do the following steps.

  • Make sure you already have some posts marked as featured from the post setting. Well, the posts you are going to show.
  • If you are working on a local development Ghost server, you may need to restart your Ghost server for the new template files to reflect.

➊ In the theme partials folder, create a new theme file post-card-featured.hbs and copy the following code to it.

<div class='o-grid__col o-grid__col--initial-grow o-grid__col--4-4-s o-grid__col--2-4-m o-grid__col--2-4-l c-post-card-wrap {{ post_class }}'>
  <div class='c-post-card {{#if featured}} c-post-card--featured {{/if}} {{#is 'home'}} {{/is}} {{#if feature_image}} c-post-card--with-image {{/if}} {{#unless feature_image}} c-post-card--no-image {{/unless}}'>
    {{#if feature_image}}
      <div class='c-post-card__media'>
        <a href='{{ url }}' class='c-post-card__image-wrap' aria-hidden='true' tabindex='-1'>
          <img
            alt='{{ title }}'
            class='c-post-card__image lazyload'
            data-srcset='
              {{ img_url feature_image size='md' }} 320w,
              {{ img_url feature_image size='lg' }} 636w,
              {{ img_url feature_image size='xl' }} 1272w'
            sizes='(min-width: 1480px) 636px, (min-width: 640px) 44.39vw, calc(100vw - 32px)'
            data-src='{{ img_url feature_image size='xl' }}'
          >
        </a>
      </div>
    {{/if}}

    <div class='c-post-card__content {{#unless feature_image}} c-post-card__content--no-image {{/unless}}'>
      <div class='c-post-card__meta'>
        {{#primary_author}}
          <a href='{{ url }}' class='c-post-card__author'>{{ name }}</a>
        {{/primary_author}}

        <time class='c-post-card__date' datetime='{{ date format='YYYY-MM-DD' }}' title='{{ date format='DD MMMM YYYY' }}'>{{ date format='DD MMM YYYY' }}</time>

        <div class='c-post-card__visibility c-post-card__visibility--{{ visibility }}'>
          <span class='paid'>{{t 'Paid' }}</span>
          <span class='members'>{{t 'Members' }}</span>
          <span class='public'>{{t 'Public' }}</span>
        </div>
      </div>

      <h2 class='c-post-card__title'>
        <a href='{{ url }}' class='c-post-card__title-link'>
          {{ title }}
        </a>
      </h2>

      <p class='c-post-card__excerpt'>{{ excerpt }}</p>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

➋ In the theme root, create a new file home.hbs and copy the following code in to it.

{{!< default}}

<div class='o-wrapper'>
  {{> hero }}

  <div class='o-grid'>
    {{> index-tag-list }}
  </div>

  {{#get 'posts' filter='featured:true' include='authors' limit='all' as |featured_posts|}}
    {{#if featured_posts}}
      <div class='o-grid'>
        <div class='o-grid__col o-grid__col--full'>
          <div class='c-title-bar'>
            <h3 class='c-title-bar__title'>Featured Posts</h3>
          </div>
        </div>
      </div>

      <div class='o-grid'>
        {{#foreach featured_posts}}
          {{> post-card-featured }}
        {{/foreach}}
      </div>

      <div class='o-grid'>
        <div class='o-grid__col o-grid__col--full'>
          <div class='c-title-bar'>
            <h3 class='c-title-bar__title'>Recent Posts</h3>
          </div>
        </div>
      </div>
    {{/if}}
  {{/get}}

  <div class='o-grid js-grid'>
    {{> loop }}
  </div>

  <div class='o-grid'>
    {{ pagination }}
  </div>

  <div class='o-grid'><hr></div>

  <div class='o-grid'>
    {{> index-tag-columns }}
  </div>

  <div class='o-grid'><hr></div>
  <div class='o-grid'><hr></div>

  {{> index-authors }}
</div>

This code is a copy of the index.hbs file plus a new code block which will do the following:

  • Loop over all the featured posts. You can manage the limit from the limit='all' attribute. You can show a fixed number, for example, limit='2' will show only two posts.
  • It will add the Featured Posts headline
  • It will add the Recent Posts headline to separate both sections

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

If you want to exclude the featured posts from the recent posts section, update the routes.yaml file to be.

routes:
  /:
    template: home
    controller: channel
    filter: featured:false

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

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

Save and Upload the routes.yaml file to your website.

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!

Add Reading Time

There are two places you can add the post reading time, the article page and the postcard in the homepage and other listing pages.

To add reading time on the article page under the title, open the partials/post-header.hbs theme file using a code editor and add the following line of code under the line42.

<span class='c-post-header__date'>{{ reading_time minute=(t '1 min read') minutes=(t '% min read') }}</span>

To add it in the homepage post card above the title area, open the partials/post-card.hbs theme file and add the following line of code under the line 26.

<span class='c-post-card__date'>{{ reading_time minute=(t '1 min read') minutes=(t '% min read') }}</span>

To learn more about how the reading time helper works, check out the Ghost documentation.

Show Full Post Excerpt for Post Cards

The theme uses the Ghost `excerpt to output the post excerpt under the homepage post title cards. It only shows two lines of it.

To display the full excerpt, add the following CSS snippet code into the Ghost admin Code Injection Site Header.

<style>
  .c-post-card__excerpt {
    display: block;
  }
</style>

Changing Theme Typeface

Penang is using two fonts:

  • Inter for the overall theme text.
  • Crimson Text for the post content and post card excerpt.

The theme loads both fonts using Google Fonts in the theme partials/fonts.hbs file.

Inter font 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';
}

Crimson Text is assigned to the post card excerpt as.

.c-post-card__excerpt {
  font-family: 'Crimson Text', Georgia, serif;
}

And for the content text elements as.

.c-content dl,
.c-content fieldset,
.c-content form,
.c-content ol,
.c-content p,
.c-content pre,
.c-content ul {
  font-family: 'Crimson Text', Georgia, serif;
}

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

<style>
  .c-content dl,
  .c-content fieldset,
  .c-content form,
  .c-content ol,
  .c-content p,
  .c-content pre,
  .c-content ul {
    font-family: 'Roboto', sans-serif;
  }
</style>

You might find the following posts useful as well:

Loading Custom Typeface

I assume 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.

If the Portal button covers the social icons and some are not visible or clickable, use the following CSS code into the Ghost admin Code Injection Site Header. It will move the button to the top and make the icons clickable.

<style>
  .gh-portal-triggerbtn-iframe {
    bottom: 40px !important;
  }
</style>

You might also try to increase the bottom 40px value to move it higher if the icons are still not visible.

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