Creator — Building a Ghost Theme (Work Log)

Building Creator, a free open-source multipurpose Ghost theme — documented step by step, in the open.

Build log 03 Jul 2026 1 min read

Part 3 — Cloning the Starter theme as the base

Rather than start from a blank folder, I forked Ghost's official Starter theme — it has the correct structure and build tooling baked in.

cd content/themes
git clone https://github.com/TryGhost/Starter.git creator
cd creator
npm install

Edited package.json — name, version, description, author. Ghost reads this for the theme name.

Restarted Ghost, uploaded/activated creator, confirmed the homepage renders.

Starter is intentionally minimal — a real starting point, not a finished theme. Perfect base.