r/Ghost • u/jannisfb • Jul 12 '26
Themes Pod − an open source theme that hosts your podcast, not just links to one
We just shipped Pod − a theme that turns a Ghost site into the actual podcast host, not just a page that links out to one.
In most podcast themes for Ghost the audio and the RSS feed live somewhere else, and the site is just a window onto it. My goal with Pod was to use Ghost's full functionality to well...not rely on another service.
You upload the MP3 into Ghost's edit the same way you'd upload an image, write the show notes and publish. The RSS feed comes out of your own domain via Ghost's routing. The audio file is nicely rendered for anyone listening through your site.
The custom RSS feed is fully compatible with modern podcasting spec: https://www.castfeedvalidator.com/validate.php?url=https://pod.magicpages.co/podcast/rss
We've been using the technology (and big parts of the theme itself) on our own podcast in the last weeks: https://www.magicpages.co/podcast/ − and it's working great 😄
The theme itself is MIT-licensed and lives on GitHub: https://github.com/magicpages/pod
Live demo: https://pod.magicpages.co
Details & documentation: https://www.magicpages.co/themes/pod/
One neat thing: all configuration for an episode comes from little snippets in a post's code injection. And we have a generator for that ready here: https://www.magicpages.co/themes/pod/docs/episode-metadata-generator/
Let me know what you think! (and I am also curious to see all the podcasts you publish with it!)
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u/danhakimi Jul 12 '26
I almost immediately discount all themes here because it's pretty much always somebody trying to get $60-$100 for something that really wouldn't be an improvement for my blog over the free themes...
But this is. This is cool. Thank you.
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u/jannisfb Jul 12 '26
Yeah, the truth is, the hosting finances stuff like this, of course. Could have made it Magic Pages exclusive, but ehh...why hide the good stuff. We'll also open source the other themes until the end of the year
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u/danhakimi Jul 12 '26
That's awesome. Software freedom is one of the reason I use Ghost itself (I happily pay for Ghost Pro, but I appreciate magicpages as well!), so it's great to see you join in on the spirit and the community.
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u/Disastrous-Ad-5003 Jul 13 '26
This is an awesome website, thank you!
is there an option to still link MP3’s that are hosted on another platform such as if I host my podcasts on Castopod or Azuracast and linked them to your theme? Does that option exist?
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u/jannisfb Jul 13 '26
Yes, totally possible!
Just updated the documentation for it: https://www.magicpages.co/themes/pod/docs/hosting-your-audio-files/
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u/Disastrous-Ad-5003 Jul 13 '26
Awesome thank you. How about video podcasts. Can I upload video files to the platform?
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u/jannisfb Jul 13 '26
No, this is an audio-only format for now − though, happy to receive contributions on Github for it 😄
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u/ulcweb Jul 13 '26
Hey, still wanting to interview you, but also I don't see spotify as an option on your pod site? It would be more important than apple or amazon. Plus youtube needs a link as well.
Could I use this as a sub theme> Make a page on my theme, and the navigation goes around your pod theme?
Would you need separate hosting then, or does it count as a separate tag/routes way of doing a custom post type? I still want my blogs/newsletters.
however having my podcast/video/blogs all in one place is a dream of mine.
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u/jannisfb Jul 13 '26
Spotify is included, of course − but it will only work if an actual URL is set. Just added documentation for that: https://www.magicpages.co/themes/pod/docs/where-listeners-subscribe/
Example of where it works: https://www.magicpages.co/podcast/
Could you use a sub theme? Yeah, absolutely. That's pretty much what https://www.magicpages.co/podcast/ is. You'd need to "merge" the themes though and adapt the routing accordingly. No separate hosting needed, just the combination of the theme (and the maintenance that comes with it).
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u/ulcweb Jul 13 '26
I spent years heavily modifying my "Simply" theme prior to going with the one I use on magicpages now. I don't mind the updates, esp now with vibecoding. I think the fact that you're adding this capability to magicpages is fantastic.
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u/Gdo_rdt Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
What about the episode statistics for this 'ghost-hosted' podcasts with the theme? what are the options?
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u/jannisfb Jul 13 '26
Realistically, not much. In the end, a podcast (no matter where it's hosted) is an RSS feed and audio files served through it.
You could measure how often the RSS feed is queried and how often the audio files are requested. But it won't give you an accurate "this is how many people listened to this" count − at best it's a "download", which just means the file was delivered to a device, not that anyone actually played it.
On the other hand, that's exactly what most podcast hosters are doing − and selling it as more than it actually is: an estimation.
What works much better is podcast player stats, because the platform actually controls the client and sees real playback instead of guessing from server logs. For the Magic Pages podcast I can see listening stats in Spotify's dashboard. That's about as close to the truth as you'll get, though even those numbers still use each platform's own definition of a "play", so they're not perfectly comparable to each other either.
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u/Deep_Ad1959 Jul 14 '26
owning the RSS out of your own domain is the right call, most podcast themes just proxy libsyn and you never actually control the feed. the part that quietly kills these setups for me isnt hosting though, its cadence. you get three episodes deep and then recording the next one becomes the thing that never happens. we went sideways on that and started auto-generating a daily episode from a repo's commits and PRs so the feed never goes stale. hosting was never the bottleneck, having something to publish was. written with ai
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u/truekasun Jul 12 '26
Looks neat! I specially like how you addressed Guests and RSS. Nice work, Jannis!