lostenthought blog

The client already had a blog built with GhostCMS, and she wanted to improve it with some changes and customization. I've never done anything with GhostCMS, but since I know my way around in JS-based Tools and Frameworks, I adapted very quickly. I made Handlebars template improvement, created a whole new newsletter via ConvertKit, which I injected into one of the templates. Also, I did some customization of styling and significant UX improvements. The client was satisfied with my work, so we continued cooperation on another more substantial project.

Ghost is not a page builder, which is what made this worth doing properly. A theme is a set of Handlebars templates rendered on the server against Ghost's own context: a base layout, separate templates for the index, individual posts and the tag and author archives, and the helpers that drive the loops and pagination between them. Changing how the blog behaves means working inside that template layer rather than dropping a snippet into a visual editor.

The newsletter followed the same logic. Rather than leaving it as a floating hosted form, I built the ConvertKit sign-up into a template so it renders as part of the design and posts subscribers straight into the client's list. The styling and UX work was theme-level for the same reason: changes made in the templates apply everywhere the blog grows, not only to the posts that existed on the day.