Royce Documentation

Thanks for choosing Royce. Below you'll find everything you need to set it up and make it yours. If you have any questions that are not answered here, email us.

Theme Details

  • Ghost version: 6.38.0 and later
  • Theme version: 3.4.0
  • Last updated:
  • Changelog
  • Demo

Installation & Updates

Installation

To install Royce, follow these steps:

  1. Log in to your Ghost Admin at yoursite.com/ghost.
  2. Click Settings in the bottom left corner.
  3. In the Site section, click Theme.
  4. Click Change theme, then Upload theme.
  5. Drag and drop your theme’s .zip file, or click to browse and select it.
  6. Once the upload is complete, click Activate to apply the theme.

Updates

Your purchase includes all future updates for free. We announce new releases in our newsletter, and you can always check the latest version in the changelog.

To update Royce:

  1. Download the latest .zip using the download link from your purchase email.
  2. Log in to your Ghost Admin at yoursite.com/ghost.
  3. Click Settings in the bottom left corner.
  4. In the Site section, click Theme.
  5. Click Change theme, then Upload theme.
  6. Upload the new .zip. Ghost will detect the existing version and ask to overwrite it. Confirm to continue.
  7. Click Activate to switch to the new version.

Updating replaces the theme’s files. Anything you added through Code Injection or Ghost settings is safe, but if you’ve edited the theme’s code directly, back up your modified files before updating and reapply your changes afterward.


Getting Started

Publication Icon

A publication icon (favicon) is a square image that appears in browser tabs, bookmarks, and other places where your site is shown. For the best results, use an image at least 60 × 60 px.

To upload it:

  1. In your Ghost Admin, click Settings in the bottom left corner.
  2. In the Site section, click Design & branding.
  3. Click Customize.
  4. Under Publication icon, click Upload icon and select your image.
  5. Click Save.

Publication icon setting

A publication logo is your site’s main branding image. For the best results, use an image with a transparent background, such as a PNG or SVG.

To add a logo:

  1. In your Ghost Admin, click Settings in the bottom left corner.
  2. In the Site section, click Design & branding.
  3. Click Customize.
  4. Under Publication logo, click Upload logo and select your image.
  5. Click Save.

Publication logo setting

Instead of the publication logo, you can display a profile image in the sidebar.

To add a profile image:

  1. In your Ghost Admin, click Settings in the bottom left corner.
  2. In the Site section, click Design & branding.
  3. Click Customize.
  4. Switch to the Theme tab.
  5. Upload the Sidebar avatar image and fill in Sidebar avatar alt text field.
  6. Click Save.

Sidebar avatar setting in Ghost Admin

If neither a publication logo nor a profile image is provided, the theme displays the site title instead.

Publication Cover

The publication cover image is used as the background of the error pages. For the best results, use a high-resolution landscape image.

To add a publication cover:

  1. In your Ghost Admin, click Settings in the bottom left corner.
  2. In the Site section, click Design & branding.
  3. Click Customize.
  4. Under Publication cover, click Upload cover and select your image.
  5. Click Save.

Publication cover setting

The theme supports both Primary and Secondary navigation. The primary navigation is displayed in the sidebar, while the secondary navigation is displayed in the footer.

To set up navigation:

  1. In your Ghost Admin, click Settings in the bottom left corner.
  2. In the Site section, click Navigation.
  3. Click Customize.
  4. Add navigation items by entering a label and its destination URL.
  5. To configure the secondary navigation, switch to the Secondary tab.
  6. When you’re finished, click Save.

Navigation settings in Ghost Admin

Royce supports Ghost’s built-in social links. When configured, they are displayed in the theme’s sidebar.

To add social media links:

  1. In your Ghost Admin, click Settings in the bottom left corner.
  2. In the General settings section, click Social accounts.
  3. Enter the URLs for your social profiles.
  4. Click Save.

Adding social links

Need more social links? Ghost includes built-in fields for only a small number of social accounts. To add links to other social platforms, you will need to customize the theme. You can either download, edit, and upload the theme again, or make the changes directly in the Theme Editor. See Making Theme Customization Easier with Ghost’s Theme Editor for more detailed instructions.

You can customize the copyright text displayed in the footer directly from Ghost Admin.

  1. In your Ghost Admin, click Settings in the bottom left corner.
  2. In the Site section, click Design & branding.
  3. Click Customize.
  4. Switch to the Theme tab.
  5. Enter the text in the Copyright text field.
  6. Click Save.

Footer copyright text setting in Ghost Admin


Content & Pages

Homepage Header

Royce lets you display an intro section at the top of the homepage.

To edit the intro text:

  1. In your Ghost Admin, click Settings in the bottom left corner.
  2. In the Site section, click Design & branding.
  3. Click Customize.
  4. Switch to the Theme tab.
  5. Scroll down to the Homepage section and edit the Hero text field. Leave it empty to hide the intro section.
  6. Click Save.

Homepage hero setting in Ghost Admin

Featured posts are displayed in a dedicated section above the regular post feed on the homepage, using a larger layout to make them stand out.

