Theme settings guide
Broadsheet, setting by setting.
Broadsheet gives you nine controls in Ghost Admin — no code, no rebuilds. This page explains what each one does, where it shows up on your site, and how to get the front page you actually want.
Where the settings live
Every setting on this page is in Ghost Admin, in one place:
Settings→Design & branding→Theme settings
Ghost groups them into Site-wide, Homepage and Post — the same three groups used in the reference below, in the same order you will see them on screen.
Theme settings only appear once Broadsheet is the active theme. If the panel is empty or shows a different set of controls, activate Broadsheet first, then reload Ghost Admin.
Changes save immediately and apply to the live site. There is no publish step and no cache to clear.
First five minutes
If you have just activated the theme, do these five things in order. Everything else is optional.
- Set your publication tagline. The default text is placeholder copy from the demo — replace it with your own, or clear it to hide the line entirely.
- Point the two section rows at your own tags. They default to politics and culture, which almost certainly are not your sections. See Section rows.
- Add your sections to the navigation. Settings → Navigation. The primary menu becomes the masthead nav; the secondary menu becomes the footer's "More" column.
- Decide on the edition behaviour. Leave it on Auto for a front page that changes through the day, or lock one edition. See Time-of-day editions.
- Publish at least six posts. The front page is built around a lead story plus supporting rows; with two or three posts it will look sparse regardless of settings.
All nine settings
Names below match the labels shown in Ghost Admin. The grey key underneath is the internal name — useful if you are reading the theme source or emailing about a specific control.
Site-wide
Applies to every page of the publication.
A short line of copy that sits directly beneath your publication name, in the style of a newspaper strapline.
Where it appears: the masthead, on every page.
Default: Independent journalism. Clearly told. — demo copy. Replace it, or clear the field to remove the line.
Homepage
Controls the front page only. Archives, posts and pages are unaffected.
Shows a scrolling breaking-news band beneath the masthead. It needs the toggle turned on and text in the field below — with either one missing, nothing renders.
Where it appears: directly under the masthead rule.
The words shown in the ticker. Keep it to a single sentence — this is a flag, not a summary.
Where it appears: inside the ticker band, when the toggle above is on.
Default: empty.
The tag whose posts fill the first section row further down the front page. Enter the tag's slug, not its display name.
Where it appears: a titled row of story cards on the front page.
Default: politics. Leave blank to hide the row. See Section rows.
The same again, for a second section row beneath the first.
Where it appears: a second titled row of story cards on the front page.
Default: culture. Leave blank to hide the row.
Shows the words Morning, Midday, Evening or Night in the masthead, naming the edition the reader is currently looking at.
Where it appears: the masthead.
Turning this off hides the label only. The layout still changes through the day unless you also lock the edition below.
Chooses between a front page that follows the clock and one fixed arrangement. Options are Auto, Morning, Midday, Evening and Night.
Where it appears: the front-page layout, and — if you pick Night — the colour scheme of the whole site.
Default: Auto, which follows each reader's own local time. See Time-of-day editions.
Post
Applies to individual articles.
Adds a reading-difficulty rating next to the read time on every article — Accessible through to Demanding.
Where it appears: the reading profile line beneath the byline.
Turn it off and the read time remains on its own. See Reading profile.
Adds a subscribe invitation at the end of every article. It is shown only to logged-out readers on sites with members enabled — existing members are never asked to sign up for what they already have.
Where it appears: beneath the article's closing rule.
No setting matches that search. Try a shorter word, or clear the box to see all nine.
The time-of-day front page
This is the feature that makes Broadsheet different from every other Ghost theme, and the one most worth understanding before you change anything.
The front page rearranges itself according to the reader's own local clock — not yours, and not the server's. Someone opening your site at breakfast in Glasgow sees a different arrangement from someone opening it after dinner in Sydney, from the same published posts. Nothing is re-fetched and nothing moves after the page loads; the layout is decided before the first paint.
| Edition | Reader's local time | What the front page does |
|---|---|---|
| Morning | 05:00 – 11:59 | Full-width lead story, then a row of secondary stories. Agenda-setting. |
| Midday | 12:00 – 16:59 | Three equal columns with vertical rules, no hero. Analytical. |
| Evening | 17:00 – 20:59 | Tall feature on the left, stacked headlines on the right. Long-read forward. |
| Night | 21:00 – 04:59 | A quiet single column — and the whole site inverts to white-on-black. |
Locking one edition
Set Edition mode to a specific edition and every reader sees that arrangement at every hour. Two reasons you might want this:
- To preview. Lock each edition in turn to see how your own stories sit in each layout, then set it back to Auto.
- To commit. Some publications simply want one consistent front page. Midday's three-column grid is the most conventional choice.
Locking Night affects the entire site, not just the homepage. The inverted palette carries through articles, archives and pages, permanently. Choose it deliberately rather than to preview the layout.
What readers without JavaScript see
The Morning layout, in the standard light palette. Nothing breaks and no content is missing — the front page simply does not follow the clock.
Breaking news ticker
The ticker needs both of its settings to render. This trips people up, so it is worth stating plainly:
| Toggle | Text field | Result |
|---|---|---|
| On | Has text | Ticker appears |
| On | Empty | Nothing appears |
| Off | Has text | Nothing appears |
That pairing is deliberate: it lets you keep a standing line of copy in the field and flip the ticker on and off with a single toggle as a story breaks, rather than retyping it under deadline.
A ticker that never changes stops being read within a week. Turn it off between genuine breaking stories and it keeps its urgency.
Section rows on the front page
Below the main story area, Broadsheet can show two titled rows — your own sections, each pulling its most recent posts. They are driven by the two tag slug settings.
