Noir — Ghost Theme

A dark, modern editorial theme for Ghost, built for journalism, newsletters, and digital publications that take their content seriously.

Live Demo · Download · Report a bug

 

Features

• Deep dark aesthetic — #08090d background with carefully tuned contrast ratios for comfortable long-form reading
• Self-hosted fonts — Plus Jakarta Sans, EB Garamond, and JetBrains Mono loaded locally — no Google Fonts, no external requests
• Three font pairs — Switch between sans-serif, serif, and monospace title/body combinations from Ghost Admin
• Curated homepage — Five-row layout with automatic de-duplication: hero, featured posts, subscribe CTA, opinion section, and latest posts
• Full Ghost feature support — Members, subscriptions, tiers, search, comments, newsletters, recommendations
• Multiple header styles — Landing, Highlight, Magazine, Search, Off
• Feed styles — Grid and List modes
• 17 custom settings — Configurable directly from Ghost Admin, no code required
• 13 languages — Including Spanish
• Lightbox — PhotoSwipe integration for image galleries
• Infinite scroll — Automatic pagination on archive pages
• Ghost card support — Full styling for all Ghost editor cards
• Accessible — Keyboard navigation, ARIA labels, focus-visible styles, semantic HTML
• SEO-friendly — Structured data, proper heading hierarchy, clean markup

 

Installation

Upload to Ghost Admin (recommended)

1. Download the latest release zip file
2. Go to Ghost Admin → Settings → Design & branding → Change theme → Upload theme
3. Upload the zip and activate

From source (development)

git clone https://github.com/luisassardo/noir.git
cd noir
npm install
npm run build

Then symlink or copy the folder into your Ghost content/themes/ directory and restart Ghost.

 

Development

Noir uses Gulp to compile CSS and JavaScript.

Prerequisites

• Node.js v18+
• A running Ghost instance

Commands

Command	Description
npm run dev	Start development mode with live reload
npm run build	Build CSS and JS for production
npm run zip	Build and create a zip in dist/
npm run test	Validate theme with GScan
npm run test:ci	Run GScan in strict/fatal mode

File structure

noir/
├── assets/
│   ├── built/           # Compiled CSS and JS
│   ├── css/             # Source CSS
│   ├── fonts/           # Self-hosted: Plus Jakarta Sans, EB Garamond, JetBrains Mono
│   ├── images/          # PhotoSwipe lightbox assets
│   └── js/              # Source JavaScript
├── locales/             # Translation files (13 languages)
├── partials/
│   ├── components/      # Navigation, header, footer, CTA, featured, post-list
│   ├── icons/           # SVG icon partials
│   └── typography/      # Font loading partials (sans, serif, mono)
├── default.hbs          # Main layout template
├── home.hbs             # Custom homepage
├── index.hbs            # Paginated post archive
├── post.hbs             # Single post template
├── page.hbs             # Static page template
├── tag.hbs              # Tag archive template
├── author.hbs           # Author archive template
├── error.hbs            # Error page
└── package.json         # Theme metadata and build config

 

Configuration

All settings are available in Ghost Admin → Settings → Design & branding → Customize.

Typography

Setting	Options	Default
Title font	Modern sans-serif / Elegant serif / Consistent mono	Modern sans-serif
Body font	Modern sans-serif / Elegant serif	Modern sans-serif

Homepage

Setting	Options	Default
Header style	Landing / Highlight / Magazine / Search / Off	Landing
Post feed style	List / Grid	Grid
Show images in feed	On/Off	On
Show author	On/Off	On
Show publish date	On/Off	On
Show sidebar	On/Off	Off
Show featured posts	On/Off	Off
Background image	On/Off	On

Post

Setting	Options	Default
Show post metadata	On/Off	On
Drop caps on posts	On/Off	Off
Show related articles	On/Off	On

Opinion section

The homepage opinion row filters posts tagged opinion. To use a different tag, edit home.hbs line 103:

{{#get "posts" filter="tag:your-tag-slug" include="authors,tags" limit="4"}}

 

Credits

• Based on Source by Ghost Foundation (MIT)
• Built by Luis Assardo
• Typography: Plus Jakarta Sans by Tokotype · EB Garamond by Georg Duffner · JetBrains Mono by JetBrains
• Lightbox: PhotoSwipe by Dmitry Semenov

 

License

MIT — free to use, modify, and distribute.