I’ve been trying different ways to build startup websites, and I keep coming back to this weird combo: Ghost + TailwindCSS + Claude.
Think about what a startup actually needs to capture and grow an audience:
Landing page
Blog with good SEO
Member signup
Email newsletter
Ghost gives you everything except one thing - building custom landing pages kind of sucks. The editor isn’t made for that.
So here’s what I do now. I just ask Claude to generate the landing page I want (AI is better with TailwindCSS than pure CSS). Refine. Copy the code. Paste it into a custom Ghost template. Done.
I don’t think this is an unpopular opinion I mostly agree that AI can be used to create landing pages for Ghost (I also used for Synaps Media). But I should say, the result is still depends on your understanding about a good design. I, for example, am not good at design, and I should confess, the output of my AI-driven designs are the average of the internet (which is expected from AI). If you are already a designer (like you), than you have better chance to get better results.
This is the only part that I don’t agree. If you guide it well, Claude is also good to generate very nice CSS code. Also, I want to share my rant about Tailwind for Ghost themes:
I mean, if you are doing for yourself and if you like the result, almost every technical solution is good enough. But if you ask me, Tailwind is wrong tool for creating Ghost theme. When you define your style on your HTML with class names, you lose the flexibility and comfort of customizing styles with code injection. Of course you can still override tailwind styles but it’s way easier with a regular HTML + CSS coding style.
Plus, Tailwind makes your HTML 10 times bigger in size. And this costs you to increase HTML download times, in slow connections. CSS files are cached on browser but HTML not.
So my unpopular opinion is: HTML + CSS + AI (+ your design vision) is the formula
I’ve been using https://www.fantasma.io/ although development is proving too slow for my needs, but hanging in there as nothing else around. Intrigued by the level of your site. Happy to look into and explore. Thanks for the heads up.
Yes, I’m really interested in this space too. One of my biggest frustrations with Ghost themes is how wildly inconsistent they are, making customization, maintenance, and switching a nightmare—especially for non-coders like many of us.
For example, some include a landing page, blog, or timeline, while others skip basics like table of contents or share buttons, forcing manual code edits. And when the theme updates? You have to reapply all your changes manually. It’s time-consuming and error-prone.
In my case, my current theme lacks ToC and share buttons, so I paid a dev to add them—extra cost and time. Now, I’m eyeing a new theme with built-in ToC/shares, plus nicer fonts, animations, and sections. But it does not have blog, archive, and membership pages, which my site relies on (my blog and membership pages are linked in hundreds of posts). Plus, how do I even test it without risking my live site breaking?
In 2026, themes should standardize basics like customizable home/landing/blog/archive/membership/newsletter pages, TOC, share buttons, search, and easy testing previews. No more wrestling with code.
Hoping AI steps in soon to make this seamless, so we don’t have to wrestle with unadaptive themes anymore. Are there other non-coders struggling like me?
Head to Themes | Priority Vision click the announcement bar and head to their Fantasma project. Reach out to them and tell them of your struggles and what you’d like.
I mirror your desires.
They will be receptive to requests and if/when the pro version comes out, all the nice extras you see in there other themes can be a reality.
Right now, they are our best bet. Just need more eyes and interest on it to speed up production.
@muratcorlu Thanks for the detailed response. I appreciate it.
I agree that the output of TailwindCSS is very heavy, compared to pure CSS.
My issue with pure CSS and HTML is that it’s very long. I tried to use AI with it, but just after some iterations, I ran out of tokens. It’s because the combination of CSS + HTML is too big. That’s why I said AI is better with Tailwind.
I’m happy to know that similar combinations, though (HTML + CSS + AI), are also possible. Thanks for sharing.
I mostly agree that AI can be used to create landing pages for Ghost (I also used for Synaps Media). But I should say, the result is still depends on your understanding about a good design. I, for example, am not good at design, and I should confess, the output of my AI-driven designs are the average of the internet (which is expected from AI). If you are already a designer (like you), than you have better chance to get better results.