Installation

Install Signal in five steps — upload signal.zip in Ghost Admin, activate it, and add the routes.yaml file that powers the episodes and blog listings and the topic and people archives.

Quick start

Five short steps and your new theme is live.

Check Compatibility First

Before installing, make sure your Ghost installation is Ghost 6.x — Signal's minimum requirement is v6.0.0. See the Compatibility Guide.

Open Theme Settings

Go to Settings → Theme in Ghost Admin and click "Change theme".

Upload the zip

Click "Upload theme" and select signal.zip.

Activate

Click "Activate" when the upload finishes.

Signal serves episodes from an /episodes/ collection, with topic archives at /topics/ and people (guest and host) archives at /people/. Those URLs come from the bundled routes.yaml, so upload it once after activating the theme. (Your browser-local Library at /library/ doesn't come from this file — it's an ordinary page you create later.)

You have two ways to get the file:

Grab it from the theme zip — routes.yaml lives at the top level of signal.zip. Extract the archive and pick it up from there.

Download or copy it from here — same file, no extraction needed:

Download routes.yaml

routes.yaml

## Signal — routes.yaml
##
## Upload this file in Ghost Admin → Settings → Labs → "Upload routes file",
## then restart or re-upload whenever it changes. It powers the /episodes/ and
## /blog/ listings and the /topics/ and /people/ archives.
##
## Optional — to set the heading and SEO for your Episodes and Blog listings,
## create published Pages slugged "episodes-index" and "blog-index". Your Library,
## Subscribe, Guests, Hosts, Contact, and About screens are ordinary Pages: create
## each one with its matching slug. Step-by-step guide:
## https://docs.enova.studio/docs/signal/getting-started/installation

routes:
  /:
    template: index

collections:
  /blog/:
    permalink: /blog/{slug}/
    template: page-blog
    filter: 'tag:hash-blog'
    data: page.blog-index
  /episodes/:
    permalink: /episodes/{slug}/
    template: page-episodes
    filter: 'tag:-hash-blog'
    data: page.episodes-index

taxonomies:
  tag: /topics/{slug}/
  author: /people/{slug}/

In Ghost Admin, go to Settings → Labs → Beta features → Upload routes file and choose the routes.yaml you just saved.

uploading routes.yaml in Ghost Labs.

Skip this step and /episodes/, /blog/, /topics/, and /people/ return 404s. You only need to do it once per install — re-upload only if the file changes between releases.

Add titles to your Episodes and Blog pages

Give your Episodes and Blog listings a proper title and a tidy preview when they're shared. You create one short page for each, and you only do this once.

Do these steps twice, once for each row in the table below:

In Ghost Admin, open Pages and click New page.
Type the title — this becomes the big heading on the screen (for example, "All Episodes").
Click the settings icon (top right) to open Page settings.
In Page URL, enter the exact address from the table.
(Optional) Add a short line in Excerpt to show under the heading, and fill in Meta data to set how the page looks in Google and when shared.
Click Publish — you can leave the page body empty.

Give the page this title	Set Page URL to	This controls
All Episodes	`episodes-index`	your Episodes listing
The Blog	`blog-index`	your Blog listing

Episodes index page

Episodes Index Page

Blog index page

Blog Index Page

Type the Page URL exactly as shown (for example episodes-index, not episodes). Both pages are optional — skip them and each listing still works with a built-in title.

Your other pages

Signal's Library, Subscribe, Guests, Hosts, Contact, and About screens are ordinary Ghost Pages too. Create each one with its matching slug — see Page templates.

Signal is installed and your routes are in place — now publish your first episode.