Getting Started
Arkai is a multipurpose, modern and minimal ghost blogging theme specially designed for Magazine, Blog for personal. It is a totally new design, with extreme features, and supported all the features of Ghost 5.x. This theme is built with SASS, Handlebars, and a lot of options. This is a fully responsive, hand-coded and fully translation-ready theme.
If you are a programmer, do you write blog or teach programming to people. You can choose this theme. Arkai comes with code-highlighting features.
Support
If you have any questions that are beyond the scope of this help file, please feel free to send your questions to our support email: support@electronthemes.com Our support team will reply to you as soon as possible.
Theme Setup
Arkai theme setup is very easy. If you have already installed a server for Ghost you can easily setup Arkai theme. If you don’t have server suported with Ghost, you can set up reading Ghost Install. When you have the server, follow the instructions for setting up the theme.
Upload the theme
You can upload the theme file from ghost dashboard. to do this
- Download theme file from ElectronThemes Dashboard
- Log in into your Ghost admin panel.
- Go to
Dashboard > Settings icon > Design > Change theme > and upload
- Click Activate.
Uploading the theme via (FTP)
Follow the instructions
- Login to your FTP account.
- Unzip the arkai.zip file and copy arkai folder to your /ghost_installation/content/themes
- Restart your installation if necessary. You can ask for help from your hosting provider if you don’t know how to do this step.
- Login to your ghost admin panel.
- Go to settings (general) and select theme “Arkai“
- Click Save.
Here I have used Cyberduck to upload file on server and I used subdomain. That is why I used Docslab Folder
General Setup
Publication Info
To change publication info, go to Dashboard > Settings Icon > General > Publication Info
. Here you can change the followings:
- Title
- Description
- Site Timezone
- Publication Language
Favicon Icon
Ghost shows it’s ghost logo in your site by default. You can change Favicon Icon or Publication Icon from Dashboard > Settings Icon > Design > Fav icon
Logo
You can change Logo from Dashboard > Settings Icon > Design > Publication Identity
Publication Cover
This is for showing site bookmark image. If you upload a cover image, it will in your site bookmark. To upload publication cover image, Go to Dashboard > Settings Icon > Design > Publication cover
Site Meta Settings
This is for Meta data. It will help to get on search using search engine. You can add also Twitter and Facebook card image, content here.
You can add/edit the content from Dashboard > Settings Icon > General > Site Meta Settings
Social Accounts
Social account section is for showing Facebook, Twitter links of your site. Go to Dashboard > Settings Icon > General > Social Accounts
Primary Navigation
Ghost only supports two types of Navigation. Primary and Secondary Navigation Menu. On header, primary navigation is showing and On Footer secondary navigation is showing. Go to Dashboard > Settings Icon > Navigation
Secondary Navigation
You can change menu item on secondary Dashboard > Settings Icon > Navigation
Create a Post
Ghost has a beautiful dashboard design. You can easily create a post. Go to Dashboard > Posts > New Post
- Post Title
- Post Contents
- Feature image
- Tags
- Authors
Create a page
As like as post, you can create a new page from Dashboard > Pages > New Page. You can add:
- Title
- Contents
- Tags
- Authors
- Feature Image
- Excerpt
- more…
Featured Post
Ghost has awesome featured posts option to show some of your chosen posts as featured for the visitors. To add a post as featured, go to Post > Settings
and scroll down. Select the checkbox Feature this post
Create Tag
To create a new tag, go to Dashboard > Tags > New Tag
Create Author
You can create multiple authors in your site from the dashboard. Go to Dashboard > Settings Icon > Stuff > Invite people
Click on Invite people and you will get a new popup. You have to add Email Address and select the staff Role. Lastly click on Send Invitation now button. An email notification will be sent to create an account on the specific Role.
Code Injection
Code injection is a great feature on Ghost. You can easily write styles and scripts for your site without editing the theme file. You can add various plugins code here like Google analytics
Here you will two text field for code injections. 1. Site Header and 2. Site Footer
Go to Dashboard > Settings Icon > Code Injection
Site Header
If you write scripts on site header, it will show in <head>
tag of header. It will load first in your site
Site Footer
If you write scripts on site footer, it will show at the closing of <body>
tag. It will load last in your site
Integrations and Custom Integrations
Integrations are another cool feature of Ghost. You can connect a lot of third-party plugins or API using integrations. To check the integrations, go to Dashboard > Settings Icon > Integrations
. You will get some inbuilt integrations and custom integrations options
Custom integrations
To create custom integrations, click on + Add custom integration at the bottom of the page and you will get a popup and add a name of the integration and Create. I have create here Search and Github Deploy integration
Labs
Labs is another very important and beta tester parts of Ghost. Here your will get some core features as follows: Go to Dashboard > Settings Icon > Labs
- Import Content
- Export your content
- Delete All Content
- Tiers
- Redirects
- Routes
Routes
Routes is another important part. When you want to use different path link or custom files for pages and different homepage, you can use routes.yaml
file to do that. Here is default .yaml for ghost.