To include a post in this section, mark it as Featured in the post settings.

Landing Page

Ghost lets you create custom landing pages without writing any code. By hiding the default page title and feature image, you can build completely custom layouts using the Header card and other cards available in the Ghost editor.

To hide the page title and feature image:

  1. Open the page in the Ghost Editor.
  2. Open Page settings.
  3. Turn off the Show title and feature image toggle.

Landing page setting in Ghost Admin

This is ideal for creating landing pages, FAQ pages, about pages, or any page with a custom design.

Drop Caps

Royce can display a drop cap at the beginning of posts and pages.

To enable or disable drop caps:

  1. In your Ghost Admin, click Settings in the bottom left corner.
  2. In the Site section, click Design & branding.
  3. Click Customize.
  4. Switch to the Theme tab.
  5. Turn the Enable drop cap option on or off.
  6. Click Save.

Drop cap setting in Ghost Admin

Syntax Highlighter

Royce includes the Prism syntax highlighter for automatic code highlighting in your posts.

To create a highlighted code block:

  1. In the Ghost Editor, type three backticks (```) and press Enter.
  2. Select the appropriate language from the Language dropdown.
  3. Write or paste your code inside the code block.

By default, the theme includes support for the following languages:

  • Markup
  • CSS
  • C-like
  • JavaScript

To add support for additional languages, visit the Prism download page, select the languages you need, and download the generated JavaScript file. Then replace the Prism code in the theme’s assets/js/post.js file with the contents of the downloaded file.


Membership

Members

Ghost’s built-in Members feature lets you turn your site into a membership business with member signups, paid subscriptions, and email newsletters.

When Members is enabled, the theme displays Subscribe and Sign in links in the sidebar, as well as a Subscribe box above the footer. Both the sidebar links and the subscribe button open the Ghost Members Portal.

You can also display labels on posts to indicate their access level (Free or Paid).

To configure post access labels:

  1. In your Ghost Admin, click Settings in the bottom left corner.
  2. In the Site section, click Design & branding.
  3. Click Customize.
  4. Switch to the Theme tab.
  5. Choose the desired option from the Post access labels dropdown. Select None to hide the labels.
  6. Click Save.

Post labels setting in Ghost Admin

Comments

Royce supports Ghost’s native commenting system.

To enable comments:

  1. In your Ghost Admin, click Settings in the bottom left corner.
  2. In the Membership section, click Access.
  3. Select the desired option from the Who can comment on posts? dropdown.
  4. Click Save.

Comment settings in Ghost Admin


Customization

Color Scheme

Royce is available in light and dark color schemes.

To change the color scheme:

  1. In your Ghost Admin, click Settings in the bottom left corner.
  2. In the Site section, click Design & branding.
  3. Click Customize.
  4. Switch to the Theme tab.
  5. Select a color scheme from the Color scheme dropdown.
  6. Click Save.

Color scheme setting in Ghost Admin

Accent Color

To change the theme accent color:

  1. In your Ghost Admin, click Settings in the bottom left corner.
  2. In the Site section, click Design & branding.
  3. Click Customize.
  4. Choose your color.
  5. Click Save.

Accent color setting in Ghost Admin

The default accent color for Royce is #D4A259.

Posts Per Page Number

By default, Royce displays 8 posts per page. To change this, edit the posts_per_page setting in the theme’s package.json file. For example, to display 10 posts per page:

"config": {
  "posts_per_page": 10
}

Save the file and upload the updated theme.

Alternatively, you can change this setting directly in the Theme Editor. See Making Theme Customization Easier with Ghost’s Theme Editor for step-by-step instructions.

Theme Translation

Royce is translation-ready and includes all theme text in the locales folder.

To add a new language:

  1. Copy locales/en.json to locales/[language_code].json, replacing [language_code] with a valid language code.
  2. Open the new file in any plain text editor.
  3. Translate the text values while keeping the JSON structure and keys unchanged.
  4. Upload the updated theme.

If your publication is in English, you can still customize any built-in theme text by editing locales/en.json. This lets you change labels, buttons, and other interface text without modifying the theme templates.

For more information about theme translations, see the Ghost translation documentation.

Custom Styles

Use Code Injection to add custom CSS without editing the theme files. Place your CSS rules in the Site Header field.

To add custom styles:

  1. In your Ghost Admin, click Settings in the bottom left corner.
  2. In the Advanced section, click Code injection.
  3. Click Open.
  4. Add your CSS inside the Site Header field using <style> tags.
  5. Click Save.

Code injection setting

For example, to make all headings semibold, add the following CSS:

<style>
  :is(h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6) {
    font-weight: 600;
  }
</style>

Custom styles

You can replace the example with your own CSS to customize the appearance of the theme.


Credits


Support

Didn’t find what you were looking for? Email us at support@justgoodthemes.com and we’ll be happy to help.

Bug reports and feature requests are welcome too. Hearing how you use Royce is what makes the theme better.