In Ghost CMS, the post.hbs file is a handlebars template file that is used to
display individual blog posts on the website and contains the code and markup
that is used to structure and style the layout of individual blog posts.
This usually includes elements such as the post title, author, publication date,
feature image and the post content.
Changing the template
If you want to make changes to your default post template, you must edit the post.hbs
file of your theme. Of course, if you just want to make stylistic changes, then
those can be done from Code Injection without changing the theme files.
However, if you want to add some new elements or change the layout of the template,
then you have to edit the file. For this you need to download the theme zip.
Open the post.hbs file in an editor, make your changes and then reupload the
changed theme.
Tip
Keep a copy of your original theme zip before making changes. It makes it much easier to revert if you introduce a template error.
Adding custom templates
At some point, you might want to add a new layout for some of your posts, maybe a limited series with a bespoke style, or some useful element, like a sidebar, etc. Ghost makes it easy to create custom templates for just such occasions.
The most important thing to notice when creating custom templates for ghost is
that you have to prefix the template name by custom-. If you want to create a
new custom template for your podcast episodes then you can create a new file
with the following name custom-podcast-episode.hbs.
This file has to be created in the root folder of the theme.
Here's a detailed guide about creating custom template in Ghost.
Set another template as the default
Some themes come with multiple post template, we usually release theme with at least 4 templates you can choose from. In some cases you might want to change the default template with one of the other ones your theme has.
As mentioned before, the name of the custom template files starts with custom-
so you can easily identify the files.
To change the default template follow the steps below:
- download your theme files from the Ghost Admin
- rename the
post.hbsfile to something likecustom-old-default.hbs(or something more meaningful for your case) - rename the template you want to set as the default one to
post.hbs - zip the theme directory and re-upload it in Ghost Admin
Your posts that have the 'Default' template selected now should use your new template.
Note
If you only want a different layout for some posts (not all of them), keep post.hbs as-is and create a new custom-*.hbs template instead. Then select that template per post from the Post Settings sidebar.