Caards

🧾 Overview

Caards is a premium Ghost theme built by the seasoned folks at Ekto Themes, a small but mighty team obsessed with design simplicity and speed. Based in Berlin, Ekto specializes in clean, high-performance Ghost templates that look great out of the box and perform even better under the hood. If you've seen their other themes, you know they don't mess around—Caards is no exception.

✨ Features

Caards is tailored for creators who want a unique, visual-first layout. Instead of a traditional blog feed, Caards presents your content in a slick card-style grid. Here’s what’s under the hood:

• Card-Based Grid Layout – Ditch the usual blog roll. Each post appears in its own visually distinct card, perfect for showing off featured images.
• Dark Mode Support – Eye-friendly toggling built in. No plugin sorcery required.
• Tag Filtering – Visitors can filter content by tags with a clean, minimalist UI.
• Responsive Design – Works perfectly across desktop, tablet, and mobile.
• Custom Theme Settings – Tweak accent colors, toggle dark mode, choose font options—all from the Ghost Admin panel.
• Syntax Highlighting – Code blocks look beautiful with built-in highlight support.
• Membership & Subscription Ready – Full support for Ghost’s native membership features.
• Custom Templates – Includes tag-specific pages, author pages, custom 404, and more.
• Accessible & SEO-Friendly – Follows best practices to keep your blog discoverable and user-friendly.

No bloated animations. Just a clean, elegant Ghost theme that gets out of the way of your content.

🧑‍💻 Use Case

Caards is perfect for:

• Personal blogs with a visual or artistic edge
• Portfolios showcasing big, bold images
• Newsletters and publications that focus on design, photography, or tech
• Portfolio websites for designers, writers, or digital creators
• Anyone tired of the “standard blog” look and craving something fresher

If you want a Ghost theme that makes a bold first impression without screaming for attention—Caards hits the sweet spot.

🚀 Performance

While exact load time metrics aren't listed, Ekto Themes are known for lean, performance-first designs. Caards avoids flashy scripts and bloated assets, making it a great choice if you care about speed, Core Web Vitals, and SEO.

Fun fact: The theme loads only essential assets and utilizes native browser features—so no extra JS baggage.

🧩 Compatibility

At the time of writing, Caards is fully compatible with Ghost CMS v5.x (Ghost 5.x and up). It supports all core Ghost.org features, including dynamic routing, memberships, and theme customization.

🛠 Theme Setup

Getting started with Caards is pleasantly straightforward. Here are the highlights from the official docs:

1. Install & Upload – Simply download the zip and upload it via Ghost Admin.
2. Configure Routes – Use the provided routes.yaml to get tag filtering and custom layouts working.
3. Customize Settings – Adjust accent colors, logos, font types, and dark mode from the Admin panel.
4. Set Up Navigation – Add menu items through Ghost’s built-in navigation settings.
5. Create Custom Tag Pages – Want a special page for “Reviews” or “Projects”? Just tag your posts and create a new collection using the routes config.
6. Dark Mode Toggle – It's native, clean, and doesn't require any code fiddling.

The documentation is well-written, no fluff, and beginner-friendly.

Final Thoughts

Caards is a modern, card-style Ghost Theme built for creators who want their content to pop without sacrificing speed or simplicity. Developed by the trusted folks at Ekto Themes, it’s a polished Ghost.org template that’s both functional and fun to use. Whether you're writing long-form essays, sharing design work, or publishing tutorials—Caards has the minimalist charm and modular flexibility to make your content shine.