routes:
collections:
/:
permalink: /{slug}/
template: index
taxonomies:
tag: /tag/{slug}/
author: /author/{slug}/
Headers
For header, we have used {{> header}}
partials in folder partials/ header.hbs. In this file you can change the followings:
Header
- Primary Navigation
- Social Icons
- Search
- Dark/Light
- Logo
Dark and Light version
We have used dark version by default. When you will install the theme file on your ghost server, you will get your website as dark version.
If you want to use Light version for default, you can change it from your custom settings. You will find the settings Settings > Design > Site Design > Site-WIde > Select Color Scheme
Logo
You can change the site main logo follow the instruction: Settings > Design > Site Design > Brand > Publication Logo
Dark Logo Mode
If you want to use Dark logo, you can change it from your custom settings. You will find the settings :
Settings > Design > Site Design > Site-Wide > Dark Mode Logo
Footer
We used very minimal footer in our theme. You will get all footer code partials > footer.hbs file. Here are the following parts:
- About Text
- Links
- Tag Cloud
- Connect
About Text
In the footer, it shows About Text. You can change about the text from partials > footer.hbs
<p>{{t "Arkai is a modern & minimal ghost blogging templates. We design and develop based on our customers demand. You can use this theme for your personal blog, portfolio site and other purposes."}}</p>
Footer Social Profiles
Change footer social profile links at footer.hbs
and you can add more links aftre copying this. Change #
with your links.
<li>
<a href="#">
{{> icons/social-icons/instagram}}
</a>
</li>
If you want to add new social icons, go to partials > icons > social-icons folder. I have used svg icons from Feathericons. Download icons from here and add it in the folder. Change the icon’s extension .svg to .hbs
facebook.svg --> facebook.hbs
Footer Social Button
Instagram & Linkedin icon will be visible , when we follow the below instruction and get the icons on right side of footer.
If you want to use Instagram and Linkedin for default, you can change it from your custom settings. You will find the settings: Settings > Design > Site Design > Site-WIde > Instagram Link or Linkedin Link
Note: we can also use this social icon single . Just empty the box then, that icon will be hide.
Tag Cloud
We have showed 10 tags in the footer. If you want to change limit, you change limit="15"
or limit="all"
at line number 18.
{{#get "tags" limit="10" include="count.posts" order="count.posts desc" filter="visibility:public"}}
Footer Links
Useful Link comes from secondary menu. You can change secondary menu link from Dashboard > Design > Secondary Menu
Copyright text
You can change at footer.hbs
file line number 41
<p>{{t "All copyright reserved by Electronthemes. Published with "}}<a href="https://ghost.org/">{{t "Ghost"}}</a></p>
Change the text inside {{t ""}}
Homepage
On the homepage, you will get some sections.
- Featured Posts
- Latest Posts
Featured posts
This section comes from the featured post. If you add a post as featured, the post will add automatically in the featured slider. You can check how to add featured post
Latest Posts
The latest posts come from the latest articles. You can control the color of the card with internal tags. If you use the internal tag #blue
, it will generate a class tag-hash-blue. You will get 11 color tags.
- blue:
#blue
- purple:
#purple
- pink:
#pink
- carrot:
#carrot
- nevy:
#nevy
- violet:
#violet
- lightgray:
#lightgray
- rosepink:
#rosepink
- space:
#space
- azure:
#azure
- grape:
#grape
You will find these colors with previews here
If you don’t want to use a featured image, you can use the color tag to show a nice postcard.
