Pod

A Ghost theme for podcasters. Made by Magic Pages.

Live demo → pod.magicpages.co

Pod turns your Ghost site into a full podcast home: a hero episode with a built-in audio player, an iTunes-spec RSS feed, and a /subscribe/ landing page that meets your listeners in whichever app they use.

No separate podcast host required. The point of Pod is that your Ghost site is the podcast host. Upload your MP3s to Ghost like any other file, add a few pod:* markers in the episode's code-injection foot, and the theme emits a full iTunes + Podcasting 2.0 RSS feed at /podcast/rss/. Submit that URL to Apple Podcasts, Spotify for Podcasters, Overcast, and the rest — they read your feed straight from your domain. One site, one subscription, one place your audience talks to you.

Episode page — sticky player, chapter list, show notes	/subscribe/ — 16 podcast apps, deep-linked

• 11-15 podcast apps — Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Castro, Castbox, Podcast Addict, AntennaPod, Podverse, Player FM, gPodder, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, RSS. Each one uses the deepest possible link — custom URL schemes where they exist, publisher-provided show URLs for closed catalogs.
• Podcast-native RSS — iTunes-spec feed with per-episode audio, duration, episode / season / type, and Podlove Simple Chapters. Passes Apple Podcasts and Spotify validators.
• Editorial cover art — self-hosted typography (Inter + Source Serif Pro
  • JetBrains Mono), light / dark / system color scheme, driven by your Ghost accent color.
• Full Ghost feature parity — comments, member portal, tiers, prev / next episode navigation, tags, authors, recommendations, newsletter signup.
• Localised — English, German, French, Spanish, Ukrainian, Italian.

Install

1. Download the latest pod.zip from the releases page.
2. In your Ghost admin: Settings → Design → Change theme → Upload theme → select the zip.
3. Activate Pod.

That's the theme itself. To turn on the podcast pieces, you'll also want to:

• Set the podcast custom settings (Design → Site-wide → Homepage): iTunes author, owner name/email, category, explicit flag, type. These populate the RSS feed's channel metadata.
• Install the bundled routes.yaml (Settings → Labs → Upload routes) so that /podcast/rss/ and /subscribe/ resolve. The file at routes.yaml is Ghost's default routes file plus the two entries Pod needs — upload it as-is on a fresh site. If you've already customised your routes, merge the two routes: entries from this file into yours instead of replacing it.
• Tag your podcast posts with the internal #podcast tag. That's the filter the RSS feed and archive templates read from.

Cover art. Pod ships a default 3000×3000 cover at assets/img/default-cover.jpg (~360 KB, well under Apple's 512 KB recommendation). It's used whenever an episode has no feature_image, or when the site cover is still Ghost's default placeholder — so a freshly-installed Pod site produces a valid iTunes feed on day one. Replace the file (keep the same path and dimensions) to ship your own default cover with the theme.

Each episode post uses Code injection → foot for the metadata that doesn't fit in Ghost's UI:

<!-- pod:audio=https://…/episode.mp3 -->    (optional; defaults to first <audio> in the post)
<!-- pod:audioLength=21524816 -->           (audio file size in bytes — improves player accuracy)
<!-- pod:duration=01:23:45 -->
<!-- pod:episode=12 -->
<!-- pod:season=1 -->
<!-- pod:explicit=false -->
<!-- pod:episodeType=full -->               (full | trailer | bonus)
<!-- pod:chapter=00:03:42|Chapter title --> (repeatable; rendered as PSC chapters)

Podcasting 2.0 (the podcastindex.org namespace) adds these:

<!-- pod:chapters=https://.../chapters.json -->     (PC2.0 chapters JSON URL)
<!-- pod:transcript=https://.../ep.vtt|text/vtt -->  (repeatable; add |en for language)
<!-- pod:person=Alice Smith|host|https://alice.example|https://.../alice.jpg -->
                                                     (repeatable; role/href/img optional)
<!-- pod:socialinteract=https://mastodon.example/@you/12345 -->
                                                     (fediverse comment root; add |activitypub|@you@host)

Channel-level Podcasting 2.0 tags (<podcast:guid>, <podcast:locked>, <podcast:funding>, <podcast:value>) are configured in Design → Site-wide — see the settings table below.

Configuration

All settings live in Ghost admin → Design → Site-wide once Pod is active.

