Ghost Magazine Themes

A personal blog theme assumes one stream of posts and one author. A magazine breaks both assumptions on day one. Heron is our Ghost theme for publications with several sections, several writers and an archive worth navigating.

See the live demo Specs and pricing

Who Heron suits

  • News sites and online magazines covering several distinct sections
  • Publications with a masthead — multiple authors, each with their own page
  • Anyone whose archive has outgrown a single reverse-chronological list
  • Sites mixing free articles with paid subscriptions
  • Teams who want to change layout from settings rather than by editing templates

When to look elsewhere

  • One writer, one stream? Skylark is the general-purpose blog theme, and Verdin is free.
  • The newsletter is the product? Macaw and Beak are built for that.
  • Publishing episodes? Siskin has the audio player.
  • Need display ad slots as a built-in feature? Heron does not ship them; ad code goes in via code injection.

Where a blog theme starts to strain

The problems below only appear at volume, which is why they are easy to miss when you pick a theme early.

Many sections, all needing a shop window

Heron ships five homepage variants and a categories widget, so sections get real estate on the front page instead of being buried behind a tag link nobody clicks.

Volume that outgrows one layout

Three post listing layouts plus a sidebar toggle mean a section with four hundred archived posts can look different from one with twelve, without maintaining two themes.

Writers with their own followings

Author pages carry an avatar, bio, location, website and social accounts, an authors widget surfaces the masthead, and multiple authors per article are supported.

Readers who arrive from search and leave

Related posts, search, share buttons and a subscribe form after each article give a one-off visitor a reason to stay — the difference between traffic and an audience.

Heron Ghost magazine theme homepage
Version 2.0.0 · Ghost 5 and 6

Heron

A simple and powerful Ghost magazine theme for news and magazine websites. The point of Heron is that layout is configuration: homepage variant, listing layout, sidebar and dark mode are all settings, so the design can follow the publication as it grows.

Version 2.0.0, compatible with Ghost 5 and Ghost 6.

Heron homepage layout options in Ghost theme settings Homepage options — featured area, listing layout, sidebar and membership area.
Heron single post layout options in Ghost theme settings Single post options — author box, comments and related posts.
Heron site-wide options in Ghost theme settings Site-wide options, including dark and light mode.
Heron paid subscription and membership options for Ghost Turning readers into paid subscribers.

Specification

Price$99 one time, lifetime updates
Ghost version5.x and 6.x
Current version2.0.0
Homepage variants5
Post listing layouts3, with an optional sidebar
Dark modeYes, site-wide setting
WidgetsSocial accounts, authors, featured posts, categories
Multiple authorsYes, with full author pages
Members & paid tiersYes, with a subscribe form after each post
Also includedSearch, related posts, share buttons, responsive tables
DocumentationHeron setup guide
Live preview Full feature list and checkout

What you get for $99

One payment, no renewal required. The same terms apply to every premium theme we sell.

Lifetime updates

Improvements and Ghost-compatibility releases come at no extra cost, for the life of the theme. Each release lists exactly which files changed.

Six months of support

Setup questions, theme settings and bug reports are covered, and you can extend to a full year during checkout. Typical reply is well inside one business day.

Written documentation

Every theme has its own setup guide covering installation, theme settings and the details specific to that theme.

A licence for one website

One theme, one site. Need more? The Annual Subscription and Lifetime Access plans cover unlimited websites and include every theme.

Translation files

All themes are translation ready, so you can run the interface in a language other than English without editing templates.

15 days to change your mind

Full refund, no questions asked. Switching themes leaves your posts untouched either way, so nothing you have published is at risk.

Planning the structure first

Magazines go wrong at the information architecture stage, not the theme stage. Worth thinking through before you install anything.

Step one

Decide the sections

In Ghost these are tags. Five or six is usually right; twenty means readers cannot form a mental model of the publication.

Step two

Pick the homepage variant

Match it to how much you publish. A daily site and a monthly one want different front pages, and this is a setting rather than a rebuild.

Step three

Set up the masthead

Give each writer a full author page. It is the cheapest credibility signal a publication has, and it earns its own search traffic.

Step four

Decide what is paid

Only if you are charging. Ghost handles tiers and Stripe; Heron renders the locked articles and the subscribe prompts.

Questions

There is no theme-level limit; Ghost paginates the archive for you. The reason to choose a magazine theme is navigation rather than capacity — with several sections and a deep back catalogue, the homepage variants and listing layouts are what stop the archive becoming an undifferentiated wall.

Yes. The homepage variants, listing layouts, sidebar and dark mode are all theme settings, so you can change them in Ghost admin without editing templates or touching your content.

Yes. Multiple authors per post are supported, each with an avatar, bio, location, website and social accounts on their author page, plus an authors widget for the sidebar.

Paid subscriptions, yes — Heron supports Ghost members and tiers, so paid articles work out of the box. Display ad slots are not a built-in feature; ad code can be placed through Ghost's code injection or inside post content.

Yes, as a site-wide setting rather than something each reader toggles. It is one of the options in the theme settings panel, alongside the homepage and post layout choices.

No. Content in Ghost is stored separately from the theme, so activating a new one changes presentation only. Posts, tags, authors, members and URLs all stay exactly as they are — which matters most on a site with a long archive.

Publishing something other than a magazine?

Newsletter themes Podcast themes Link in bio theme All seven themes