User guide — all chapters
Change the wrapper, not the words
Open ⋯ → Themes, or Site Settings → Theme. Pick one and publish again. Your writing is untouched. A theme is styling and layout, so switching is free and reversible.
Every theme is a single stylesheet. It is responsive, it follows each reader’s light or dark setting, and it uses only fonts readers already have, so nothing is fetched from anyone else’s server.
| Theme | What it is like |
|---|---|
| Default | Clean and minimal, in system fonts. The dependable starting point. |
| Modern | Bold type and vivid accents, laid out as a grid of cards. |
| Classic | Traditional serif type with a timeless, reading-first feel. |
| Sky | A social-feed timeline with a profile header, your avatar and banner, and photo mosaics. |
| Mono | Monospace and terminal-adjacent, made for developer blogs. |
| Editorial | A magazine grid with large serif headlines. |
| Zine | Bold colours and heavy type with a playful, printed feel. |
The first four come with the app. Mono, Editorial and Zine are optional one-time purchases in the same gallery, tied to your Apple ID: buy one once and use it on every site, on every device. Restore Purchases is there if you have bought one before. Publishing is never paywalled. See all seven live →
If a site is set to a premium theme that this device can’t confirm you own, it builds with Default and tells you, rather than failing.
Make a theme yours
Options, at the top of the theme gallery, are free with every theme. Each theme’s card shows them as you choose.
| Option | Choices |
|---|---|
| Accent colour | The theme’s own, or any colour you pick. |
| Typeface | The theme’s own, Sans-serif, Serif, Rounded or Monospace. All are fonts every reader already has. |
| Appearance | Automatic follows each reader’s light or dark setting. Always light and Always dark fix it. |
| Text width | The theme’s own, Narrow, Medium or Wide. |
Your colour stays readable whatever you choose. Links are darkened, or lightened on a dark page, until they read clearly against the theme’s background.
Your avatar, banner, logo and icon
Site Settings → Site → Profile Images holds two pictures for the site itself.
| Image | Where it is used |
|---|---|
| Avatar | Your site’s icon in browser tabs, bookmarks and on home screens. Sky also shows it in the page header. A square image works best. |
| Banner | A wide image in the header of themes that show one, as Sky does. A page with no photo of its own also uses it as its picture in link previews, unless share cards are on (below). |
Two switches sit beneath them.
- With no avatar, use the title’s first letter as the icon. A site with no avatar still gets an icon for browser tabs and home screens. Sites made with New Site start with this on. An avatar, when you add one, takes its place.
- Show it beside your site’s name. Puts your avatar, or the letter, beside the site’s name at the top of every page. It is offered for the themes that don’t already show the avatar themselves.
The footer
Site Settings → Site → Footer controls the foot of every page.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Your line | A line of your own. Links and emphasis work, written as in a post. |
| Licence | All rights reserved, Copyright only, one of six Creative Commons licences, or CC0 for the public domain. Creative Commons licences link to their terms. |
| “Published with Selfish” | The credit line, which you can turn off. |
With the credit off, your pages still name Selfish in their code, where readers don’t see it. That is what lets you get a site back from the web if you ever lose it.
What post pages show
Site Settings → Site → Post Pages:
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Reading time | Puts “4 min read” beside each post’s date. |
| Updated dates | Adds “Updated 3 October 2026” once a post changes on a later day than it went up. |
| Related posts | Lists up to three posts under each one that share its tags or category, the most in common first. A post that shares nothing gets no list. |
| One main heading on each page | Makes each post’s or page’s own title its main heading, with your site’s name above it as plain text. It looks exactly the same, and reads more clearly to screen readers and search engines. Sites made with New Site start with it on. |
| Addresses without .html | Publishes posts at /posts/my-post/ rather than /posts/my-post.html. See how publishing works first. |
Reading times and dates are written in your site’s language. Older and newer posts are linked at the foot of every post, in each theme’s own style.
Photos and link previews
Site Settings → Site → Photos:
- Smaller copies for phones publishes each photo wider than that at 640 and 1280 pixels wide as well, so phones and small windows download the size they need.
- Share cards for posts without a photo gives a post with no picture of its own a card for link previews: its title in your theme’s colours and type, with your site’s name. It is what shows when the post is linked from Mastodon, Bluesky, Messages and the rest. It needs your site’s address to be set.
Sites made with New Site start with both on; an imported site has them off until you switch them on. Both take a little more space where your site lives.
Built for every reader
Every site Selfish builds starts each page but “Page not found” with a “Skip to content” link, keeps keyboard focus visible, and prints without its menus and footer. None of that needs switching on.