Editing Theme

Nova is professionally designed ghost theme that works perfectly fine across various content forms out of the box, but if you want to change certain things to your liking, you will need to change the underlying code. (don’t worry — it’s not as scary as it sounds and this can be done by anyone!)

Modifying the theme's underlying code can potentially disrupt the styling of the theme. However, it should not affect your posts, subscribers, or other content, so there's no need to worry about that. To ensure safety, it is recommended to download a copy of the theme before making any code changes.

To download a copy of the Nova theme, follow these steps:

1. Access the Ghost Admin and navigate to the "Design" settings.

2. In the bottom left corner, click on "Change theme".

3. In the upper right corner, click on the Advanced dropdown menu.

4. Select the option to download the Nova theme.

5. Save the downloaded theme file in a secure location, preferably cloud storage or a different computer, for backup purposes.

By following these steps, you can download a copy of the Nova theme to safeguard against any unintended consequences while tinkering with the code.

Steps to edit the theme

1: Download the theme from Ghost Admin

To download a copy of the Nova theme as a .zip file, follow these steps:

1. Open the Ghost Admin and navigate to the "Design" settings.

2. In the bottom left corner, click on "Change theme".

3. In the upper right corner, click on the Advanced dropdown menu.

4. From the dropdown menu, select the option to download Nova as a .zip file.

By following these steps, you can easily download a compressed .zip file of the Nova theme from the "Design" settings in the Ghost Admin.

2: Unzip the theme

If you're not sure how to unzip the theme, doing advance things like editing code is probably not a good idea :)

Please email me if you need more help!

3: Open it with a code editor

To work with the theme's code, you will need a code editor like Sublime Text, Visual Studio Code, or Brackets. Avoid using native text editors like TextEdit on macOS, as they may introduce formatting that could potentially break the theme.

Follow these steps to open the theme with your preferred code editor:

1. Ensure you have a code editor installed on your computer (e.g., Sublime Text, Visual Studio Code, Brackets).

2. Locate the theme folder you want to edit.

3. Right-click on the theme folder and select "Open with" from the context menu.

4. Choose your desired code editor from the available options.

By following these steps, you can open the theme folder with your chosen code editor, allowing you to make modifications and edits to the theme's code.

Now you’re ready to make changes to the theme. See Code-level Changes for detailed guides on how to make code-level changes.

Applying changes

Once you have made the necessary changes to the theme code, follow these steps to re-upload and activate the modified theme in Ghost:

1. Re-zip the theme directory containing the updated code.

2. Open the Ghost Admin and navigate to the "Design" settings.

3. Click on "Change theme" in the bottom left corner.

4. In the upper right corner, click on the "Upload theme" button.

5. Select the re-zipped theme file from your computer and upload it.

6. After the upload is complete, click on "Activate" to apply the newly uploaded theme to your site.

By following these steps, you can successfully re-upload the modified theme and activate it on your Ghost site.

To create a zip archive of the theme folder on macOS, follow these steps:

1. Right-click on the theme folder to open the context menu.

2. From the context menu, select the "Compress" option.

3. This will create a zip archive of the theme folder.

On Windows, follow these steps:

1. Right-click on the theme folder to open the context menu.

2. Select the "Send to" option.

3. From the sub-menu, choose "Compressed (zipped) folder".

4. This will create a compressed zip folder of the theme.