Troubleshooting

Solutions for common setup and theme configuration issues.

I get the error: 'A template file called index.hbs and post.hbs must be present'

This error usually means you uploaded the full archive downloaded from ThemeForest instead of the theme ZIP file.

After downloading the ThemeForest archive, unzip it first. On Windows, right-click the archive and select 'Extract All'. Inside the extracted folder, you will find the actual theme ZIP file, for example theme-name.zip.

My Design & branding settings reset after uploading the theme

Use the same ZIP filename for each update, for example theme-name.zip. This helps Ghost keep the existing Design & branding settings for that theme.

Ghost stores Design & branding settings by uploaded archive name. If you upload theme-v1.zip and later theme-v2.zip, Ghost treats them as separate themes and the settings will not carry over.

This applies only when updating the same theme. Different themes can have different custom settings.

I get a 400 error: 'Missing template members/signin.hbs for route /signin/'

This usually means a previous theme used a custom routes.yaml file. Reset routes.yaml to the default Ghost routes to resolve it.

routes:
collections:
  /:
    permalink: /{slug}/
    template: index
taxonomies:
  tag: /tag/{slug}/
  author: /author/{slug}/

You can download the default file from this link.

How to remove featured posts from the main collection

Go to the 'Labs' settings in the Ghost Admin to find the 'Routes' section.
Upload the routes.yaml file with these settings:

routes:
collections:
  /:
    permalink: /{slug}/
    filter: featured:false
    template: index
  /featured/:
    permalink: /featured/{slug}/
    filter: featured:true
    template: index
taxonomies:
  tag: /tag/{slug}/
  author: /author/{slug}/

This creates a separate /featured/ collection for posts marked as featured and removes those posts from the main collection.