Theme settings guide
Coben, setting by setting.
Coben is an editorial theme for essayists and authors. It has sixteen controls in Ghost Admin: the type style, the accent colour, the homepage hero, the featured book, the newsletter panel and the reading features of an essay. Every setting has a default that already looks right, so most sites only change a few.
Where the settings live
The sixteen settings are in Ghost Admin, in one place:
Settings→Design & branding→Customize→Theme
Ghost groups them into Site wide, Homepage and Post, the three groups used below. Your title, description, logo and publication cover live one tab over, in Ghost’s own Brand settings, and custom fonts are on the Typography tab.
Changes preview live and nothing goes public until you press Save.
First hour
Just activated the theme? These steps make it look like the demo.
- Add your publication cover. Under Brand, upload a portrait photograph of at least 1200 × 1500 px. It becomes the arched portrait beside your name. Add your title and a one-sentence description too: the description sits under your name.
- Build the navigation. Three to five items works best, for example /archive/, /about/ and /books/. Put Contact, Privacy and RSS in the secondary navigation, which becomes the footer links.
- Feature your best essays. Open a post, switch on Feature this post in its settings, and do it for three or four. They become the Essential essays on the homepage, the newest leading.
- Give your tags descriptions. Your six busiest public tags become the topic index. A description and a feature image on each tag make its page a proper topic hub.
- Choose a type style and colour. Under Theme, pick Literary Serif, Modern Editorial or Clean Sans, and set your Accent color. The demo uses terracotta, #B14B32.
- Add your book, or remove the section. Fill in the Featured book settings, or clear the title to remove the showcase.
- Turn on members under Settings → Membership if you want the email signup, a paywall and comments. Coben styles all of them.
All sixteen settings
Each setting is listed with its internal key, its control type and its default.
Site wide
Applies across the whole site.
Literary Serif sets headlines in Besley and reading text in Literata. Modern Editorial sets headlines in Bodoni Moda over IBM Plex Sans. Clean Sans uses IBM Plex Sans throughout. Labels, dates and buttons are always IBM Plex Sans.
Where it appears: every page.
If you choose heading or body fonts in Ghost’s Typography settings, those are used instead.
The one colour on the page. It runs through buttons, links, small labels, the reading progress bar and the newsletter panel. Button and link colours are derived from it automatically, so pale colours such as yellow or mint stay readable.
Where it appears: buttons, links, labels, highlights and the newsletter panel.
This is Coben’s own setting, in the Theme tab. Ghost’s Brand accent colour is not used, although Ghost’s own signup cards in the editor follow this colour.
The heading of the coloured email signup panel.
Where it appears: the newsletter panel on the homepage and after each essay.
The panel is hidden from signed-in members, and when signups are off or invite-only.
Choose where the newsletter panel appears: Homepage only, Posts only or Everywhere.
Where it appears: the foot of the homepage and of each essay.
Homepage
Controls the homepage only.
Author Portrait shows your publication cover image in an arched frame beside your name. Book First shows your featured book’s cover as a real-looking book instead. Newsletter First keeps the portrait and replaces the Join button with an email signup field.
Where it appears: the top of the homepage.
Add the portrait under Settings → Design & branding → Brand → Publication cover. Without an image, a typographic placeholder is shown.
A short positioning line in small capitals above your name.
Where it appears: the homepage hero.
Leave it empty and a neutral line is used.
The small label above the topic index.
Where it appears: the homepage, under the hero.
The index lists your six most-used public tags that have posts. It is hidden if there are none.
Editorial Grid shows three-column cards. Essay List sets one row per essay with a thumbnail beside it. Magazine makes the newest essay a double-width lead card at the head of the grid.
Where it appears: the Latest essays section of the homepage.
Tag, author and archive pages use the grid.
Switches on the full-width book showcase and sets its heading.
Where it appears: the book showcase on the homepage.
Clear this field to remove the showcase. Replace the default with your own title before you launch.
One or two sentences about the book.
Where it appears: the book showcase.
Your book cover, shown as an object with a spine and a shadow. Upload a portrait image of about 1000 × 1500 px.
Where it appears: the book showcase and the Book First hero.
Without a cover, a typographic cover is generated from the title and your site name.
The text of the button beside the book.
Where it appears: the book showcase.
Where the button goes: a Ghost page such as /books/, or a retailer such as Amazon, Bookshop or Gumroad.
Where it appears: the book showcase.
Clear it to hide the button.
Post
Controls individual essays.
A slim bar across the top of the window that fills as the reader moves through an essay.
Where it appears: essays.
Builds a short numbered list of the essay’s Heading 2 and Heading 3 blocks, highlighting the section being read.
Where it appears: a sticky column beside long essays.
It needs at least two headings and a window wider than 1200 px. On narrower screens it is not shown.
Sets the first letter of an essay’s opening paragraph as a large initial.
Where it appears: essays (not pages).
How the homepage builds itself
Blocks with nothing to show disappear. From top to bottom:
- The hero: your credibility line, your site title, your description and a Join button (or signup field), with the portrait or book beside it.
- The topic index: your six most-used public tags, with post counts.
- Essential essays: up to four posts marked Featured. The newest leads with a large image. Hidden if no post is featured.
- The book showcase: shown when Featured book title has a value.
- Latest essays: your newest posts in the Homepage feed layout you chose, with Newer and Older links. A Browse the archive link appears once a published page with the slug archive exists.
- The newsletter panel: an inline email signup, as set by Newsletter CTA placement.
