Sounding

Requirements

Sounding runs on Ghost 6.0 or newer and needs Administrator or Owner access to install. It works on Ghost(Pro) and on self-hosted installations.

You need your audio files, or a podcast host such as Transistor, Buzzsprout or Springcast. No page builder, external font service or custom integration is required, and the theme works on Ghost's default routes: no routes.yaml changes.

Install

Before changing a live site, export your content and settings and keep a copy of the active theme.

1. 1.In Ghost Admin, open Settings > Theme and choose Change theme.
2. 2.Click Upload theme and choose sounding.zip exactly as you downloaded it.
3. 3.Click Activate once the upload finishes.

Do not rename the file. Ghost names the installed theme after the zip's filename and stores your theme settings per theme name, so a renamed upload installs a second theme instead of updating this one.

Your first episode

Sounding treats a post as an episode. What makes the episode page work is the first card in the post.

1. 1.Primary tag. Give the post a primary tag for your show (the first tag in the tag list), for example My Show. Episode numbers count per primary tag.
2. 2.Audio card first. Make the first card an Audio card with your mp3. Sounding moves it into the coloured band at the top of the page, so play is the first thing a listener sees, on a phone too. The duration appears in the band and in every list. For a video episode, make the first card a YouTube or Vimeo embed, or a Video card: it takes the player's place.
3. 3.Excerpt. The excerpt is the short introduction under the band and the description in every list.
4. 4.Feature image (optional). It fills the band behind the title. Without one, the band is a plain field in your accent colour.
5. 5.Shownotes. Write them below the player. Headings such as Sources, Links or Credits become small labels; put a long transcript in a Toggle card titled Transcript so it stays folded until opened.
6. 6.Access. Under Post access, choose Public, Members only or Paid-members only. Locked episodes still show their number, title and excerpt, with a way to sign up or upgrade where the player would be.

Give a post the internal tag #bonus and it is left out of the numbering, so episode 12 is still followed by 13.

First steps

1. 1.Title and description. Set your show's name and a one-sentence description under Settings > Title & description. Sounding shows it on the homepage and in the footer.
2. 2.Branding. Under Settings > Design & branding, upload a logo (optional; Sounding falls back to your title) and set an accent colour. The accent is your show's colour: it fills the episode band, tints the Start here section and marks episode numbers.
3. 3.Customize. Under Design & branding > Customize, write your homepage statement and choose a colour scheme. Every setting is listed below; leave them at their defaults and the site still works.
4. 4.Navigation. Under Settings > Navigation, add your primary links, for example Home, Archive and About. Keep it to five.
5. 5.Social accounts. Ghost fills X and Facebook with its own accounts on a new site. Clear or replace them, or your footer links to Ghost.
6. 6.Membership. Under Settings > Membership, choose who can sign up and connect Stripe for paid members. Tiers and prices are edited in Ghost Admin only.

Listen links

Under Settings > Navigation > Secondary navigation, add one link per place your show can be heard. Sounding recognises these services by their address and shows their logo: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Castbox and Podcast Addict; Amazon Music gets a neutral icon. An address containing rss or starting with feeds. gets the RSS icon.

For RSS, use the feed from your podcast host. Ghost's own /rss/ lists your posts, not your audio, and podcast apps won't accept it.

Listen links appear under the homepage player, on every audio episode, on the About page and in the footer's Listen column. On an episode that opens with a video they are left out under the video, so they don't read as "this video is on Spotify". Any other secondary link goes to the footer's More column. Service names and logos belong to their owners and are only used to link to your show on that service.

Start here

The homepage can show a short Start here section: a few episodes that introduce your show to someone who has never heard it. Add the internal tag #start-here to three or four episodes; they appear in their own tinted section, oldest first. Without episodes carrying the tag, the section is not shown.

Prefer another tag? Enter its slug under Start here tag. An internal tag #best-of has the slug hash-best-of.

