Navbar behaviour (sticky / island) settings

Beyond the links in it, the header's behaviour — whether it sticks to the top as you scroll and how it looks — is controlled by this theme's custom settings, exposed in Ghost Admin under Settings → Design → Site-wide (the theme's custom settings panel). These @custom.* settings let you change the navbar without editing templates.

The two main behaviours are sticky and island. A sticky navbar pins to the top edge of the viewport and stays visible as the reader scrolls, which keeps navigation always reachable — good for long documentation and lesson pages. The island style renders the navbar as a floating, rounded bar inset from the edges (with a translucent, blurred background), giving a lighter, more modern feel that suits marketing and home pages.

Design -> theme custom settings:
  Navbar style      : Sticky  |  Island
  Navbar behaviour  : Always visible  |  Hide on scroll down / show on scroll up
  (related) Theme   : Light / Dark default (see the pre-paint theme script)

Depending on the theme's configured options you can typically combine the style with a scroll behaviour: keep the bar always visible, or have it hide when scrolling down and reappear when scrolling up to maximise reading space. Choose based on content: always-visible for reference-heavy pages, hide-on-scroll for immersive reading.

Because these are Ghost custom settings, they are data, not code — changing them is instant and safe, and they are stored per-site rather than in the theme files, so upgrading the theme preserves your choices. This is also why they live in Ghost Admin and not in the repository.

A practical note: the theme also applies a pre-paint script that sets light/dark mode before first paint to avoid a flash, and the navbar styling adapts to the active theme via the role tokens (surface, ink, border). So the navbar looks correct in both modes automatically. The last configuration doc covers enabling ads and sponsors.