Finding a tag's slug
A slug is the URL-safe version of the tag name: Arts & Culture becomes arts-culture. To check one, open Ghost Admin → Tags, click the tag, and read the slug field in its settings panel. Enter that value on its own — no #, no slashes, no full URL.
When a row does not appear
Each row renders nothing at all — no heading, no empty space — when either the setting is blank or the tag has no published posts. So a mistyped slug looks identical to a hidden row. If a row is missing, check the spelling against the Tags screen first.
Showing one row instead of two
Fill in the first setting and clear the second. There is no need to keep them balanced.
The reading profile
Every article carries a short line beneath the byline: a read time, and — unless you turn it off — a complexity rating.
Read time is calculated at 238 words per minute over the article body.
Complexity is measured from the writing itself when the page loads. Five checks each add a point:
- Average sentence length over 25 words
- Average word length over 5.5 characters
- More than two blockquotes
- More than three subheadings
- More than five external links
| Score | Label shown |
|---|---|
| 0 – 1 | Accessible / Straightforward |
| 2 | Considered |
| 3 | In-depth |
| 4 – 5 | In-depth / Demanding |
It is a signal of density, not quality — a demanding rating on a piece of serious analysis is doing its job. If the framing does not suit your publication, turn Show complexity off and keep the read time alone.
Section URLs (routes.yaml)
Broadsheet ships an optional routing file that moves tag archives from /tag/politics/ to /section/politics/, which reads far more like a newspaper.
This is not a theme setting and uploading the theme does not install it. Routing is a site-level file in Ghost, so it has to be uploaded separately — and it replaces your existing routes wholesale.
- Go to Settings → Labs → Routes.
- Download your current routes.yaml first. That download is your only way back.
- Upload the routes.yaml included in the theme package.
Skip this step entirely if you like — the theme works normally on Ghost's default /tag/ URLs. If your site is already live, be aware that changing the routing changes existing archive URLs, so any links you have shared to /tag/… pages will need updating.
The content conventions that matter
Several things that look like theme settings are actually ordinary Ghost fields. Broadsheet leans on four of them:
The first tag becomes the section
A post's primary tag is shown as its section badge and drives the "more from this section" row at the end of the article. Order your tags so the section tag comes first.
The excerpt becomes the standfirst
Set a post's Excerpt in the editor sidebar and it renders as the italic standfirst under the headline. Leave it empty and the standfirst is simply omitted — this is the single highest-impact field for how a front page reads.
Feature images render greyscale
Every feature image is monochrome and animates to full colour on hover. This is intentional and central to the theme's look. On touch devices, where there is no hover, images stay greyscale.
Both navigation menus are used
Under Settings → Navigation, the primary menu becomes the masthead navigation and the secondary menu fills the footer's "More" column.
Beyond the settings
A few common requests are not theme settings. They are still available to you — they just need a different route.
Change how many posts appear per page
Broadsheet shows 20 posts per page. That number lives in the theme's package.json, not in Ghost Admin, so changing it means editing the theme file and re-uploading the ZIP.
Keep a note of any edit like this — re-uploading a theme update will overwrite it.
Change the accent colour or fonts
Broadsheet is deliberately monochrome — ink, paper and one editorial red — and its three typefaces are part of the design rather than variables. There is no colour or font setting.
If you want a different palette, the cleanest approach is a small CSS override through Settings → Code injection → Site header, which survives theme updates:
<style>
:root { --accent: #1a5c3a; }
</style>Test it against the Night edition too — that palette inverts, and a colour that reads well on paper may not hold up on ink.
Translate the interface
Every interface string routes through Ghost's translation system, including the edition labels and reading profile. Copy locales/en.json in the theme to a new language file, translate the values, and set your language under Settings → General → Publication language.
Add advertising
Broadsheet has no built-in ad slots — that is Society's territory. If you need display advertising on a newsroom layout, email me before buying so we can talk about whether a custom build is the better fit.
Troubleshooting
I cannot find the theme settings panel
Broadsheet must be the active theme, not just uploaded. Activate it under Settings → Design & branding → Change theme, then reload Ghost Admin. Note that custom themes need Ghost(Pro) Publisher or higher, or a self-hosted install — Ghost(Pro) Starter does not allow them at all.
My section row is not showing
Three things to check, in order: the slug is spelled exactly as it appears under Ghost Admin → Tags; the tag has at least one published post; and you entered the slug alone, without a # or any part of a URL. A row with a wrong slug renders nothing rather than an error.
The ticker will not appear
It needs the toggle on and text in the field. Both, together. See Breaking news ticker.
My whole site has gone black
Edition mode is set to Night, which inverts every template rather than just the front page. Set it back to Auto — or to Morning, Midday or Evening if you want to lock a light layout.
The front page looks different at different times of day
That is the theme working as designed. Set Edition mode to a fixed edition if you would rather it stayed still.
Two people see different front pages at the same moment
Expected, if they are in different time zones — the edition follows each reader's own clock. Lock the edition if you need everyone to see one arrangement.
The date in the masthead is a day behind
The date is rendered by the server and then corrected to the reader's local date in the browser. On a heavily cached page with JavaScript disabled it can lag. This keeps the date correct for readers across time zones, which matters more for a newspaper than for a blog.
My callout colours all look the same
They are meant to. The theme renders every callout as a grey panel with a red rule, because a pastel callout would be the only coloured object on an otherwise monochrome page. Choose any colour in the editor; Broadsheet renders them consistently.
Still stuck?
Email hello@themesbykyle.com with your Ghost version, the page URL and a screenshot or the exact error. I aim to reply within two business days, and support covers installation, documented settings and confirmed defects.
For installation, updates and licensing, see the main documentation. For release notes, see the changelog.