Jasper2 Jekyll Theme
Full-featured Jekyll port of Ghost's iconic Casper v2 theme. Bold full-bleed cover images, multi-author support, tag pages, infinite scroll pagination, and dark editorial aesthetics.
About this Theme
Jasper2 is a meticulous Jekyll port of Ghost’s default Casper theme (v2.1.9), bringing the editorial polish and bold visual style of one of the most admired blogging platforms to the Jekyll ecosystem.
If you love the way Ghost blogs look — large atmospheric cover images, clean typography, multi-author bios, tag landing pages — but want to run on Jekyll and host for free, Jasper2 is the closest you’ll get without leaving the Jekyll world.
The Ghost Casper Aesthetic
The signature look is the full-bleed cover image: a photograph or illustration that fills the entire browser width, with the post title and author information overlaid on a dark gradient. On the homepage the featured post gets the hero treatment, and the remaining posts are displayed in a 2-column card grid, each with their own cover image.
The colour palette skews dark — near-black backgrounds, white text, and restrained use of accent colour. It reads as editorial and professional, well-suited to long-form writing, photography blogs, and content-heavy publications.
Who It’s For
Jasper2 suits bloggers who want a premium magazine look without paying for a premium theme. It’s especially popular with writers who run multi-author publications, since author management is a first-class feature rather than an afterthought.
Developers migrating from Ghost to Jekyll — or maintaining a Jekyll blog while wanting the Ghost aesthetic — will feel immediately at home.
Key Features
Multi-Author Support — Define all authors in _data/authors.yml with name, picture, bio, website, Twitter, and Facebook. Each post’s author: field maps to an author key, and Jasper2 automatically links to dedicated author archive pages showing all posts by that person.
Tag Pages with Covers — Tags are more than labels in Jasper2. Each tag can have a custom description and its own cover image, defined in _data/tags.yml. The tag landing page shows the cover and lists all matching posts, giving topical sections a proper editorial identity.
Related Posts — At the bottom of every post, three related posts are automatically surfaced based on shared tags, keeping readers engaged with more content.
Pagination Options — Choose between infinite scroll (posts load as you scroll) or traditional paginated navigation. Both are supported via configuration.
Deployment with GitHub Actions — The included jekyll_build.yml workflow builds the site and pushes to the gh-pages branch automatically on every commit, so publishing is as simple as pushing to main. Netlify is also supported as a hosting option.
Installation and Build
Jasper2 requires a build step because it uses Gulp and PostCSS to compile its CSS (following the same approach as the original Ghost Casper theme). You’ll need Node.js and Gulp installed. After cloning:
npm install
gulp
bundle install
bundle exec jekyll serve
Because of the custom CSS pipeline and additional plugins, Jasper2 cannot be used directly on GitHub Pages’ built-in Jekyll build — you’ll need GitHub Actions, Netlify, or another build service. The GitHub Actions workflow is included and ready to use.
Customisation
The main _config.yml sets site-wide options. The _data/ directory is where you configure authors, tags, and navigation. For visual customisation, styles live in assets/css/ and are compiled by the Gulp pipeline into assets/built/.
The theme follows Ghost’s standard override pattern, so most changes can be made by editing the relevant _layouts/ and _includes/ files.
Community
With 776 stars and 641 forks, Jasper2 is one of the most-forked editorially-styled Jekyll themes available. The Ghost Casper design is widely recognised and admired, giving Jasper2 instant visual credibility with visitors who associate the look with high-quality publishing.
Features
- Full port of Ghost's Casper v2.1.9 design
- Bold full-bleed cover images on home and posts
- Multi-author blog support via _data/authors.yml
- Author pages with bio, picture, and social links
- Tag pages with custom descriptions and cover images via _data/tags.yml
- Related posts at the bottom of every post
- Infinite scroll or standard pagination options
- Atom feed via jekyll-feed
- Toggleable email subscribe button
- Syntax highlighting via highlight.js
- Google Analytics support
- Disqus comment integration
- GitHub Actions deployment workflow included
