Verse
A quiet, book-like Ghost theme for fiction, serials and poetry, with reader settings, a bookshelf of serials, chapter navigation and "continue where you stopped".
// overview
About Verse
Verse is a quiet, book-like theme for fiction, serials and poetry. Reader settings, a bookshelf of serials, chapter navigation and 'continue where you stopped' make long reading on the web feel like reading a well-made book.
Who it is for
- You publish short stories, poems or a novel in chapters
- Your readers read long pieces and come back later
- You want a page that feels like a well-made book
- You sell memberships for the later chapters
Probably not for you if
- You run a news site with many posts a day — see Gazette
- You write a technical blog with code — see Stack
- You need a photo-led magazine — see Atelier
Pages and layouts
Page templates: Topics (the library), Writers, Membership, Signin, Signup, Account.
Extra post layouts: Poem.
Getting set up
- Books: create a tag for each serial with a slug that starts with book-, an upright cover image and a description.
- Chapters: put the book tag first on each chapter, so the book is its primary tag. Chapters are ordered by publish date.
- Lead story: mark a story as Featured. The newest featured story leads the homepage.
- Upload the theme zip in Ghost Admin → Settings → Design, then fill in the theme settings.
- Import the sample content if you want to start from the demo and replace it with your own posts.
What you download
- The theme, ready for Ghost 6.0 or later (verse_1.0.0)
- Documentation in HTML
- Sample content you can import into Ghost
- 12 months of updates and support from the people who built it
Requirements
A Ghost 6 site: Ghost(Pro) on a plan that allows custom themes, or self-hosted Ghost. Memberships and paid tiers use Ghost's own members feature and its Stripe connection; the theme adds the pages and the paywall design. Demo photos are not included in the download.
// features
What's included
- Reader settings (the Aa button): five text sizes, three pages (paper, white, night) and serif or sans text; the choice is remembered with no flash on the next page
- Focus mode: press F to hide everything but the story, Escape to come back
- Serials: a book is a tag whose slug starts with book-; its posts become chapters in reading order
- Chapter pages show "Chapter 3 of 8", previous and next chapter, and the full contents
- A book page with the cover, a numbered contents list and a Start / Continue button
- Bookshelf on the homepage and the library page, with each reader's progress ("3 of 8 read")
- Verse remembers where each reader stopped: a "continue where you stopped" button on the story and a Continue reading box on the homepage
- A small "minutes left" note while reading
- Drop cap and small capitals at the start of each story; ⁂ for scene breaks
- Two post layouts: the story page and Poem, which keeps every line break
- Light (paper) by default, with a night page and a reader toggle
- Library and Authors page templates
- Membership page with tiers and a monthly/yearly switch; styled paywall for members and paid chapters
- Sign in, sign up and account pages
- Reading progress bar, image lightbox, galleries, callouts and toggle cards
- Self-hosted fonts (Cormorant, Literata)
- Fully translatable, 18 theme settings, no jQuery
Compatibility & tags
Changelog
v1.0.0 · 2026-09-30
- First release.
// faq
Questions about Verse
Read more about Verse
How to Publish Fiction and Serial Stories Online with Ghost
Serial fiction platforms own your readers. Your own site can feel like a well-made book instead, with chapters, reader settings and paid later chapters.
How to Build a Digital Garden with Ghost (and the Theme We Made for It)
A digital garden is a personal site that grows instead of a feed that scrolls. Here is how to build one on Ghost, with essays, notes, growth stages and sidenotes.
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