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# Fixes, Refinements, and Lessons Learned in Ghost Theme Development
- URL: https://www.nevillehobson.io/fixes-refinements-and-lessons-learned-in-ghost-theme-development/
- Published: 2025-09-21T13:53:58.000Z
- Updated: 2025-09-21T13:53:58.000Z
- Description: A week after rolling out my first Ghost theme customisation, I refined the site with fixes and improvements for a smoother reader experience. As a non-developer, I leaned on curiosity and ChatGPT-5 as my code guide, creating a clear workflow and versioning strategy along the way.
- Author: Neville Hobson
- Tags: Ghost, Studio6

A week ago, I rolled out the [first round of theme changes ](https://www.nevillehobson.io/refreshing-the-reader-experience/)on my [Ghost](https://ghost.org/?ref=nevillehobson.io) blog. That work set the foundation – adjusting layouts, navigation, and a few custom touches that made the site feel more my own.

Today marks the next step in the process: refining details, fixing quirks, and smoothing out rough edges to deliver an even better reading experience. I’m not a theme developer or programmer. My skillset is communication, not code. What I do have is curiosity, a willingness to experiment, and an acceptance that sometimes the only way forward is to take a leap in the dark.

That’s where ChatGPT-5 came in – acting as a kind of coder and knowledge wizard. It explained Ghost’s quirks, walked me through [Ghost's Handlebars templates](https://docs.ghost.org/themes?ref=nevillehobson.io), generated CSS tweaks, and helped me create a repeatable workflow.

Without that, most of these changes would never have made it past the idea stage.

As my story here goes a bit technical, here's the [TL;DR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TL;DR?ref=nevillehobson.io) if you prefer it:

💡

****Key Takeaways:**  
▪️ The first round of theme edits happened a week ago; today was about polishing and fixing.  
▪️ New blogroll, navigation, and footer now work more smoothly.  
▪️ I’m not a developer, just a curious user taking leaps in the dark.  
▪️ ChatGPT-5 provided the code guidance and workflow.  
▪️ Clearer versioning (v3.1.0) ensures easier future updates.

### What We Fixed and Improved

The journey wasn’t always smooth. There were stops and starts, discoveries and dead-ends. But each step built momentum, and each fix made the custom theme more reliable and consistent. Some highlights:

- **Navigation refinements** – expanding the primary navigation to allow five items before triggering the “More” dropdown, working around a limitation in the original [Neon theme](https://gbjsolution.com/ghost-themes/neon/?ref=nevillehobson.io) I built on.
- **Blogroll** – added to the footer, editable directly in Ghost Admin via secondary navigation. A simple idea, but it took some CSS wizardry to get the formatting and link behaviour just right.
- **Footer and sidebar consistency** – aligned widget titles (“Latest Posts,” “Featured Posts”), and made link styles consistent across sections.
- **Membership links** – fixing Ghost’s tendency to throw 404s for “Sign in” by connecting directly to Portal views instead.
- **Quirks discovered** – like Ghost’s habit of tying theme names to activation, which meant I needed a versioning strategy to avoid conflicts.

### Versioning and Workflow

All of this sits on top of a simple versioning strategy: today’s updates are released as **theme version 3.1.0**. That numbering matters – it gives me a way to track what’s live, what’s local, and what’s in development.

The workflow now looks like this:

- Local development in `D:\Ghost-Local`
- Iteration, testing, and fixing quirks in the local environment: Ghost locally installed on a Windows 11 PC, [Docker Desktop](https://www.docker.com/products/docker-desktop/?ref=nevillehobson.io) to manage the system, and [VS Code](https://code.visualstudio.com/?ref=nevillehobson.io) for editing and managing all theme files
- Packaging the theme as a versioned zip file
- Uploading it to the live site with confidence it won’t break anything (and being prepared to revert to the now-previous theme version in case)

It’s not the workflow of a professional developer, but it’s one that works for me.

### The Outcome

The result is a site that’s more consistent, more reliable, and a little more polished for readers. And equally important, a process that’s clearer and repeatable for me.

For a communicator with no coding background, that feels like a pretty good outcome.

If you’ve tried making your own Ghost theme tweaks, I’d love to hear how you handled versioning and workflow.

**Related Reading:**

- [Refreshing the Reader Experience](https://www.nevillehobson.io/refreshing-the-reader-experience/) (14 September 2025)