Sapphire
Ghost theme
Sapphire is a Ghost theme most suitable for building niche publications and personal websites. You can use this theme to show your work, run a blog, build premium memberships for your audience and share what you do.
Supports Ghost version 4.x
The first step is to unzip the downloaded package. Inside the new directory sapphire, you'll find the zipped theme and a documentation file.
Follow these steps to upload the theme to Ghost:
- 1.Login to your ghost admin dashboard (example.com/ghost).
- 2.Click the settings icon at the bottom of the left-hand side.
- 3.Go to Themes and click Upload a theme.
- 4.Select the theme file.
- 5.Once uploaded, click on Activate now button to activate the theme immediately or Close if you want to activate it later.
Once you have Node.js and Ghost setup ready on your machine, run the following commands from the theme root directory:
# To install node modules
npm install
# To compile and watch for changes in SCSS and JS files
npm run dev
Now you can edit the SCSS and JS files in
/assets/sass/ & /assets/js/ directories. These will get compiled to /assets/built/ automatically. To generate a production-ready theme zip file, run the following command. It will minify all the CSS & JS files and package the theme into
dist/<theme-name>-<version>.zip .# To generate production ready theme zip file.
# check the /dist folder after completion.
npm run build
LiveReload chrome plugin watches over the handlebars, CSS, SCSS, and JS files and automatically reloads the browser while developing the theme.
The configuration for LiveReload has already been done in the theme Gulpfile. You can install this chrome plugin and activate it to make your development easier.
All the colors and fonts are managed through CSS variables. You can change colors and fonts by editing the
/assets/sass/base/_variables.scss file. This file contains variables for primary color, text colors, background color, and primary & secondary fonts.
:root {
/* Colours */
--color-primary: #222222;
--color-primary-lighter: color-mod(var(--color-primary) tint(35%));
--color-text: color-mod(var(--color-text-bold) l(30%));
--color-text-secondary: #757575;
--color-text-bold: #222;
--color-bg: #ffffff;
--color-bg-secondary: color-mod(var(--color-bg) shade(4%));
--color-border: #e7e7e7;
--color-border-lighter: #f1f1f1;
/* Fonts */
--font-primary: 'Work Sans', -apple-system, blinkmacsystemfont, 'Segoe UI',
'Roboto', 'Oxygen', 'Ubuntu', 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif;
--font-secondary: 'Merriweather', georgia, times, serif;
--font-normal: 400;
--font-bold: 700;
}
After making the required changes, you'll have to re-compile the theme. This can be done by running the
npm run build command. This will generate the zip file. Follow the Theme Development guide for more details on compiling the theme.Sapphire has two options in-built for adding search:
- 1.
- 2.
Follow these steps to activate search:
Step 1: Enable the search icon
Edit
partials/header.hbs file and un-comment the search icon as shown in the screenshots:
Un-comment the search icon
Step 1: final result
This was the common step. Based on which search service you want to use, you can follow the steps below.
This is the easiest and free option available for adding search to Ghost blogs.
Steps:
- 1.
- 2.Create a new search engine and copy the embeddable code.
- 3.Edit the
partials/search.hbsfile and paste the code in the space provided for it.
Paste your GPSE embed code as shown in screenshot
Final
4. Next, In the GPSE settings set the layout to full width
That's it. You can now check the search on your Ghost blog.
By default, Google will show ads on top of the search results for free accounts. You can disable that by adding a paid API key.
This option is useful for small sites that need basic site search functionality.
Steps to add ghostHunter:
- 1.Edit
default.hbsand un-comment the ghostHunter section at the bottom.
Final
2. Edit
partials/search.hbs and un-comment the ghostHunter section. 
3. Create a new integration on your Ghost admin panel, and copy the content API key displayed.
4. Visit Code Injection on your Ghost admin panel, and paste the following snippet in the Page Header section. Update the ghosthunter_key variable with the content API key obtained in last step.
<script>
var ghosthunter_key = 'PASTE-CONTENT-API-KEY-FROM-INTEGRATION';
//optional: set your custom ghost_root url, default is `"/ghost/api/v2"`
var ghost_root_url = "/ghost/api/v4"
</script>
Done. You should see a functional search on your site.
