How Masthead works

Masthead is a publishing engine for content-driven websites. Instead of providing a generic editor or visual page builder, Masthead allows themes to define both the website and the editing experience.

The goal is simple: theme developers create beautiful, focused websites, while site owners can concentrate on publishing content.

Themes define the experience

Everything in Masthead starts with a theme.

A theme contains the templates, styles and assets that make up a website. In addition, it defines which settings can be configured by the site owner.

For example, a photography theme might expose settings for a gallery, biography and featured work, while a restaurant theme could instead provide fields for opening hours, menus and reservations.

Because every theme defines its own editor, site owners only see the settings that are relevant for the website they are managing.

Sites contain content

A site is the central concept in Masthead. Every site contains its own pages, posts and uploads, all rendered through a single theme.

The site owner is responsible for creating and maintaining content, while the theme determines how that content is presented.

This separation allows content to change without affecting the design, and themes to evolve independently of the content they display.

Themes are reusable

Themes are designed to be reusable.

A theme developer creates the website once, packages it as a theme and publishes it. Site owners can then install the theme, provide their own content and immediately have a fully functional website.

This makes themes portable, easy to share and suitable for a marketplace.

Opinionated by design

Masthead intentionally does not include a visual page builder.

The platform focuses on publishing content rather than designing layouts. This means that not every type of website can be built with Masthead, and that is a deliberate design decision.

By keeping the scope focused, themes remain maintainable, websites stay consistent and the editing experience stays simple.

The publishing flow

Every Masthead site follows the same flow.

Theme
├── Defines templates
├── Defines styling
├── Defines the editor
└── Defines configurable settings
          │
          ▼
      Site owner
          │
├── Creates pages
├── Writes posts
└── Uploads assets
          │
          ▼
Masthead renders the website

The theme defines how a website works.

The site owner decides what the website contains.