Observability and reliability

This page covers monitoring, health, and what to do when something breaks so the theme and site stay reliable.

Deployment and rollback

Theme: Deploy by uploading the theme zip in Ghost Admin. Roll back by re-uploading a previous zip or activating a previous theme. See Deployment.
Docs: Deploy the docs site via your host (e.g. Netlify). Roll back by redeploying a previous build or reverting the branch and redeploying.

Broken layout or styles: Re-check that the correct theme is active and that you uploaded a zip that was built and tested (yarn test) before packaging. If you edited the theme in Admin (Code Injection), review those snippets.
Missing assets (404): Ensure the theme zip included assets/built/screen.css and built/main.min.js and that Ghost is serving the theme’s asset path correctly. Re-upload the theme if the zip was incomplete.
GScan errors after upgrade: After a Ghost upgrade, run yarn test locally and fix any compatibility or deprecation issues, then rebuild and re-upload the theme.

Site down or 5xx: Check Ghost and the hosting environment (process manager, logs). Restart Ghost if needed (ghost restart from the Ghost directory). If the host runs Ghost in a container or platform, use its restart/redeploy and log tools.
Database: Ghost stores content and settings in its database. Theme changes don’t touch the DB; rollback is re-upload theme or redeploy. For DB issues, follow Ghost’s backup and restore docs.

Health checks: Use a simple HTTP check to the site root (or a dedicated health URL if you add one) to detect downtime. Many hosts and monitoring tools support this.
Error tracking: Optionally add a lightweight client-side error tracking script (e.g. for JS errors) and document it in the theme or ops docs. Keep privacy and performance in mind.
Broken links: Run a broken-link checker (manual or in CI) before or after launch so internal and key external links are valid.

Deployment and rollback — How to ship and revert (theme zip, docs deploy). See Deployment.
Validation — Run GScan before packaging so the theme doesn’t introduce known issues. See Build and validate.
Observability — This page: what to do when things break, optional monitoring and health checks. More (e.g. dashboards, alerts) can be added as the setup grows.