Features
What the theme does, shown rather than described.
Assembly is a newspaper front page and a reading column built for long, sourced work. Everything below is the theme running on this demo — click any image to open it full size.
A front page you arrange yourself
A full-bleed lead story opens the page, then a three column briefing: the wire, the second lead, the editor’s picks. Beneath it, each desk draws from whichever tag your publication actually uses. The hero can be switched off entirely, and the front page opens on the briefing instead.
Light and dark
Dark mode resolves before the first paint, so nobody sees a flash of white. Readers choose it from the masthead and the choice sticks; a publisher can lock the site to one mode and hide the toggle.
Four post layouts
Every story picks its layout from Post settings → Template. The default sets the image at the width of the reading column beside a sticky rail; immersive gives the opening image the whole window; wide keeps the rail but opens on a full-bleed banner. A story published without a feature image simply opens on its headline.
Members and paid stories
Set a post’s access and the theme handles the rest. Gated stories fade into an upgrade panel that takes the page’s own colours rather than sitting in a box, and the reader keeps whatever public preview you left in front of it.
Everything the editor can write
Every Ghost card is styled: galleries, callouts in each colour, toggles, bookmarks, buttons, embeds, audio, files, tables and highlighted code. Images open in a lightbox that pages through a gallery with arrows, the keyboard or a swipe. The styleguide page carries one of each.
Archives and the masthead
Tag and author archives keep the rhythm of the front page, and the authors page collects the newsroom.
Menus that group themselves
Ghost gives a theme two menus. Give a menu item the URL # and it becomes a heading, with the items after it as its group — so one menu carries as many named lists as you like, arranged from Settings → Navigation without touching the theme.
And the rest
- Responsive AVIF and WebP images against a full srcset ladder
- Nineteen theme settings, so the front page rearranges without code
- Every interface string translatable, with locales/en.json to copy from
- Prints cleanly: the article, without the furniture around it
- No webfonts and nothing fetched from a CDN at runtime