Theme recommendation for hybrid consultant-creative?

Themes
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Hi, I’m new to Ghost, but drawn to its small web politics/philosphy, especially after examining how much time and cost it would take to make (and keep) my Pressable WP site close to the same feature mix and performance.

But after paying for 1 month I see the current Ghost themes are all very siloed. They presume an either/or use of mediums. (Just podcasting, just vlogging, just blogging, just newslettering., etc.)

Here’s my content strategy roughly:
I’m developing an integrated content strategy that honors both the inherent nature of different digital media and my commitment to mindful, embodied practices. My YouTube channel features meditative ASMR-style silent videos documenting public spaces, captured after spending time grounding myself in each location. My podcast deliberately records conversations in public spaces, using environmental audio to create a sense of place and challenge the standard NPR-style format. My writing, while my most challenging medium, focuses on creating enduring, well-researched pieces that respect digital text’s logical nature while incorporating thoughtful pauses through typography and structure. All content creation aligns with natural rhythms - leveraging morning and late-night sanctuary times when my city (NYC) is quieter - and follows a ‘small web’ philosophy that prioritizes sustainable growth and human-scale relationships over rapid scaling. The strategy emphasizes mindful social practices for maintaining and renewing digital content over time, similar to how Buddhist temples survive through consistent community care rather than permanent structures.

Are there any themes made for hybrid multi-medium types like me?

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Not sure how having audio or video is any different, more maybe you need to explain how you think they have to be used and what roadblocks your hitting in trying to achieve some specific look or feel.

Yes most free themes have a focus, because they are leveraged at specific audiences but if you choose to learn handlebars and CSS or pay someone you can make loads of layouts and presentations.

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Thanks @digitalresidue, I’m a user-centered product pro, and I started out as a web developer, so I’m pretty comfortable with coding. I’ll definitely check out Handlebars and the Ghost theme support docs.

My initial impression of Ghost is that, given its roots in WordPress development, I was expecting paid accounts to have a decent set of blocks for common UI patterns, like you get from GeneratePress or Blocksy.

I’m really impressed with how Ghost handles server and CMS admin work. It’s labor-saving and a performance boost compared to managing a stack of WP plugins and hosting equivalents to get the same webtest scores. But I’m a bit puzzled by the lack of block patterns. I don’t like the bloat and bad CMS UI of Webflow and Squarespace (nor their closed source model), I assumed Ghost would have a more practical balanced approach, like a middle ground between those two extremes in terms of its web UI design approach (Bloated CMS that does it all vs. Developer custom code DIY.) This could all be just first impressions, and want to learn more since what I see so far (even with paid themes) is different than what I expected.

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Ghost is publishing focused, its not Gutenberg and shouldnt be. Publishing doesnt need weird bells and whistles it needs to read good, be presented well, and preferably not allow content theft when memberlocked.

Honestly Ghost has nothing to do with WordPress, if anything they took the right parts of the concept of web. publishing and focused on that. Blocks and editor crap are bloat and generally serve no purpose.

I’m still unsure what a “block” gives you, its text, an image, or video per paragraph or content area. What are you thinking you have to make as it will tell whether youre making it difficult because its difficult or because your trying to make it harder than it is.

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Appreciate the help in explaining my goals and learning the Ghost way.

I’m referring to good interaction design and user experience design in the interface and the common type of UI patterns used repeatedly and the value of using good human-centered design (HCD) principles.

The DIY method often leads to efficient yet really bad UX if there’s no understanding of HCD and other UX standards’ needs like accessibility. Designing patterns for common UI elements helps keep usability consistent for users.

This is what I’m talking about in principle:

Patterns in Guttenberg page builders and block themes are just one technical way to solve for that. And there are many other ways in past and present CMS system designs.

Regardless of technical solution (from cold fusion days to guttenberg or others) there are good patterns for different UI and it’s useful to have patterns handy instead of one off layouts that can quickly diverge.