Setting	What it does
color_scheme_default	Default color scheme for new visitors (Light / Dark / System).
itunes_author / itunes_owner_name / itunes_owner_email	Show owner metadata written to the RSS feed. Required for Apple Podcasts submission.
itunes_category	Primary Apple Podcasts category.
itunes_explicit	Channel-level explicit flag (per-episode override via pod:explicit=).
itunes_type	episodic (latest first) or serial (oldest first).
subscribe_apple_url	Apple Podcasts show URL. Empty falls back to the podcast:// URL scheme, which only works on iOS/macOS. Set this to your podcasts.apple.com/… URL after Apple approves your feed.
subscribe_spotify_url	Spotify show URL — required for the Spotify pill to appear.
subscribe_amazon_url	Amazon Music show URL.
subscribe_youtube_url	YouTube Music show URL.
subscribe_castbox_url	Castbox channel URL.
podcast_guid	Podcasting 2.0 <podcast:guid> — a UUIDv5 derived from the feed URL. Generate at podcastindex.org/namespace/1.0#guid. Persists across host changes.
podcast_locked	yes/no. yes means other hosts should not import this feed.
podcast_funding_url	Where listeners can support the show. Leave empty to fall back to Ghost's built-in tipjar (Portal → Support) when donations are enabled in your Ghost admin.
podcast_value_type	lightning enables Value 4 Value payments. none disables the tag.
podcast_value_address	Lightning node pubkey. Required for the <podcast:value> tag.
show_post_cta	Whether to render the "Keep Listening" CTA card at the end of each episode.
post_cta_heading	Heading for the CTA card.

Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Castro, Podcast Addict, AntennaPod, Podverse, Player FM and gPodder don't need any setting — Pod generates the deep-link URL from your RSS feed and show title automatically. Only the closed-catalog platforms above require a show URL.

Development

Pod is a plain Ghost theme — any local Ghost install will work.

Option A: Ghost's local dev

npm install -g ghost-cli
cd path/to/local-ghost
ghost install local

Then clone Pod into content/themes/pod (or symlink), activate it in the Ghost admin, and use the build commands below from the Pod directory.

Option B: Ghost via Docker

Any Ghost 5.93+ container will do. Bind-mount the theme into /var/lib/ghost/content/themes/pod and activate it in the admin.

Build commands

npm install                 # install build dependencies
npm run dev                 # Vite in watch mode — rebuild on change
npm run build               # one-off production build
npm run validate            # gscan against Ghost 6.x
npm run zip                 # package pod.zip for release

Template changes are picked up on the next request (Ghost re-reads .hbs files each render). Asset changes (assets/css/*, assets/js/*) require npm run dev or npm run build to regenerate assets/built/.

Structure

pod/
├── assets/
│   ├── css/main.css        # Tailwind entry
│   ├── js/main.js          # Player + color-scheme + Pod meta hydration
│   ├── fonts/              # Self-hosted woff2 sources
│   ├── img/default-cover.jpg  # Shipped RSS artwork fallback (3000×3000)
│   └── built/              # Vite output (gitignored — built by npm run build)
├── locales/
│   ├── en.json + de/fr/es/uk/it.json
├── partials/               # Reusable Handlebars partials
│   ├── audio-player.hbs
│   ├── cover-art.hbs
│   ├── header.hbs / footer.hbs / navigation.hbs
│   ├── subscribe-band.hbs  # Home / archive band
│   ├── subscribe-pills.hbs # Top-5 pills + more-link (shared by band & CTA)
│   └── subscribe-grid.hbs  # Full 10–16 platform grid on /subscribe/
├── podcast/
│   └── rss.hbs             # iTunes-spec podcast feed
├── subscribe.hbs           # /subscribe/ landing page
├── default.hbs / index.hbs / post.hbs / page.hbs
├── tag.hbs / author.hbs / error*.hbs
├── routes.yaml             # Ghost default routes + /podcast/rss/ + /subscribe/
├── tailwind.config.js / postcss.config.js / vite.config.js
├── package.json            # Theme metadata + custom settings + build scripts
├── CHANGELOG.md
├── CONTRIBUTING.md
└── LICENSE

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

Pod is MIT-licensed.

Third-party assets — the self-hosted fonts (Inter, Source Serif Pro, JetBrains Mono) — ship under their own licenses. See THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md for the required attribution and licenses/OFL-1.1.txt for the SIL Open Font License text.

Ghost® is a registered trademark of the Ghost Foundation. This theme is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Ghost Foundation.