Ghost will not read custom theme in content/themes. #436

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1. tianon commented on Apr 21, 2025

   

   tianon

   on Apr 21, 2025

   Contributor

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   I have to admit that my experience with Themes in Ghost is extremely limited -- from https://ghost.org/help/installing-a-theme/#installing-a-theme-manually, it seems possible that Ghost does not auto-discover themes in that directory and that more is required for it to pick them up, but perhaps that's inaccurate and something else is happening here? 🤔
2. tianon commented on Apr 21, 2025

   

   tianon

   on Apr 21, 2025

   Contributor

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   Ok, it took a lot of tries, and I got lost in some Ghost-specific details along the way, but the end result was success.

   I'm running https://github.com/tianon/rawdns locally (which is why I'm using url=http://ghost.docker:2368), I don't have a mail server (hence mail__transport=stub), and I don't want to set up a separate database just for testing (hence database__ stuff):

   $ # I start with `bash` instead of letting Ghost start since we need to restart Ghost after installing a theme and that was easier for me than doing this correctly with a volume, etc
   $ docker run -it --rm --name ghost --pull=always --env database__client=sqlite3 --env database__connection__filename=content/data/ghost-non-production.db --env database__useNullAsDefault=true --env url=http://ghost.docker:2368 --env NODE_ENV=development --env mail__transport=stub ghost bash
   root@96b1971bde38:/var/lib/ghost# # I started with "apt-get update" and "apt-get install git" so I can just "git clone" the theme later
   root@96b1971bde38:/var/lib/ghost# apt-get update
   root@96b1971bde38:/var/lib/ghost# apt-get install git
   root@96b1971bde38:/var/lib/ghost# # switch to the "node" user -- I should've used "--user node" instead but this is easy enough
   root@96b1971bde38:/var/lib/ghost# gosu node bash
   node@96b1971bde38:/var/lib/ghost$ # initialize all the content directories
   node@96b1971bde38:/var/lib/ghost$ docker-entrypoint.sh node current/index.js
   ...
   Ctrl+C
   node@96b1971bde38:/var/lib/ghost$ git clone https://github.com/TryGhost/Starter.git content/themes/starter
   node@96b1971bde38:/var/lib/ghost$ cd content/themes/starter/
   node@96b1971bde38:/var/lib/ghost/content/themes/starter$ npm install
   ...
   added 435 packages, and audited 436 packages in 4s
   ...
   node@96b1971bde38:/var/lib/ghost/content/themes/starter$ cd /var/lib/ghost/
   node@96b1971bde38:/var/lib/ghost$ docker-entrypoint.sh node current/index.js
   ...

   Now I was able to go in my browser to http://ghost.docker:2368/ghost/#/settings/design/change-theme and after setting things up I was able to successfully swap to my "Starter" theme.
3. TryGhost

   locked and limited conversation to collaborators on Apr 21, 2025
4. tianon

   converted this issue into a discussion #437 on Apr 21, 2025