Gatsby Ghost Novela Theme is a Gatsby theme plugin that turns a headless Ghost CMS into a static blog using the Novela design system, built by Draftbox and released under the MIT license.
What is Gatsby Ghost Novela Theme?
Gatsby Ghost Novela Theme is a Gatsby theme plugin that sources content from a headless Ghost CMS and generates a static website with the Novela design system. It replaces Ghost's default Handlebars frontend with a Gatsby-powered React frontend, producing fast, secure static HTML. Developed by Draftbox, it is open source and released under the MIT license.
Key Features
- Novela theme by Narrative — Ports Narative's award-winning Novela design system to Ghost blogs, featuring a clean editorial layout focused on readability.
- SEO optimized — Includes built-in meta tags and structured data to improve search engine visibility.
- Fully responsive — The layout adapts to mobile, tablet, and desktop screens, ensuring a consistent reading experience.
- Gatsby images — Leverages Gatsby's image processing for optimized, lazy-loaded images with responsive srcsets.
- AMP Pages — Automatically generates AMP HTML versions of posts to accelerate page loading on mobile devices.
- RSS Feed — Produces a standard RSS feed so readers can subscribe to blog updates.
- Contact & Subscribe Forms — Ships with contact and subscription forms for collecting email addresses and engaging readers.
- Extensible — Built as a Gatsby theme, allowing template and style overrides using Gatsby theme shadowing.
Who is it for?
- Ghost CMS users who want a faster, more secure static frontend without giving up Ghost's editing experience.
- Frontend developers who prefer React and want to build a custom blog frontend on a headless Ghost backend.
- Agencies and freelancers building blogs for clients, as the theme reduces development time and includes SEO, AMP, and social sharing out of the box.
- Indie hackers who want a low-cost, high-performance blog with minimal maintenance by exporting static HTML.
Use cases
- Turning an existing Ghost blog static — Migrate a Ghost site to a Gatsby static site to boost load times and reduce server costs.
- Scaffolding a new blog — Use the starter repo to quickly create a new blog connected to a headless Ghost CMS.
- Customizing a blog frontend — Use theme shadowing to modify layouts and components for brand-specific design.
How does it work?
You install the theme as a Gatsby plugin, configure your Ghost CMS API URL and content key, then run the Gatsby build process to generate a static site. The README provides a starter repo for quick setup, and local development uses yarn workspaces with an example site.
Pricing
Free — the project is open source and released under the MIT license.
Alternatives
- gatsby-theme-try-ghost — Another Gatsby theme for connecting Ghost CMS, which inspired this project but does not use the Novela design.
FAQ
Is Gatsby Ghost Novela Theme free?
Yes, the theme is released under the MIT license, so you can use it in personal and commercial projects free of charge.
How do I get started?
The recommended way is to clone the starter repository listed in the README. That gives you a working Gatsby site connected to Ghost. For existing projects, install the theme plugin and follow the theme-specific README.
Does it support AMP?
Yes, the theme automatically generates AMP Pages, a feature explicitly listed in the README.
Can I customize the theme?
Yes, the theme is composable and extensible. It leverages Gatsby theme shadowing, so you can override components and templates in your own project.
