Giornale documentation
An editorial membership theme: a full-screen slider of featured stories, a mega menu, torn-page and sticky-column articles, and your tiers on the homepage.
Installation
- Download
giornale-package.zipfrom your purchase email or your purchases library and unzip it: it containsgiornale.zip(the theme),giornale-demo.zip(the demo content), a README and the licence. Do not unzipgiornale.zip. - In Ghost Admin, open Settings → Design & branding → Change theme.
- Click Upload theme, select the zip, then Activate.
Giornale requires Ghost 6 (self-hosted, or a Ghost(Pro) plan that allows custom themes).
Updating
Upload the new zip the same way and confirm the overwrite. Your content, navigation and theme settings are kept.
Import the demo content
The download includes giornale-demo.zip: posts, pages, tags, navigation and images.
- Use a new or empty site: importing over existing content creates duplicates. On a fresh Ghost, first delete the default content in Settings → Advanced → Danger zone → Delete all content.
- Open Settings → Advanced → Import/Export and import the zip (not just the JSON, or the images will be missing).
- Theme settings are not part of an import: set them in Design & branding (see the table below).
Homepage cover
Choose the Hero layout:
- Full screen: a slider of your Featured posts (up to six, newest first). Each slide shows the feature image, the primary tag, the Excerpt in italics, the author with their profile picture, the date and the title. Dots switch stories; slides change every 6.5 seconds, pause while the reader points at or tabs into the cover, and stay still for readers who ask for less motion. Without a Featured post, the latest post is shown alone. These stories are not repeated lower on the page.
- Half page: the Publication cover (Settings → General) with the site title and description, then your six largest public tags as tabs and a search field. The Topics tiles are hidden with this cover, the tabs replace them.
Homepage sections
| Section | Content comes from |
|---|---|
| Topics | Your six largest public tags as photo tiles (the tag image, or the accent colour). Hidden below three public tags. |
| Latest | One large story and two smaller ones, beside the newsletter box (Newsletter heading, Newsletter text; hidden for members). |
| Editor’s picks | Up to four posts with the internal tag #picks, with Picks text. Hidden without #picks. |
| More stories | The homepage posts (15 per page) with Load more, without the stories already in the cover and in Latest. |
| Membership | Your tiers (Settings → Membership): name, monthly price, description, benefits and a Join or Sign up button. The second tier gets an accent border. A word of Membership heading between *asterisks* is set in italics. Hidden when memberships are off or invite-only, and for paying members. |
# (type #picks in the Tags field of a post). Readers never see them and they have no public page; the theme uses them to pick content.Mega menu
- In Settings → Navigation, a label starting with a dash, like
-Books, becomes a sub-link of the item above it. That item turns into a mega menu: its sub-links, an All … link to its own URL, and the three latest stories of that URL. - Point the parent item to a tag page (or any list of posts on your site) to show its stories. With an external link or a single page, the panel shows the links only.
- On phones the menu is full screen and parent items open as an accordion.
Post layouts
In the post settings, under Template:
| Template | Layout |
|---|---|
| Default | A centred reading column with the feature image below the title. Wide and full-width images break out of the column. |
| Torn | The feature image fills the left half with a torn paper edge and stays in place while the story scrolls on the right. Without a feature image, the default layout is used. |
| Sidebar | A dark column with the image, title, author and a Subscribe button stays in place on the left; the story scrolls on the right. |
On phones, Torn and Sidebar stack the image above the story. Every post ends with tags, sharing, a subscribe box for visitors (Post signup box), the author cards and three posts of the same primary tag.
All settings
| Setting | Tab | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Color scheme | Site-wide | Light | Default color scheme. Readers can still switch with the toggle. |
| Logo for dark mode | Site-wide | — | Optional logo used when the dark scheme is active |
| Footer text | Site-wide | Essays, interviews and reviews for people who still read to the end. | Short text under the site name in the footer |
| Other social links | Site-wide | — | Extra social profile URLs, comma-separated (Pinterest, WhatsApp, GitHub...) |
| Show hero | Homepage | On | Cover at the top of the homepage |
| Hero layout | Homepage | Full screen | Full screen: slider of your Featured posts (up to 6). Half page: cover, title, topic tabs, search. |
| Show topics | Homepage | On | Topics: your six largest public tags as photo tiles (tag images) |
| Show latest | Homepage | On | Latest: one large story and two smaller ones |
| Show newsletter | Homepage | On | Newsletter box beside the latest stories (hidden for members) |
| Newsletter heading | Homepage | The weekly letter | Heading of the newsletter box |
| Newsletter text | Homepage | One email a week with our best stories. Free. | Short line in the newsletter box |
| Show picks | Homepage | On | Editor's picks: up to four posts with the internal tag #picks |
| Picks text | Homepage | Four stories worth your evening, chosen by the people who edit them. | Short text beside the editor's picks |
| Show more | Homepage | On | More stories: the grid of recent posts with a Load more button |
| Show membership | Homepage | On | Membership: your tiers with their prices and signup buttons |
| Membership heading | Homepage | Support *independent* writing | Heading of the membership section. A word between *asterisks* is set in italics. |
| Membership text | Homepage | We are funded by our readers. No ads, no sponsored posts. | Short text of the membership section |
| Table of contents | Post | On | Show a table of contents on posts with three or more headings |
| Post signup box | Post | On | Subscribe box at the end of posts (hidden for members) |
Posts per page: 15 (set by the theme). Settings are in Settings → Design & branding → Customize, in the Site-wide, Homepage and Post tabs.
Navigation & social links
- Dropdowns: in Settings → Navigation, start a label with a dash (
-About) to put it in a dropdown under the item above. That parent item only opens the dropdown; its URL is not used. - Social accounts: X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Bluesky, Threads, Mastodon, TikTok, YouTube and Instagram come from Settings → General → Social accounts. Add any other profile in the Other social links setting (comma-separated URLs): Pinterest, WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord, GitHub, Dribbble, Behance, Spotify, Twitch, Snapchat, Reddit and Medium get their icon, any other URL gets a link icon.
- The RSS icon is added automatically.
Posts & pages
- Table of contents: added automatically to posts with three or more H2 headings (setting Table of contents).
- Full width page template: choose it in the page settings for landing pages.
- The page option Show title and feature image is respected.
- Every editor card is styled, including wide and full-width images, galleries, toggles, callouts, buttons and bookmarks.
Members & newsletter
The subscription block uses Ghost’s native members. It is hidden for signed-in members, and when sign-ups are off or invite-only (Settings → Membership).
Translation
Every text of the theme goes through Ghost’s translation system. Copy locales/en.json inside the theme to locales/fr.json (or your language code), translate the values, zip the theme again and upload it. Then set the language in Settings → General → Publication language.
FAQ
The mega menu shows no stories.
Its parent item must link to a list of posts on your site, such as a tag page. Check the URL of the item above your “-” sub-links.
The slider shows only one story.
Mark more posts as Featured in their settings. The slider shows up to six, newest first.
The membership section is empty or missing.
It lists the tiers of Settings → Membership and hides when memberships are off or invite-only. Add a description and benefits to each tier to fill the cards.
A section of the homepage does not appear.
Check its switch in Design & branding, then its content: every section hides itself when it has nothing to show (no Featured post, no post with the internal tag, an empty tag…).
Can I change the fonts?
Yes: the fonts chosen in Design & branding → Typography replace the theme’s heading and body fonts.