Atlas Vertical Documentation

Everything you need to install, configure, and get the most out of Atlas Vertical.

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Requirements

Before you start, make sure you have:

  • Ghost 6.x or later (Ghost(Pro) or self-hosted)
  • Access to Ghost Admin
  • Your Atlas Vertical theme zip file (downloaded from Lemon Squeezy after purchase)

That's it. No other software required.

Installation

  1. Log into Ghost Admin (yoursite.com/ghost)
  2. Go to Settings → Design → Change theme
  3. Click Upload theme
  4. Select the atlas-vertical.zip file you downloaded after purchase
  5. Click Activate

Your site is now running Atlas Vertical. The whole process takes about 60 seconds.

If you see an error during upload

Make sure you're uploading the zip file directly — not a folder, and not a zip of a zip. The file should be named atlas-vertical.zip and should be the file you downloaded from Lemon Squeezy without any modifications.

First setup

After activating the theme, go to Settings → Design → Customize.

You'll see two tabs: Brand and Theme.

Work through these in order before publishing any content.

Brand tab

  • Accent color — this is your primary brand colour. It appears on buttons, links, and highlights throughout the site. Set this first — it affects everything.
  • Publication icon — your favicon. Square image, at least 60x60px. Appears in browser tabs and bookmarks.
  • Publication logo — appears in the navigation header. If you leave this empty, your site title text shows instead. Recommended size: 200x50px or similar wide format.
  • Publication cover — a large banner image. Atlas Vertical does not display this on the homepage by default, so you can leave it empty for now.
  • Heading font — choose the font used for all headlines. Default is Merriweather.
  • Body font — choose the font used for body text. Default is Inter.

Theme tab

  • Phone frame — toggle on to display vertical video posts inside a phone frame. Recommended: on. This is the signature feature of Atlas Vertical.
  • Hero layout — controls how featured posts display on the homepage. portrait-video is the default and works best for vertical content.
  • Enable video feed — toggle on to activate the Video Feed page. Recommended: on.
  • Default theme — sets whether visitors see dark or light mode on first visit. They can always toggle themselves.
  • Nav style — text shows plain text links in the nav. Other options add button styling.
  • Nav button color — sets the colour of the nav button if you're using a button nav style.
  • Show publication intro — toggle on to display a large headline above the homepage feed. Good for stating what your publication is about.
  • Publication intro headline — the text of that headline. Keep it short — one line works best.
  • Publication intro alignment — center or left alignment for the intro block.
  • Related posts heading — the label above related posts at the bottom of each article. Default is "More from". Change it to match your publication's voice.
  • Home hero columns — sets whether featured posts display in 1 or 2 columns on the homepage.
  • Show post date — toggle off to hide publish dates. Useful if your content is evergreen.

Click Save when done.

Creating your first video post

In Ghost Admin, go to Posts and click New post.

Give your post a title. Then in the post editor, add a video embed as the first block. To do this:

  1. Click the + button to add a new block
  2. Select HTML or Embed
  3. Paste your video URL (YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, or Vimeo all work)
  4. Ghost will embed the video automatically

You can also upload the video directly.

Click + button (or type "/" on the first line) and select "video"

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The video needs to be the first piece of content in the post for the phone frame to appear. If you put text above the video, the phone frame will not activate.

Feature image

Feature images appearin the homepage grid and archive pages.

Use a vertical crop (portrait orientation) for best results. A still frame from your video works well.

Tags

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Add the tag #video and the video will appear on the video feed page.

Ghost requires at least one tag to every post.

Learn more about Tags.

Publishing

When you're ready, click Publish.

Your post will appear on the homepage immediately.

Go to Settings -> Navigation to configure your menu links.

Atlas Vertical has two navigation areas: primary navigation (shown in the header) and secondary navigation (shown in the footer).

Recommended primary navigation

  • Videos -> yoursite.com/videos/
  • About -> yoursite.com/about/
  • Buy Theme -> yoursite.com/buy/ (or your Lemon Squeezy link directly)

Recommended secondary navigation

  • Privacy Policy -> yoursite.com/privacy/
  • Terms of Use -> yoursite.com/terms/

The nav button

The last item in your primary navigation renders as a button rather than a plain text link. Put your most important call to action last -- for most publishers this is a subscribe link, a buy link, or a link to your most important page.

Video feed link - /videos

If you have Enable video feed turned on in the Theme settings, add a link to yoursite.com/videos/ in your primary navigation.

This is the dedicated vertical video feed page and is one of the strongest features of the theme.

Dark mode

Atlas Vertical includes a fully designed dark mode. Both modes are built from scratch -- dark mode is not just an inverted version of light mode.

How it works

Visitors see whichever mode you set as default in Settings -> Design -> Customize -> Theme -> Default theme. They can switch at any time using the toggle in the navigation bar. Their preference is saved and remembered on their next visit.

Setting the default

Go to Settings -> Design -> Customize -> Theme -> Default theme and choose dark or light. This is the mode first-time visitors see before they toggle.

Accent color in dark mode

Your accent color applies in both modes. If you choose a very light accent color, check that it still reads clearly against the dark background. A mid-tone or saturated color works best across both modes.

Testing dark mode

After making any design changes, check both modes before publishing. Switch using the toggle in your nav, or change your OS appearance settings – Atlas Vertical respects your operating system preference on first visit if no saved preference exists.

Troubleshooting

The homepage is empty?

You need at least one published post for the homepage to populate. Go to Posts -> New post, publish something, and the homepage will fill in automatically.

The phone frame is not showing

Check two things. First, make sure Phone frame is toggled on in Settings -> Design -> Customize -> Theme. Second, make sure your video embed is the first block in the post – text or images above the video will prevent the phone frame from activating.

The video feed page is not working

Make sure Enable video feed is toggled on in Settings -> Design -> Customize -> Theme. Then check that you have a navigation link pointing to yoursite.com/videos/

My accent color is not showing

Ghost has two accent color settings – one in the Brand tab and one in the Theme tab. Atlas Vertical uses the one in the Theme tab. Make sure you have set it there and clicked Save.

The theme looks unstyled after upload

This usually means the zip file was corrupted or modified during download. Re-download the original file from Lemon Squeezy and upload it again without unzipping it first.

I uploaded the theme but my old theme is still showing

After uploading, you need to click Activate. Uploading alone does not switch the active theme.

Getting help

If you run into something not covered here, email [email protected] with a description of the issue and a link to your site if possible.

Updates

When a new version of Atlas Vertical is released you will receive an email from Lemon Squeezy with a download link. Updates are free and included in your one-time purchase.

To update:

  1. Download the new zip file from the link in your email
  2. Go to Ghost Admin -> Settings -> Design -> Change theme
  3. Click Upload theme
  4. Select the new zip file
  5. Click Activate

Your content, settings, and configuration are not affected by theme updates.

Changelog

A full version history is available at atlasvertical/changelog.

Licence

Your purchase includes a commercial use licence for one Ghost installation. You can use Atlas Vertical on one live site. If you need to use it on additional sites, purchase an additional licence.

The theme files remain the intellectual property of Atlas Themes.

You may not resell, redistribute, or sub-licence the theme.