Vanta documentation

1. Overview

Vanta is a premium Ghost theme with its own design system: a dark-first look with cyan/violet accents, a light mode readers can switch to, and every feature controlled from Ghost Admin — no code edits needed.

• Dark & light mode with a reader toggle and an optional dark-mode logo
• Configurable hero, featured-posts showcase and three feed layouts
• Automatic table of contents, reading progress bar, focus mode, font resizer and text-to-speech player
• Syntax highlighting with a copy button for code blocks
• Share bar, breadcrumbs, image lightbox and infinite scroll
• Members, newsletter and comments support (Ghost Portal)
• Interface translated into 13 languages

2. Requirements

• Ghost 5.0 or later. Vanta is tested on Ghost 6.x and passes Ghost's official theme validator (GScan).
• Works on Ghost(Pro) and on self-hosted Ghost.
• No build tools are required to use the theme. Node.js is only needed if you want to edit the source CSS/JS (see Customizing).

3. Installation

Your download contains the theme as vanta.zip. Do not unzip it — Ghost installs the zip directly.

1. Log in to Ghost Admin (yoursite.com/ghost).
2. Go to Settings → Design & branding → Customize, then open Change theme (bottom left).
3. Click Upload theme and select vanta.zip.
4. When the upload finishes, click Activate.

4. Demo content (optional)

To start from the same content as the live demo, import demo-content/vanta-demo-data.json (included in your download package):

1. Go to Settings → Advanced → Import/Export.
2. Choose Import and upload vanta-demo-data.json.

The import adds 12 sample posts, 6 tags and 2 authors. Import it on a fresh or test site: it adds content alongside whatever you already have.

5. Site setup

Logo, icon and accent color

Set these in Settings → Design & branding → Brand. Vanta uses your accent color for buttons, links and highlights. The demo uses #7C3AED.

Navigation

Edit the header menu in Settings → Navigation. The secondary navigation appears in the footer. Tag pages work well as menu items, e.g. /tag/engineering/.

Author profiles

Author pages and the author card at the end of each post show the author's bio, location, website and social profiles (X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok — only the ones filled in appear). Edit them in Settings → Staff.

6. Theme settings

All options live in Settings → Design & branding → Customize, grouped into Site-wide, Homepage and Post.

7. Homepage & layouts

Feed layouts

• Grid — cards in a responsive grid. The default.
• Magazine — the first post is shown large, followed by the rest of the feed.
• Editorial List — a compact, text-first list.

Featured posts

Open a post in the editor, click the settings icon and turn on Feature this post. With Show featured section enabled, featured posts get their own showcase on the homepage.

Posts per page & infinite scroll

The homepage loads 27 posts per page. More posts load automatically as the reader scrolls.

8. Posts & reading tools

Table of contents

Vanta builds a table of contents automatically from the headings in each post. To hide it on a specific post, add the internal tag #no-toc to that post.

Code blocks

Code blocks are highlighted automatically and include a copy button. Set the language in a Markdown code block for best results (e.g. ```js).

Images & galleries

Images and gallery cards open in a full-screen lightbox when clicked. Vanta generates responsive image sizes so pages stay fast.

Reading tools

Readers can adjust the font size, switch to focus mode (hides everything except the article) and listen to the post. Each tool can be turned off in the theme settings.

9. Members & newsletter

Vanta works with Ghost's built-in memberships. When members are enabled in Settings → Membership, the header shows Sign in / Subscribe buttons and the homepage includes a newsletter box. Paid and members-only posts show Ghost's standard access message.

If comments are enabled in Settings → Membership → Commenting, they appear at the end of each post.

10. Translations

The interface is translated into Spanish, German, Swiss German, French, Italian, Dutch, Brazilian Portuguese, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese and Chinese (Simplified and Traditional). Irish and Scottish Gaelic fall back to English.

Vanta follows your site language, set in Settings → General → Publication language (e.g. es, de, pt-BR).

Adding or editing a language

1. Unzip vanta.zip and open the locales/ folder.
2. Copy en.json and name the copy with your language code (e.g. pl.json).
3. Translate the values (not the keys), zip the folder again and upload it as described in Installation.

11. Customizing

Without editing code

Use Settings → Code injection to add custom CSS or scripts to every page. For example:

<style>
  :root {
    --color-accent-cyan: #10b981;   /* secondary accent */
    --font-sans: 'Georgia', serif;   /* body font */
  }
</style>

Code injection survives theme updates, so it is the recommended place for small changes.

Editing the theme files

Ghost themes use Handlebars templates:

To work on the source files you need Node.js and pnpm:

pnpm install      # install dependencies
pnpm dev          # compile CSS/JS on every change
pnpm zip          # package the theme into dist/vanta.zip

Custom templates follow Ghost's naming rules, e.g. page-about.hbs for the page with slug about. See the Ghost theme docs.

12. Updating

All 1.x updates are free. Download the latest vanta.zip from where you bought the theme and upload it in Change theme → Upload theme. Ghost will ask to overwrite the existing Vanta theme — confirm, and your theme settings are kept.

13. Support

Every purchase includes 6 months of email support from the date of purchase, covering installation and theme features on supported Ghost versions. Custom development is not included.

Email [email protected] with your purchase code or order number, your Ghost version and a link to your site.

14. Changelog

1.0.3 — September 2026

• Author pages and author cards show icon links for X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.
• Screen-reader labels and lightbox controls are now translated.
• First visits now follow the reader's system light/dark setting; the toggle choice still takes priority.
• Fixed side margins on phones: content no longer touches the screen edges.
• Documentation included in the download package.
• License terms clarified; third-party credits listed in CREDITS.md.

1.0.2 — August 21, 2026

• Newsletter box title and description configurable from Ghost Admin.
• Complete interface translations for 13 languages.
• Fixed English strings in the comments section on non-English sites.

1.0.1 — August 21, 2026

• Initial public release.

Full history: planethemes.com/vanta/changelog

15. Credits

Full license notices are in CREDITS.md inside the theme. The theme itself is licensed as described in its LICENSE file.