Custom Pages URLs

Posts live at root-level permalinks (/{slug}/). This guide covers the page patterns Essence supports and how to customize URLs and navigation.

Built-in page patterns

Page type	How it works
Posts	Published at `/{slug}/` via the root collection in `routes.yaml`
Tag archives	`/tag/{slug}/` — taxonomy route
Author archives	`/author/{slug}/` — taxonomy route
Contact	Create a Ghost page with slug `contact`
Home hero	Create a Ghost page with slug `home-hero`
404	Theme provides `error-404.hbs` automatically

Most pages are regular Ghost pages. To use a custom URL:

Create or edit the page in Ghost admin
Set the Page URL (slug) to your desired path — e.g. about instead of contact
Add a navigation item pointing to that path

For the homepage hero, keep the slug as home-hero — the theme looks up this slug specifically.

Tag and author archive URLs are defined in routes.yaml:


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

To change prefixes (e.g. /topic/ instead of /tag/), edit and re-upload routes.yaml via Settings → Advanced → Labs.

Essence includes a styled 404 page via error-404.hbs. No setup is required — Ghost serves it automatically for missing URLs.

Ghost pages (contact, etc.): Unpublish or delete the page in Ghost admin, then remove any navigation links
Home hero: Unpublish the home-hero page; the hero falls back to site title and description
Tag/author archives: These are automatic — you cannot remove them without editing routes.yaml