The voice guide and image style guide
This page covers the two guides Ghostwriter writes from your site: how it sounds, and what its pictures look like. Both are markdown files in your project. Ghostwriter writes the first version, and you correct it. Both are read every time Ghostwriter writes, or finds or makes an image.
The voice guide
Ghostwriter → Voice guide. It describes how your site sounds, with real examples from your entries: who is talking and to whom, the attitude, how pieces are shaped (openings, headings, endings, length), and the words you use and the ones you never do.
Writing it
Tick the collections to read, then Write the voice guide the first time, or Rescan and rewrite under Read the site again after that. Ghostwriter reads the newest published entries in those collections, spread across them, and writes the guide in a minute or so. Rescanning replaces the guide, and asks first.
How much it reads is set by voice.max_entries and the other voice.* keys in Configuration.
Changing it
- Edit it in the editor, then Save.
- Or Ask for a change in plain words, such as "We never say solutions. Add that.", then Update the guide. Ghostwriter rewrites the guide with the change, and says what it did.
While there are unsaved edits, rescanning and asking for a change wait: "Save your edits first."
The guide is kept in resources/ghostwriter/voice.md (see Where things are kept). Commit it, so every environment writes the same way.
The image style guide
Ghostwriter → Image style. It describes what your pictures look like, collection by collection: photography or illustration, subjects, composition, light, colour, mood, what would look wrong, and how to search for one that fits.
Writing it
Tick the collections to look at, then Describe the images the first time, or Look again and rewrite under Look at the images again after that. Ghostwriter looks at a few images from each image field used by the newest published entries, including those inside page-builder blocks, and writes one ## section per collection. A collection needs at least three images. The number looked at per collection is images.guide_samples (10 by default).
Changing it
Edit it in the same way as the voice guide. Keep a ## Collection title heading for each collection: that is how Ghostwriter finds the part that applies to an image. As with the voice guide, looking again waits while there are unsaved edits.
The guide is kept in resources/ghostwriter/imagery.md.
Where it is used
- Choosing what to search for when finding a photo.
- Ranking the photos found against your site.
- Making an image.
See Images.
When something goes wrong
If writing or changing a guide fails, the reason stays at the top of the screen, under That didn't work, until the next run, even if you were away when it failed.
Next: Kinds of content.