Sapphire theme comes with three color modes – "Light", "Dark", "Warm", which users can change by clicking the color modes icon on the bottom left-hand side.
Light mode is the default for the theme, but you can change the defaults by making the following changes:
- 1.Edit
default.hbsand add classcolor-scheme--darkorcolor-scheme--warmto the HTML tag as shown below.<html lang="{{@site.locale}}" class="color-scheme--dark"> - 2.Edit
assets/js/main.jsand change thecolorSchemesarray according to the sequence of color schemes that users will see./* Dark Mode */const colorSchemes = ['dark', 'light', 'warm']
3. Recompile the theme (Follow theme development steps for recompiling)
Look for the following space in the
post.hbs file:{{!--
<div class="post-widget post-comments-widget post-widget--no-margin">
If you want to embed comments, this is a good place to do it!
</div>
--}}
Create a Disqus account and retrieve embed code for your site. Paste the embed code inside the space left for it as shown below.
<div class="post-widget post-comments-widget post-widget--no-margin">
<!-- Disqus Embed Code -->
<div id="disqus_thread"></div>
<script>
/**
* RECOMMENDED CONFIGURATION VARIABLES: EDIT AND UNCOMMENT THE SECTION BELOW TO INSERT DYNAMIC VALUES FROM YOUR PLATFORM OR CMS.
* LEARN WHY DEFINING THESE VARIABLES IS IMPORTANT: https://disqus.com/admin/universalcode/#configuration-variables */
var disqus_config = function () {
// this.page.url = PAGE_URL; // Replace PAGE_URL with your page's canonical URL variable
this.page.identifier = "ghost-{{comment_id}}"; // Replace PAGE_IDENTIFIER with your page's unique identifier variable
};
(function() { // DON'T EDIT BELOW THIS LINE
var d = document, s = d.createElement('script');
s.src = 'https://sapphire-2.disqus.com/embed.js';
s.setAttribute('data-timestamp', +new Date());
(d.head || d.body).appendChild(s);
})();
</script>
<noscript>Please enable JavaScript to view the <a href="https://disqus.com/?ref_noscript">comments powered by Disqus.</a></noscript>
</div>
Twitter, Facebook, and RSS feed icon are already implemented in the theme. To add more icons follow these steps:
- 1.
- 2.In
partials/icons/paste SVG file and change its extension to .hbs (instead of .svg)For example, you created a file calledpartials/icons/pinterest.hbs, It should look like this:<svg viewBox="0 0 24 24" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" fill="currentColor"><path d="M12.017 0C5.396 0 .029 5.367.029 11.987c0 5.079 3.158 9.417 7.618 11.162-.105-.949-.199-2.403.041-3.439.219-.937 1.406-5.957 1.406-5.957s-.359-.72-.359-1.781c0-1.663.967-2.911 2.168-2.911 1.024 0 1.518.769 1.518 1.688 0 1.029-.653 2.567-.992 3.992-.285 1.193.6 2.165 1.775 2.165 2.128 0 3.768-2.245 3.768-5.487 0-2.861-2.063-4.869-5.008-4.869-3.41 0-5.409 2.562-5.409 5.199 0 1.033.394 2.143.889 2.741.099.12.112.225.085.345-.09.375-.293 1.199-.334 1.363-.053.225-.172.271-.401.165-1.495-.69-2.433-2.878-2.433-4.646 0-3.776 2.748-7.252 7.92-7.252 4.158 0 7.392 2.967 7.392 6.923 0 4.135-2.607 7.462-6.233 7.462-1.214 0-2.354-.629-2.758-1.379l-.749 2.848c-.269 1.045-1.004 2.352-1.498 3.146 1.123.345 2.306.535 3.55.535 6.607 0 11.985-5.365 11.985-11.987C23.97 5.39 18.592.026 11.985.026L12.017 0z"/></svg> - 3.Next, edit
partials/social-media-icons.hbsand add the icon<ul class="social-media-icons">...other icons<li><a href="https://pinterest.com/" title="Pinterest" target="_blank" rel="noopener">{{> "icons/pinterest"}}</a></li></ul>
The theme is translation ready and includes translation files for English (en) and German (de). To add a translation for any other language, create the translation file in
locales/ directory. To add a new language, follow these steps:
- 1.Create a new file in the theme’s
localesfolder with the language ISO Code code. So, if the new language is Spanish, the new file name will bees.json. - 2.Copy the
en.jsonfile content into your new file and start to translate each line. The key is plain English that exists in all translation files and should not be changed. You should change only the value.