Home page Layout
Now we can control our home page layout settings follow the instructions. You will find the settings: :
Settings > Design > Homepage > Homepage Layout
Hide featured posts slider
Now we can off/ on our featured post slider settings follow the instructions. You will find the settings: :
Settings > Design > Homepage > Hide featured post slider
Pagination Type
If you want you can change the pagination type ( Button Mode default ) just select one. You will find the settings: :
Settings > Design > Homepage > pagination Type
Custom Settings
From v4.0.0, we have released custom settings for Site-Wide, Homepage, Post. You can easily select your options from Settings > Design > Site Design
Site-Wide Settings
Dark Mode Logo:
You can Upload from here Dark Mode Logo. For enable dark mode logo you have upload first publication logo (light mode logo) for default.color scheme:
You can change your theme color from Dark to Light or Light to Dark for defaultSearch content API:
Add your content API for the search field. When you add to this field, your search option will show and work.Instagram Link :
Add your Instagram link in this fieldLinkedin Link :
Add your Instagram link in this field
Homepage Settings
Homepage layout:
You can Select Post grid, Post by category & Post with sidebar . Post grid (default) from Homepage Layout.Hide featured post slider:
You can off/on hompage featured slider by this option.Select pagination:
You can select Pagination or Load More. By default, Load more option will work
Post Settings
Post layout:
Select default post layout from there. This layout will be applied for all the posts.Comments Type:
By default we are use cove comment for the posts. You can change your comment Disqus or Cove.Disqus shortname:
If you select Disqus Comment for your comment option, you need to add Disqus Shortname. You can learn more from [Comments Section]Cove publication id:
Add your cove publication ID from this field. To get cove publication id, create account to CoveRelated posts title:
You can change title of relates articles section
Post Layout
If you want you can change the Post Layout ( Right sidebar default ) just select one. You will find the settings:
Settings > Design > Post > Post Layout
Related Post Title
You can change the Related Post Title from custom settings. You will find the settings:
Settings > Design > Post > Related Post Title
You get the change output below single post page :
Custom Templates
Custom template is a default setting on Ghost. It can be page template and a post template. We have created some custom pages and post templates for the theme. The page template are as follows:
Page Template
- Membership
- Account
- Contact
- Authors
- Tags
- Blog
- Blogwithsidebar
- Portfolio
- Signin
- Signup
Selecting page template
- Create a new page
- Click on Settings to the right side and scroll down
- Select page template i.e. “Membership”
Page url
When you create page, please keep page slug like this.
Page title | Page URl |
Membership | /membership/ |
Account | /account/ |
Signin | /signin/ |
Signup | /signup/ |
For other custom pages, you can add Authors, Tags, Contact, Portfolio, Blog, Blogwithsidebar page.
Sidebar
We have showed some elements on Post sidebar
- About Us
- Featured Posts
- Tag Clouds
1. About us
You will find it in the file partials > sidebar.hbs If you want to remove it from the sidebar, go to sidebar.hbs
in the partials folder and remove line 1
{{> sidebar-about}}
2. Featured posts
These posts are featured posts as like as featured slider. We have showed 3 limited posts in featured posts of sidebar. If you want to change, go to partials > sidebar-featured-posts.hbs and change limit
{{#get "posts" filter="featured:true" limit="3" include="tags"}}
2. Categories
Here we have shown 10 tags based on the count of posts. If you want to change the in the file, you will get the file partials > sidebar-categories.hbs. If you want to change the limit, you can to it: limit="10". If you want to remove category from sidebar, remove this {{> sidebar-featured-post}} from sidebar.hbs file
{{#get "tags" limit="10" filter="visibility:public" include="count.posts" order="count.posts desc"}}
Membership and Subscriptions
he membership page is helping your customer to understand the plan and compare the differences between your offers. Here are the step by step instructions:
Create Membership page
- Create a new page and open the page settings panel from the right side of the page
- Select the page template: Membership at the bottom dropdown
- Publish the page
Create Tiers and show on membership page
- Go to Settings > Membership in your Ghost Admin
- Go to MEMBERSHIP TIERS at the bottom
- Connect your Stripe Account if you don’t have Stripe connected
- Expand Premium position and click on +Add tier to add new tier name, description, list of benefits, price for monthly and yearly.
- Add tier to activate
- Now, go to portal settings, you can control enable and disable tiers appearing on the membership page.
Create Account Page
- Create a new page and open the page settings panel from the right side of the page
- Select the page template: Account at the bottom dropdown
- Publish the page
Search Options
We have created real-time search options the theme file. You can activate the search easily.
search option & icon will be visible , when we follow the below instruction and get the search icon on right side of header.
We have used Fuse.io for creating real time search. When you will type, you will get instant results. When you install the theme file, you have configure and add content api key on condeinjection
- Create a custom integrations
- Copy Content Api Key from your created custom integration
- Go to Code Injection > Site Header as follows
After collect the Content Api Key we go to : Settings > Design > Site-Wide
and insert to below search content API box.
Ghost has a native comment system. Only members of your website can comment on your post. To activate native comment:
- Go to the Settings > Membership > Commenting in the Ghost Admin.
- Change the Commenting level to All members or Paid-members only.
