Reading a lesson & tracking progress

This doc describes the reader's experience so authors understand what their content will look like in context. When someone opens a lesson, the theme wraps the post body in a learning-focused layout rather than a plain article page, and several of its features depend on how you structure your content.

On the left (or collapsed on mobile) is a curriculum sidebar listing the sibling lessons in the course or track, in published-date order, with the current lesson highlighted. This is generated automatically from the shared primary tag, so as long as your lessons carry the correct course or track tag they appear here without extra work.

Within the content, the theme builds a table of contents from your headings. The toc.js script scans the rendered .gh-content for headings and generates an anchored, scroll-spy TOC that highlights the current section as the reader scrolls. The practical implication for authors is simple: use real heading structure (an h2 to open, h3 for subsections) so the TOC is meaningful.

At the foot of the body is previous / next navigation, again derived from published-date order within the course or track, so a learner can move end-to-end without returning to the listing. Breadcrumbs at the top show the path (section → course → lesson) using the primary-tag hierarchy.

Progress cues are presentation-level: the theme can visually mark the current position in the curriculum and, where enabled, indicate completed items. Ghost's native membership drives access — a #paid lesson respects the reader's tier, and #preview lets a locked lesson be sampled.

The takeaway for authoring: write clean headings, keep lessons in the right order by date, and apply the correct primary tag. Do those three things and the sidebar, TOC, and navigation all populate themselves. The Authoring sections that follow explain each in step-by-step detail.