Membership CTA
A full-bleed member signup band rendered above the site footer on every page. Editorial copy lives on a Ghost page; pricing fills automatically from your tiers; delete the page to hide the band site-wide.
The Membership CTA is a full-bleed dark section that sits above the site footer on every page — homepage, posts, archives, tag pages, the bookmarks page. It carries editorial copy on the left and tier pricing + a signup form on the right. Designed to be the recurring conversion moment across the site, editable without touching template code.
How the band is composed
The band has two columns:
- Left column — eyebrow stamp, optional issue line, headline (with one accent phrase wrapped in
<mark>), and body paragraphs. All sourced from a Ghost page with slugmembership-cta. - Right column — optional trial badge (eyebrow), monthly and yearly pricing for your cheapest paid tier, a "save N%" line computed client-side, and the signup form.
Pricing fills automatically from your Ghost tiers — you only ever author the left column. If you don't author it, the band doesn't render at all (see Hiding the band below).
Editorial copy lives on a Ghost page
The four left-column slots are mapped one-to-one to fields on a Ghost page (not a post) with the slug membership-cta.
| Page field | Slot in the CTA | Notes |
|---|---|---|
custom_excerpt | Eyebrow stamp (top-left) | e.g. Membership · Zuse News |
meta_description | Issue line (top-right of left column) | Optional — e.g. Independent since 2003 |
meta_title | Trial badge (right column eyebrow) | e.g. Start your 7-day trial |
html (body) | Headline + body | One <h2> followed by one or more <p> |
Membership CTA Page - Editor
Membership CTA Page - Meta data
Create the page
In Ghost Admin, go to Pages → New page. Title it whatever you like — the title isn't rendered.
Set the slug to membership-cta
In Page settings, set the Page URL to membership-cta. The page does not need to be linked from your nav; it's a content source, not a destination.
Fill the meta fields
In Page settings:
- Excerpt (which becomes
custom_excerpt) → your eyebrow. - Meta description → your optional issue line.
- Meta title → your trial badge override.
Author the body in the editor
Type the headline as a normal Heading 2 in the Ghost editor, then write the body paragraphs underneath. Use the highlight action on the few words you want as the accent phrase — see the next section for the shortcut.
Highlighting a phrase in the headline
The accent phrase — the few words you want italicized and tinted with your accent colour inside the otherwise plain headline — is created with Ghost's native highlight action, which emits a <mark> tag.
How to highlight in the Ghost editor
- Type the headline as a normal Heading 2.
- Select the words you want as the accent phrase.
- Apply highlight:
| Platform | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| macOS | ⌘ + Option + H |
| Windows / Linux | Ctrl + Alt + H |
The selection gains Ghost's default yellow highlight in the editor; Meridian's CSS swaps that for italic + accent-colour text on the rendered page.
You can highlight multiple ranges in the same headline if needed, though one accent phrase usually reads better than two.
Highlight is also in the toolbar
The same action lives in the editor's floating text-format toolbar — select your phrase and click the highlighter icon. The keyboard shortcut is just faster once you know it.
Pricing
The right column fills automatically from your Ghost membership tiers:
- The band uses the cheapest active public paid tier. If you have multiple paid tiers, the lowest monthly price wins.
- Both monthly and yearly prices are pulled from that tier directly.
- A "save N%" line is computed client-side from
monthly_price × 12versusyearly_price. If the yearly price doesn't actually save money, the line self-removes — no awkward "save 0%". - The whole price block is hidden when no paid tier exists; the form and fine-print still render so free-tier signups stay possible.
You don't need to touch any theme setting for pricing. Open Settings → Membership → Tiers in Ghost Admin and the band reflects whatever you set up there.
Hiding the band
The band hides itself entirely under any of these conditions:
- The
membership-ctapage is missing or unpublished — this is the admin-controlled opt-out. Delete the page (or set it back to draft) and the band disappears from every page on the site immediately. No theme setting required. - Memberships disabled — if you've turned off memberships site-wide (Ghost Admin → Settings → Membership → "Subscription access" set to Nobody), the band doesn't render.
- Viewer is a paid member — paying members never see the band. They've already converted.
In every case the footer flows together as if the band had never been authored.
Free members still see it
Free members and logged-out visitors both see the Membership CTA. Only paying members get the band suppressed, individually.
Deleting is the opt-out
There's no theme toggle for the Membership CTA. The Ghost page IS the toggle — delete or unpublish membership-cta to hide the band, re-publish to bring it back.
When to use this vs. the post-page CTA
Two member CTAs ship in Meridian:
- Membership CTA (this page) — full-bleed band above the footer on every page. Heavy, editorial, conversion-focused.
- Post-page member CTA — the box at the end of every article. Tier-aware (signup / upgrade / hidden). Copy is set via theme settings, not a Ghost page. See Site wide settings.
They're complementary. The footer band is the editorial-tone pitch readers see on every page they land on; the post-page CTA is the reader-just-finished-an-article moment.