- Click on Save button
Contact form
To change contact information, go to custom-contact.hbs file. You change all of the information.
In contact form, we have used Formspree for getting form data. Change your email in <form>
tag in partials > contact-form.hbs file at line number 6.
<form class="row" action="https://formspree.io/youremail@domain.com" method="POST">
Google Map Embedded Code
You can add your google map embedded code at line number 8 in the file custom-contact.hbs
. You can create your own location map from this url
After getting your location, you can click on Get HTML Code. You will get HTML and replace the code in your file.
Github Deployment
Arkai theme in ready for deploy on github easily. You can read the articles on Github deployment
Development and Customization
In this theme, we have used SCSS to develop and style fast. You must have installed Nodejs and SASS on your computer.
- Open theme file in your editor like VSCode or Sublime Text
- Open terminal in the theme folder
- Run command
npm run sass
Alternatively, You can easily do it using Prepros. To edit SCSS code, follow the instruction:
- Unzip arkai.zip (this is the template only file) and remember where is the folder location.
- Install a SASS compiler, we recommend you to use Prepos 6, you can download it here.
- Click on “Browse” to add project on the middle side.
Changing Primary and Secondary colors
You can change easily primary, secondary, text color and other colors from _variable.scss file. Open assets/scss/_variables.scss file and change the color that you want, example:
:root {
--color-primary: #002b41;
--color-text: #3f6172;
}
Credits
Fonts and Icon Fonts
Images
- Unsplash
- Pexels
Plugins and libraries
Changelog
VERSION – 4.5.2: Release on 30 September 2023
* ADDED: Header card improvements feature
* ADDED: New twitter Icon
* Small css issues fixed and improvement performance
[+] CHANGED FILES
assets/css/style.css
partials/icons/social-icons/twitter.hbs
page.hbs
package.json
VERSION – 4.5.1: Release on 09 July 2023
* ADDED: FX Light box image popup feature
* FIXED: Image height issues for post page
* Removed all deprecated code
* Small css issues fixed and improvement performance
[+] CHANGED FILES
assets/css/style.css
.github/workflows/deploy-theme.yml
partials/featured-slider.hbs
partials/post-card.hbs
partials/icons/dots.hbs
partials/footer.hbs
custom-authors.hbs
custom-post-left-sidebar.hbs
custom-post-no-sidebar.hbs
custom-post-right-sidebar.hbs
custom-post-with-table-of-content.hbs
custom-tags.hbs
post.hbs
tag.hbs
page.hbs
package.json
[-] REMOVED FILES:
partials/comments/cove-comments.hbs
partials/comments/disqus-comments.hbs
VERSION – 4.5.0: Release on 13 November 2022
* ADDED: Multiple fonts support
* ADDED: Table of contents added
* FIXED: Dark Light issues fixed for dark devices
* Small css issues fixed
[+] CHANGED FILES
assets/css/style.css
assets/css/style.css.map
assets/js/plugins.js
assets/scss/_author.scss
assets/scss/_blog.scss
assets/scss/_component.scss
assets/scss/_content.scss
assets/scss/_dark-version.scss
assets/scss/_footer.scss
assets/scss/_gallery.scss
assets/scss/_membership.scss
assets/scss/_post.scss
assets/scss/_reset.scss
assets/scss/_responsive.scss
assets/scss/_search.scss
assets/scss/_signin.scss
assets/scss/_tags.scss
assets/scss/_variables.scss
custom-post-left-sidebar.hbs
custom-post-no-sidebar.hbs
custom-post-right-sidebar.hbs
custom-post-with-table-of-content.hbs
default.hbs
error.hbs
package.json
partials/comments/cove-comments.hbs
partials/comments/native-comments.hbs
partials/home/post-grid.hbs
partials/navigation.hbs
partials/post-content.hbs
partials/post-navigation.hbs
partials/postcard.hbs
partials/related_posts.hbs
post.hbs
tag.hbs
[+] ADDED FILES:
partials/google-fonts.hbs
VERSION – 4.4.0: Release on 23 August 2022
* ADDED: Ghost Native Comment Support
* ADDED: Ghost Native Search Support
* ADDED: Contact form endpoint option in dashboard
* FIXED: Logo issues fixed
* Small css issues fixed
[+] CHANGED FILES
assets/css/style.css
assets/scss/_post.scss
