Membership
How Quiet handles members: the free preview that fades into a signup card, the Members and Paid labels, locked films, and where readers sign up.
Memberships are Ghost's, not the theme's: tiers, prices, payments and the signup window all live in Ghost Admin. Quiet's job is to make a gated post look deliberate rather than broken, and to put the signup where a reader is most likely to want it.
Making a post members-only
Open the post and click the settings icon.
Under Access, choose Members only, Paid members only, or specific tiers.
Write an Excerpt: this is what a non-member reads before the card. Without one there is no preview at all, just the card.
Publish.
What a non-member sees
Your excerpt, fading out, then a card with the offer. The wording follows the access level you chose:
| Access | The label | The heading |
|---|---|---|
| Members only | Members only | This post is for subscribers |
| Paid members only | Paid members | This post is for paying subscribers |
| Specific tiers | Paid members | This post is for subscribers on selected tiers |
A signed-out reader gets Subscribe and Sign in. A signed-in member looking at a post their tier does not cover gets Upgrade, which opens their account's plan list rather than a fresh signup.
Controlling how much shows
Ghost's public preview divider, added in the editor with /public preview, splits the post: everything above it is public. Quiet renders that as written.
Never use the preview divider on a gated film
On a film the video sits at the top of the post, above any divider, so a public preview shares the film itself with people who have not paid. Leave the divider out of gated films and let the excerpt do the teasing. See The video channel.
Labels on cards
Anywhere a gated post appears in a list, it carries a small padlocked label:
| Access | Label |
|---|---|
| Public | none |
| Members only | Members |
| Any paid tier, or specific tiers | Paid |
The label follows the post, not the reader: a paying member still sees Paid on a post they can read, because that is a fact about the post.
This works on posts, projects, episodes and films alike.
Locked films
A members-only film shows its poster with a padlock and a prompt to subscribe, and the video's address is never sent to a browser that has not signed in. It is a genuine lock rather than a hidden play button.
Where readers sign up
Every Subscribe and Sign in control in Quiet opens Portal, Ghost's own signup window. That includes the header button, the signup fields on the homepage and in the footer, the paywall card and the newsletter page.
Portal's wording, colours and which tiers it shows come from Settings → Portal. Prices come from Settings → Tiers, and payments need Stripe connected in Ghost.
Quiet has no pricing page
Tiers and prices are shown by Portal rather than printed into a theme page, which means they can never fall out of step with what you actually charge. If you want a page dedicated to joining, build an ordinary page and link a button to #/portal/signup.
Signup forms, and where each one reports
Quiet labels every form so Settings → Members shows where a reader came from: homepage-intro, homepage, newsletter-page, footer, and the band at the foot of posts and other pages.
Turning membership off
Set Settings → Membership → Access to Nobody and every membership control disappears: the header button, the signup fields, the bands, the newsletter page's form. Nothing renders empty, and no page needs editing.
Related
Reading experience
What surrounds an article in Quiet: the byline, the share row and Copy link, Read next, the author card, previous and next posts, comments, printing, and what still works with JavaScript off.
Publication language
Quiet ships in fourteen languages and is fully translatable. Set your publication language and every word the theme adds, and every date, follows.