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Smart 2.0

My beautiful, free Ghost theme, Smart, has been totally redesigned and updated for version 2.0. Jam-packed with features, it's perfect for creators, writers, and coders.

by Ryan Feigenbaum

Smart 2.0
Photo by National Cancer Institute / Unsplash

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Smart 2.0

Smart 2.0

With the release of Ghost 5, I took the opportunity to completely overhaul my free, open-source theme Smart. The introduction of custom settings in Ghost opened up a host of possibilities so that Smart could better live up to its name.

Splashy image for Smart theme, with a mobile preview

The basics

Smart is decked out with features, but importantly it also covers the basics:

various devices with screenshots of website

Features 🆕

Compatible with the latest and greatest Ghost features

Support for Ghost search and comments, right out of the box.

Light/dark mode toggle

Advanced logic automatically switches your site from dark to light mode (and vice versa) based on your visitor's system preferences. Smart also includes a button for users to manually set the color preference, which is remembered across visits. Finally, there's a toggle to set your default (dark or light) when a user has no preference set.

Automatic color palettes

This is one I'm excited about 🎨. Setting an accent color in Ghost Admin will generate an entire color palette for your site, including a complementary color and variations for light and dark modes. Change the whole look of your site with just a few clicks.

Follows menu

Add custom social media icons to the Follow menu to share your socials. Over 20 different social media platforms are available! This setting is available from the Design menu in Ghost Admin.

Smart theme follows menu

Share menu

A share menu makes sharing your content easy, either by copying a link to the clipboard or generating dynamic links to relevant social media platforms.

Saves

Your visitor can share their faves by clicking the heart icon. Not only are saves saved across visits (in the same browser), but so is the progress through the article. This means that visitors will be brought right back to where they stopped reading in their previous session.

Smart theme Saves menu

Syntax highlighting

For devs, you can turn on code syntax highlighting with the flick of a toggle. Available in Design settings in Ghost Admin.

const sum = (a,b) => {
    return a + b;
}

sum(3,4)
Syntax highlighting demo

Demo

This current site, on which you're reading this article, is using Smart theme (goodbye Inline for now), but there's also a demo site that includes documentation. Check it out!

Smart | An elegant Ghost theme
An elegant, free Ghost theme for publishers, creators, coders, and writers. Including features like a built-in contact form and syntax highlighting, automatic color theming, dark mode, and more. Created by Ryan Feigenbaum.

Download

There are two ways to get the theme.

Clone the GitHub repo:

GitHub - royalfig/smart: A theme for the open source Ghost CMS.
A theme for the open source Ghost CMS. Contribute to royalfig/smart development by creating an account on GitHub.

Download the theme:

Smart theme

Download and go 🏃‍♂️🏃‍♀️🏃

Download