assets/scss/_content.scss
assets/scss/_responsive.scss
assets/scss/_variables.scss
assets/scss/_header.scss
assets/js/scripts.js
partials/contact-form.hbs
partials/footer.hbs
partials/header.hbs
partials/post-content.hbs
partials/header.hbs
partials/comments.hbs → partials/comments/cove-comments.hbs
partials/disqus/comment-box.hbs → partials/comments/disqus-comments.hbs
default.hbs
package.json
post.hbs
locales/en.json
[+] ADDED FILES:
partials/comments/native-comments.hbs
VERSION – 4.3.0: Release on 09 June 2022
* Added Support for Ghost 5.0
* Removed all deprecated code
* Small css issues fixed
* Updated English translation file
[+] CHANGED FILES
assets/scss/_membership.scss
assets/css/style.css
custom-membership.hbs
custom-account.hbs
default.hbs
package.json
partials/members/pricing-tables/pricing-free.hbs
partials/members/pricing-tables/pricing-monthly.hbs
partials/members/pricing-tables/pricing-yearly.hbs
locales/en.json
VERSION – 4.1.0: Release on 06 Mar 2021
* Added new feature:
- color scheme dark and light mode
- dark mode logo
- search API key input box
- post layout
- comment option disqus & cove added
- social link instagram & linkedin input box
- pagination or load more select option
- featured posts slider on/off option
- related posts title text change option
. Mejor changes on style section style.css and style.scss
. Updated deprecated functions
. Small bug fixes and performance improvements
CHANGED FILES
[+] style.css (All css file)
[+] style.scss (All scss file)
[+] default.hbs
[+] index.hbs
[+] post.hbs
[+] account.hbs
[+] author.hbs
[+] tag.hbs
[+] custom-blog.hbs
[+] custom-post-with-sidebar.hbs
[+] package.json
[+] partials/header.hbs
[+] partials/postcard.hbs
[+] partials/post-loop.hbs
[+] partials/related_posts.hbs
[+] partials/members/paid-post-box.hbs
[+] partials/disqus/comment-box.hbs
[+] partials/pagination.hbs
[+] partials/footer.hbs
[+] assets/js/scripts.js
NEW ADDED FIELS
[+] assets/scss/_cove.scss
[+] custom-subscribe.hbs
[+] partials/logo.hbs
[+] partials/icons/social-icons/map.hbs
[+] partials/home/post-by-category.hbs
[+] partials/home/post-grid.hbs
[+] partials/home/post-with-sidebar.hbs
[+] partials/post-content.hbs
[+] partials/comments.hbs
VERSION – 4.0.0: Release on 07 Jun 2021
. Compatible with ghost version 4.0
. Added support for public preview posts for members only posts
. Support for new price plan helper
. Updated deprecated functions
. Small bug fixes and performance improvements
CHANGED FILES
[+] default.hbs
[+] account.hbs
[+] partials/navigation.hbs
[+] partials/members/pricing-tables/pricing-free.hbs
[+] partials/members/pricing-tables/pricing-monthly.hbs
[+] partials/members/pricing-tables/pricing-yearly.hbs
[+] partials/members/subscriber-information.hbs
[+] partials/sidebar/sidebar-subscribe.hbs
[+] package.json
VERSION – 3.1.0: Release on 13 Jan 2021
[+] Dark Version added
CHANGED FILES
[+] _variables.scss
[+] All SCSS files
[+] package.json
[+] default.hbs
[+] index.hbs
[+] post.hbs
[+] page.hbs
[+] subscribe.hbs
[+] account.hbs
[+] author.hbs
[+] error.hbs
[+] error-404.hbs
[+] custom-authors.hbs
[+] custom-tags.hbs
[+] signin.hbs
[+] signup.hbs
[+] tag.hbs
[+] partials/footer.hbs
[+] partials/logo.hbs
[+] partials/author-card.hbs
[+] assets/img/logo/logo-white.png
[+] assets/img/logo/logo.png
[+] scripts.js
[+] locales/en.json
ADDED NEW FILES
[+] partials/icons/moon.hbs
[+] partials/icons/sun.hbs
[+] partials/members/free-subscriber-information.hbs
[+] partials/members/subscriber-information.hbs
[+] partials/members/notification.hbs
[+] partials/members/visibility-content.hbs
[+] partials/members/pricing-tables/plan-free.hbs
[+] partials/members/pricing-tables/plan-monthly.hbs
[+] partials/members/pricing-tables/plan-yearly.hbs
[+] partials/sidebar/popular-author.hbs
[+] partials/sidebar/popular-posts.hbs
[+] partials/sidebar/popular-tags.hbs
[+] partials/sidebar/popular-subscribe.hbs
[+] partials/sidebar/share-post.hbs
[+] partials/disqus-comment.hbs
[+] _dark-version.scss
VERSION – 1.0.0: Release on 13 April 2019
[+] Initial Release