How to Edit Your Publication Description in Ghost CMS (Sidebar Settings)

Your Ghost publication description lives in Settings → General → Title & Description in Ghost Admin. This single field controls the tagline shown in theme sidebars, RSS feeds, and social share previews across your site. It's different from the SEO meta description, which you set separately under Settings → General → Meta data.

Most tutorials stop there. But if you're searching for this because your theme's sidebar (Source, Editorial, or a custom theme) isn't reflecting your change, the fix usually isn't in the settings panel at all. More on that below.

Where to find the publication description setting

1. Log into Ghost Admin at yoursite.com/ghost.
2. Click the gear icon (⚙️) in the bottom-left sidebar to open Settings.
3. Under the General tab, find the Title & description row.
4. Click it to expand, then edit the Description field.
5. Click Save in the top-right corner.

That's the whole process for the default field. It updates instantly and applies site-wide, but "site-wide" doesn't always mean "everywhere you expect."

What this field actually controls

The publication description is a global site attribute, not a per-post one. Here's where it typically renders:

That distinction between the general Title & Description field and the Meta data section trips people up constantly. If you're optimizing for search or AI citation, the meta description field is the one that matters for rankings and snippet text, not the sidebar tagline.

Why the sidebar sometimes won't update

If you've already changed the description and the sidebar widget still shows the old text (or generic subscribe copy), it's almost never a caching issue. It's usually one of these:

• Custom theme settings override it. Themes like Source expose their own cta_text or "about" copy through Settings → Design → Theme settings, which sits on top of the global description. Check there before assuming the main field is broken.
• The theme hardcodes different text in the .hbs file. Some custom or older themes write static text directly into the sidebar partial instead of pulling {{@site.description}}. In that case, changing it requires editing the theme file itself (only possible on self-hosted Ghost or Ghost Pro's Business tier with custom theme uploads).
• Browser or CDN cache. Less common than the two above, but worth a hard refresh before you go digging through theme files.

If you want the sidebar to say something different from your global site description (a common ask on themes like Tripoli or Source), you generally need a custom theme setting or a small .hbs edit, not a change in the General settings panel. This is the exact gap most "how to edit your Ghost description" guides skip.

Our Approach to This Article

My name is Hrithik Kaul. I'm the founder of Typeflo, a blogging and content platform built for SEO and AI search visibility. I've spent five years doing SEO across content teams, startups, and client projects, and I worked hands-on with Ghost at my previous company, Micro.Company, which included theme-level customization work like this.

For this piece, I cross-referenced Ghost's own documentation, current Ghost forum threads from users hitting this exact sidebar issue, and my own experience customizing Ghost themes, rather than just restating the settings-panel steps that already exist everywhere.

How Typeflo handles this differently

One reason this kind of confusion exists on Ghost: the site description, the SEO meta description, and the theme's visual "about" copy are three separate systems that happen to look related. On Typeflo, publication and SEO metadata are unified under one settings panel, so there's no separate theme-level override fighting with your site settings. What you set is what renders, in the sidebar and in search results.

If you're evaluating whether Ghost's structure is worth the tradeoff for your team, our Ghost alternatives guide breaks down where Ghost's theme system helps and where it adds friction for B2B content teams. And if SEO and AI citation are the actual goal behind getting this description right, our best blog sites for SEO guide covers which platforms handle metadata and schema without this kind of settings sprawl.

FAQ

Where is the publication description in Ghost CMS?
It's under Settings → General → Title & Description in Ghost Admin. This field sets the tagline used in theme sidebars, RSS feeds, and default social share cards.

Why isn't my Ghost sidebar showing the updated description?
Most themes with a sidebar widget (like Source) either pull from a separate theme setting or hardcode the text in a .hbs file. Check Settings → Design → Theme settings first, then the theme's partial files if the option isn't there.

Is the publication description the same as the SEO meta description?
No. The publication description is a general site attribute used in themes and feeds. The SEO meta description lives under Settings → General → Meta data and is what search engines and AI answer engines actually use for snippets.

Can I set a different description just for the homepage sidebar?
Only if your theme supports a custom theme setting for it, or if you're comfortable editing the theme's .hbs files directly. This isn't available as a default option in Ghost Admin's General settings.

Do I need Ghost Pro's paid plan to edit theme files?
You need either a self-hosted Ghost install or a Ghost Pro plan that supports custom theme uploads (Ghost Pro's Business tier). Lower Ghost Pro tiers restrict theme code edits to what's exposed through theme settings.

Related internal resource note: I looked for a matching page on migrating Ghost's theme settings inside our knowledge base but didn't find one live yet. [Internal link: Typeflo knowledge base guide on Ghost-to-Typeflo theme and metadata migration] — flagging this as a good future piece rather than forcing an unrelated link.