Extra pages
Coben includes one extra page template. Open a page’s settings (the gear icon in the editor), choose it from the Template menu, then add the page to your navigation under Settings → Navigation.
| Template | Use it for |
|---|---|
| Default | An ordinary page such as About or Contact, with a centred title and a reading column. |
| Archive | Every essay as a simple list, newest first, with its date and topic. It shows the latest 100 posts, the most Ghost returns in one request. Give the page the slug archive and the homepage links to it automatically. |
Tag and author pages are created by Ghost, and Coben designs them as topic and author hubs. Page 2 onwards of the homepage feed is shown as a plain “Essays & notes” archive.
Writing for Coben
- Featured essays. A featured essay is listed in Essential essays on the homepage and carries an “Essential essay” label on its own page.
- Excerpt. A post’s Excerpt (in the post settings) is the line under the title and the text on cards. Without one, Ghost’s automatic excerpt is used.
- Primary tag. The first tag is shown above the title and used to choose the “Related ideas” at the end; if it has no other essays, the newest posts are shown instead.
- Headings. Heading 2 and Heading 3 form the contents list. Headings inside cards, such as a callout or toggle, are ignored.
- Drop cap. Start the essay with a paragraph rather than an image or heading so the initial applies to your opening words.
- Wide and full-width images. Use the image card’s width controls. Wide images break out of the column and full-width images run edge to edge.
- Members-only essays. Add the Public preview divider in the editor to choose where the free opening ends. Readers see it, then a quiet prompt to join or upgrade.
Every editor card is styled: image (regular, wide and full), gallery, bookmark, callout, toggle, button, product, file, audio, video, signup, header, embed, quotes, code, tables and dividers.
Recommended image sizes
| Image | Recommended |
|---|---|
| Publication cover (portrait) | 1200 × 1500 px (4:5), at least. Shown in the arched hero frame. Keep the face in the upper half. |
| Feature image | 1800 × 1125 px (16:10). Shown wide at the top of an essay; cards crop it to 3:2 around the centre. |
| Tag image | 1200 × 900 px (4:3). Optional; shown beside the topic name. |
| Author profile image | 800 × 1000 px (4:5). Shown in an arched frame on the author page and after each essay. |
| Book cover | 1000 × 1500 px (2:3). |
| Content images | Any size, up to 2000 px wide. Ghost resizes them. |
Members, comments and search
Coben uses Ghost’s native memberships, so there is nothing extra to install.
- Portal. The Sign in, Account and Subscribe links in the header use Ghost’s Portal. Signed-in members see Account, and the signup prompts disappear.
- Email signup. The newsletter panel (and the Newsletter First hero) subscribes readers without leaving the page. It is hidden when members are off.
- Paywall. Members-only and paid essays show the free preview, then a quiet notice to join, sign in or view plans.
- Comments appear under each essay when they are enabled in Ghost.
- Search opens from the button in the header and uses Ghost’s built-in search.
- Recommendations, when enabled in Ghost, appear in the footer under “Worth reading”.
Beyond the settings
Fonts
Besley, Literata, IBM Plex Sans and Bodoni Moda are bundled with the theme and loaded from your own site, so Coben makes no request to a font service. If you choose a heading or body font under Typography, Ghost loads it from Bunny Fonts and Coben switches to it cleanly. Leave Typography on “Theme default” for no third-party requests at all.
Translations
Fixed wording such as “Related ideas”, “In this essay” and “Copy link” is listed in locales/en.json. To change a phrase, edit that file; to translate the theme, copy it to your language code, such as locales/de.json, translate the values and set the same language under Settings → General. Anything missing falls back to English.
Small changes
For small tweaks, such as extra CSS, use Ghost’s Code Injection under Settings → Advanced so theme updates stay easy. Do not remove {{ghost_head}}, {{ghost_foot}} or the asset helpers. Ghost depends on them.
Printing
Essays have a print stylesheet that removes the header, footer, sharing and signup panels, so a printed or saved-as-PDF essay is just the text.
Updating
Download your current theme as a backup, upload the new ZIP, check the homepage, one essay and one tag page, then activate it. Ghost asks whether to overwrite the existing theme; say yes. Your settings are kept, and new settings take their defaults. If you have edited the theme’s files, keep a copy of your changes and reapply them.
Troubleshooting
There is no portrait on the homepage
The portrait is your Publication cover, under Settings → Design & branding → Brand. Upload one there, and check that Homepage hero style is not Book First, which uses the book cover instead.
The topic index is missing
It lists public tags that have at least one published post. Internal tags (those starting with #) are never shown.
Essential essays is missing
Feature at least one post: open it, then switch on Feature this post in its settings.
The book section is missing
It is shown only when Featured book title has a value. If the button is missing, Book CTA URL is empty.
There are no Subscribe or Sign in links
Turn on memberships under Settings → Membership → Access and allow anyone to sign up. The links and the newsletter panel are hidden when members are off, when signups are invite-only, and from signed-in members.
The contents list is missing
The essay needs at least two Heading 2 or Heading 3 blocks, Show table of contents must be on, and the window must be wider than 1200 px.
“Browse the archive” is missing
Create a page with the slug archive, choose the Archive template for it and publish it.
The archive stops at 100 essays
That is the most Ghost returns in a single request. Use topics or search to reach older essays.
I cannot find the theme settings panel
Coben must be the active theme, not merely uploaded. Activate it under Settings → Design & branding → Change theme, then reload Ghost Admin. Custom settings appear under Customize → Theme.
Still stuck?
Email hello@themesbykyle.com with your Ghost version, the page URL and a screenshot. If you have customised the theme, say what you changed. Support covers installing Coben, its documented settings and confirmed defects, and replies usually arrive within two business days.
For installation, updates and licensing, see the main documentation. For release notes, see the changelog.