As a non technical user of Ghost I try to work my way around the need to edit files on the server as much as possible. Playing with themes I get forced to do that as there is no theme configuration panel in the admin interface (I’m spoiled ).
So my suggestion would be to add an Edit button/link in the admin interface to allow easy edit of theme files without the need to login to the server and do that manually. I know it’s not as simple of a task as it sounds but it would be a nice feature to have.
Hey @dsecareanu Logging in to the server and manually changing files is definitely not a recommended way to modify themes. I’m interested to hear where you saw that suggested or why you took that approach; we make pains not to suggest that route in our documentation as it’s painful as you’ve noticed
Anyway, in the “Design” screen of the admin area you can download the currently active theme, make changes, zip it up again and re-upload - that will do all of the things necessary to clear internal caches too so you don’t have to restart Ghost like you do if you’re modifying files directly on the server.
and if you’re using Casper be sure to checkout it’s Readme for how to ensure the CSS and so on is built correctly. If you’re using a different theme then check it’s readme for any other instructions.
One of the main things that would stop a theme edit interface is that themes can use any build pipeline the theme author wants. That’s not something that would be do-able via a theme editing interface without a lot of extra work and introduction of difficult if not impossible to work around security implications.
Yeah, I know that editing files on the server is not something that should be done as a routine operation but at that respective moment and for that small change this was actually easier than downloading the theme, modifying it and uploading it again.
However, as a non-developer user, I need to start learning to code first and get into the habit of doing things properly (local dev copy and so on), but I was thinking that maybe a simple file editing feature would help to just make small changes onto a theme directly into the admin panel.
I really think there needs to be something for editing the theme in the console UI itself as well… Not all users are pragmatically savvy enough to edit any given theme.
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Logging in to the server and manually changing files is definitely not a recommended way to modify themes. I’m interested to hear where you saw that suggested or why you took that approach; we make pains not to suggest that route in our documentation as it’s painful as you’ve noticed 
but at that respective moment and for that small change this was actually easier than downloading the theme, modifying it and uploading it again.
and get into the habit of doing things properly (local dev copy and so on), but I was thinking that maybe a simple file editing feature would help to just make small changes onto a theme directly into the admin panel.