Seeking Solution to Pre-publish Customization in Homepage Themes

Hello,

I am currently developing a homepage theme with customizable options in specific sections. For instance, section A can be modified to have a blue background, whereas section B can be personalized to green. To maintain user-friendliness, I’ve intentionally constrained the selection range to prevent the need for code-level alterations.

The challenge I’m encountering relates to the “Design settings” section. At present, a user can only visualize and customize the new post within this section once it has been published. This feature allows them to match the background color to the post picture color, for instance. However, as per my understanding, there’s no provision to modify the “Design settings” when the posts are still in draft status. This can be problematic since adjusting the design after a post is published seems belated.

Could anyone provide a workaround for this predicament? Ideally, I’m seeking a solution that enables users to personalize the theme prior to the article’s publication.

Thank you for considering my request. Please let me know if you need any additional information to understand the issue better.

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Welcome mate @rogi

It would be great to be able to customize the homepage for sure. Let’s hope other exp members chip in here.

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@rogi I would like to better understand both your current issue and where you are headed with this.

Is a “section” (like section A) a part of a post/page, or is it a collection of posts/pages?

Also, where is the “Design settings” section?

A search on this forum for section yields these results…

https://forum.ghost.org/search?q=section

Hello @denvergeeks,

Thanks for your prompt response. Let me clarify my use of the term “section” - it refers to a collection of posts, although in my scenario, it is applicable to a single post. For a better understanding, consider the Okiro theme where certain posts are presented in a “section” distinguished by a unique background color.

The creators of the Okiro theme tackled this challenge using internal tags - a strategy that I’ve adopted as well. While effective, I don’t believe this to be an optimal solution, especially when dealing with a large volume of posts. If you have hundreds of posts, it could potentially result in an equal number of tags, making management quite complex.

In my implementation, I opted for a custom setting that allows users to select their preferred color. However, I’ve encountered a limitation. When users navigate to the Design settings, they’re only able to see and modify already published posts. Consequently, the most recent post’s color can only be updated post-publication.

Ideally, I’d like to extend the functionality of the Design section to include Draft posts, enabling users to adjust the color before hitting the publish button. Unfortunately, I’ve yet to find documentation that can guide me through this process. I would greatly appreciate any insights or suggestions on how to accomplish this.

@rogi Where are the “Design settings” or the “Design section” you are referring to?

Also, have you considered Content snippets? CSS could be inserted using snippets.

You can find the “Design setting” in Settings → Design on the Ghost dashboard. The “Site design” in the side nav.

The “Site-wide” is where the custom features are placed. It can be color, font and so on.

This is the place where the user can customize the site. But only the published posts is displayed in the preview.

But I think my issue is too specific, to be honest. A better is probably to change the design.

Thanks for your support