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A free, open-source Ghost theme for building a paid-membership publication with a minimal design.
Pico is a free, open-source Ghost theme built for running a paid-membership publication, combining a minimal front-end design with a routes.yaml file that wires up member-specific pages on the Ghost platform.
Pico is a minimal, functional Ghost theme originally created by Paul Jarvis and Jack Ellis, now stewarded by the Ghost Foundation (TryGhost) and released under the MIT license. It takes a standard Ghost website and turns it into a paid-membership publication by including a custom routes configuration that enables sign-up, sign-in, and account pages for members. The theme provides the templates and styles for the public site, while Ghost's built-in membership engine handles payments and member management. The repository sits on GitHub under TryGhost/Pico and is maintained by the Ghost core team.
routes.yaml file that adds the routes needed for Ghost's free and paid membership features, such as signup, signin, and account pages.routes.yaml under Labs > Custom Routes.pnpm install, then pnpm dev to build and watch for CSS changes, and pnpm zip to package the theme into a distributable zip.Pico is for independent journalists, newsletter writers, and content creators who want to sell subscriptions to their writing using Ghost. It is also for developers building custom Ghost publications who need a clean starting point with membership support already configured. The minimal design suits publications that emphasize long-form articles rather than complex layouts.
zip task.Pico works as a standard Ghost theme, but it adds a crucial routes.yaml file that tells Ghost where to render member-facing pages. After uploading the theme zip under Design, you download the theme archive, extract routes.yaml, and upload it in the Ghost admin under Labs > Custom Routes. Once uploaded, the publication automatically gains the membership pages that wire into Ghost's payment and subscription backend. For development, styles live in /assets/css/ and are compiled by Gulp/PostCSS into /assets/built/, so you only edit the source CSS files.
Pico is completely free. It is an open-source theme released under the MIT license, so there is no cost to download, use, or modify it. You do, however, need a Ghost installation (self-hosted or Ghost(Pro)) to run it, which may have its own hosting costs.
Yes, Pico is released under the MIT license and is available at no cost. It is maintained by the Ghost Foundation as an open-source project.
Download the theme zip from the GitHub repository, then in Ghost admin go to Design > Upload a theme to upload the zip. Next, unzip the theme archive on your computer, locate routes.yaml, and upload it in Labs > Custom Routes. That configures the membership pages.
Yes. Pico is specifically designed for paid-membership publications. The included routes.yaml file activates the routes needed for Ghost's membership features, including sign-up, sign-in, and account pages, and it works with Ghost's built-in Stripe payment integration for paid tiers.
No. Basic installation only requires uploading two files through the Ghost admin. To restyle Pico beyond what the Ghost theme settings allow, you would need to edit the CSS source files and rebuild them using Node, pnpm, and Gulp, as described in the theme's development instructions.
Pico is licensed under the MIT license, giving you freedom to use, modify, and distribute the theme, including in commercial projects.