To set the language in Ghost, Go to Admin > General > PUBLICATION INFO > Publication Language and enter the language code (
es in this example).To add the custom bio section in the header, follow these steps:
Custom bio section in header
- 1.Edit
partials/header.hbsfile and uncomment the{{!-- {{> "header-bio"}} --}}line as shown in screenshot:
Step 1
Step 1: final
2. edit
partials/header-bio.hbs and change the slug author's slug as shown in screenshots: 
Step 2
Step 2: final
3. Zip the theme folder, and upload it to your Ghost installation.
Make sure you have at least one post by this author. Ghost sends 404 when there are no posts by the author. The bio section won't display anything if the author has no published posts.
You can add buttons to your blog post content. There are two styles available –
- 1.Primary Button: Class name
.button--primary - 2.Secondary Button: Class name
.button--secondary
To add a button, click the "+" icon next to the line in Ghost editor and select HTML. Then add anchor tags with the class of the button you want to use. For example, to add a primary button you would paste the following HTML:
<a href="http://example.com" class="button--primary">Primary</a>
If you're using a logo on your Ghost blog, then you can follow these steps to customize the height of the logo. By default, we have set the height of the logo to 55 pixels (and 45px for mobile), which works well for most logos, but you might want to customize this setting depending upon your logo.
- 1.First, make sure there is no empty padding around your logo's image file. If there is padding around your logo, then you can crop that using any of the image editors.
- 2.Next, on your Ghost dashboard go to Settings > Code Injection, and paste the following snippet of CSS code in the Site Header section.
<style>
/* Customize height of site logo */
/* FOR MOBILE */
.site-logo-image {
max-height: 45px; /* Set height for your logo on mobile here */
}
/* FOR TABLETS & DESKTOPS */
@media (min-width: 768px){
.site-logo-image {
max-height: 55px; /* Set height for your logo on tablets & desktops here */
}
}
</style>
3. Edit the values of max-height property according to your needs. You can change these values and experiment with them to see what works for you.
Note: You can make this change directly in CSS files as well, but this is easier because you won't have to make these changes again when any new update is released on the theme.
To remove the "Published with Ghost & Sapphire" text from the footer, you can edit
partials/footer.hbs file and delete the lines (12-14) containing this text. To add a tags list view follow these steps:
- 1.Create a new page. You can set the title to anything you want. We'll call it Topics.
- 2.Next, select the template to "Tags" and save the page.
Create a page, and set the template to Tags
Done. You can now visit this page to see all your tags rendered in descending order of the number of posts associated with them.
Tags archive view
To add a posts archive view, follow these steps:
- 1.Create a page. You can set the title to anything you want.
- 2.Next, from the settings menu, set the template to "Posts Archive" and save the page.
Create a page, and set the template to Posts Archive
That's it. You can now visit that page to view your posts archive.
Pro Tip: You can add the Featured Image and Excerpt as well to show them on this view.
Post Archive Page
Keeping your theme updated with its latest releases can be a little challenging if you have lots of customizations. We would recommend the following ways:
- Use Git version control. You can create two branches. One will have your customized theme and one will have the original theme. When an update is released, you can commit the update to the original branch. Then you would switch over to your customization branch and rebase it with the original branch.
- Another good practice is to keep third-party scripts like Google Analytics in code injection.
Thanks to the following services and libraries used in building this theme:
Thank you for using our themes. If you have any questions that are beyond the scope of this documentation, please feel free to email us at [email protected]. We'll do our best to assist you.
Thanks so much!
Last modified 2yr ago