I’m talking about usability focused good clean “just enough” web UI design. I too dislike gratuitous aesthetics that have usability problems, are often gimmicks, and aren’t focused on equitable usability, content, or performance. Even in WP I’ve always used minimalist, web standards based, and performant themes. Less is more.

About my goal it’s definitely more complex given Ghost’s print-centric publishing paradigm. I want to host my entire consulting site and content feeds on a Ghost site rather than have Ghost function as a separate “newsletter” tool like many use substack for.

I want a more holistic user experience and to leverage Ghost’s amazing hosting performance and security so I can focus on content and instead of burning hours as a webmaster as we used to call sever and app admin work in the early days of the web in the 1990s.

So far I’m exploring in Ghost how I can “publish” my consulting work with services lists, portfolios, case studies, and several landing pages for different sales funnels.

I also want the same Ghost site to have my newsletter, and integrate with Transistor for my podcast, so I can ideally offer paid tiers that offer select premium podcast and newsletter content.

And also showcase a feed of my videos (hosted on YouTube, PeerTube, and elsewhere).

I have so much to learn. Right now am assessing the feasibility of all this and the time/cost benefit of an all-Ghost “hub” solution vs having 3 or 4 separate sites for users.

Any Ghost pro advice is welcome :pray:t4:

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I mean these are as simple as using a custom hbs (handlebars) template and using routes to sort data there when it has a specific tag. These show way more custom things allowed when configured.

Partials can give you power within a theme to do custom things:

So Tags meant for content focused on specifics:

  • services lists
  • portfolios
  • case studies
  • podcast
  • videos

making these with custom routing can stop them showing in the blogroll and homepage and divert, or leave them on the homepage its all down to however you want to split it all up.

Then Landing pages you build page template hbs file like a “landing page” template without header and footer where you show only content and build within the editor alone.

People like @Cathy_Sarisky and others are far more into the complete customization side and can call me out if I made things ound too easy or too hard.

Honestly, Handlebars, Routes, Redirects, Collections

The amount of resources is staggering but read, test, try out… its not fast at first as you learn. If you have money people make fully custom things to help you get what you want in a speedy manner but they aren’t inexpensive.

If you want to see others sites Ghost has a huge list (and you can submit your own):

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Super helpful @digitalresidue thanks for the time, this is what small web and commons culture is all about :raised_hands:t4: The welcoming-ness of any new FOSS group is something I pay attention to a lot.

I’ll spend a good chunk of hours reading Ghost docs & posts this weekend.

Already I think a better way to rephrase my original question in this thread is more like this:

  1. How can I get more Editor Cards?
  2. Are there “card packs” I can buy? (this is what I meant by Blocksy-like prebuilt templates/blocks.)

As in Notion, with more Editor Card types I can go far; without even doing manual custom theme code edits (which I still need to learn how to do in a scalable way and avoid hard forking myself into a corner.)

So far it feels like due to smaller number of Editor Cards than the equivalent of what I have in Notion I could almost just use Notion for my site (if I didn’t have other needs that Ghost offers.)

As a product pro I appreciate the product-market-fit and product-business-fit challenges all at play in all this. As a customer I just want to bang out my new site, lol.

(This was my initial buyers remorse with Ghost Pro, I expected a wider variety of Editor Cards for common web ui-patterns to get up and running with a new site fast.)

I searched in the tutorials for more on Card creation and didn’t find exactly what I was looking for more info about, likely due to not (yet) knowing the Ghost lingo to ask for, but the closest was this:

Which is amazing.

But I still wish I could get/buy more Editor Cards for common ui-patterns. Any tips on this would be great to learn more about :pray:t4:

Back to reading up more. Thanks again!

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I am assuming you mean the tools provided in the editor when you start with the slash?

Those are built in and since not “theme” related I don’t recall seeing ways to add them as they are part of core Ghost (but also assume you could submit them if you coded them and they were accepted).

Many show you how to adjust product cards, or create html blocks, CSS to adjust cards or to add your own things that after CSS look and appear similar:

Good places to learn adapting tools or adding html elements to create what you are looking for:
https://www.spectralwebservices.com/blog/

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