Pages and hosts

Create these as ordinary Ghost pages and choose the matching template in each page's settings panel. A template appears in the list only after the theme is activated.

Your hosts are Ghost staff users: name, photo, bio and location in Settings > Staff. Each host gets a page with their episodes.

Theme settings

Found under Settings > Design & branding > Customize. Every setting has a safe fallback: leaving a text setting empty, or never opening the panel at all, produces a fully working site.

Site-wide

Homepage

Episode

The footer is built from Ghost's own settings: your site title and description, a Listen column with your listen links, a More column with any other secondary links (hidden when empty), and a Follow column with a newsletter or account link, RSS and your X and Facebook links when set.

The Archive page

The Archive lists every episode of your show, newest first, numbered, with duration and date; #bonus episodes are listed without a number. It shows the show of your latest episode. If you publish more than one show on the same site, each show's full list is its tag page, which Sounding styles as a show page with its own cover, description and listen links.

Ghost limits every theme data request to 100 results. For a weekly show that is about two years. Past 100 episodes, the Archive lists the 100 most recent and links to the show's tag page, which is paginated and reaches every episode.

A fully paginated archive is possible with a routes.yaml collection, but a collection also becomes the canonical URL of every post it matches, which would quietly change the address of every episode on your site. It is not the default; write to us and we will walk through what it changes before you turn it on.

Members and the private feed

Sounding uses Ghost's native membership system and styles it. Sign in, sign up, account and upgrade open Portal. A locked episode keeps its number, title and excerpt in the band and offers the right next step where the player would be: sign up for visitors, upgrade for free members. Comments and Ghost Search are styled in both colour schemes. Paid tiers need Stripe connected to your Ghost site.

With Ghost's Transistor integration (Settings > Integrations), paid members can follow your paid episodes in their own podcast app through a private feed. Turn on Private feed in the theme settings and Sounding shows paid members a Get your private feed button after each episode and on the About and Subscribe pages. It opens their Ghost account, where the integration lists the feed and the app to add it to. Sounding never stores or shows feed addresses itself: every member's feed is personal. Not using Transistor? Leave Private feed off.

The private feed is Transistor's service, not part of Sounding: it needs a Transistor account on a paid plan that includes private podcasts, which is not included with Sounding. Supported setup: Ghost 6.0 or newer with the Transistor integration connected, a private podcast at Transistor, and Private feed on in the theme settings (tested with self-hosted Ghost 6.71, October 2026). Without Transistor everything else works the same, and a locked paid episode offers the full archive instead. Changes on Transistor's or Ghost's side are outside Aftertype's control; we update Sounding where a change affects the theme.

For a paid member the route is Account > Podcasts > View: Transistor opens their personal access page, where they pick their podcast app (Apple Podcasts, Pocket Casts, Downcast and others). Only members who have access under your podcast's rule in Transistor see the Podcasts row, so test it signed in as such a member.

Colour and dark mode

Colour scheme is a theme setting: Light and Dark use Sounding's paper or near-black palette for every listener, and Auto follows each listener's device. If your logo is dark, upload a light version as Dark mode logo, or it will disappear on dark paper.

Your accent colour fills the episode band and is kept wherever it is readable. Where it would be too faint to read as text, Sounding shifts it towards the text colour just enough, keeping its hue, separately in light and dark.

Localization

Interface labels (Subscribe, Hosted by, episode counts and so on) come from Ghost's locale files. The theme ships English and Dutch; choose the language under Settings > General > Publication language.

Updates

Free updates for as long as Sounding is actively maintained, including updates for new major Ghost releases.

Uploading a new theme zip under Settings > Theme replaces the theme files only; your episodes, settings and navigation are untouched. Always upload sounding.zip under its original name so the update replaces the installed theme and keeps its settings, and keep the previous zip until you have checked the update.

Troubleshooting

These are the questions that come up most often.

Still stuck? Write to support@aftertype.studio with your Ghost version, the theme version and a link or screenshot.