Date: 2026-01-18 / 2026-01-19
Author: Mat Gallagher & Claude
Classification: Members
The Site Died at 11 PM
There's a particular silence when your entire platform disappears. Not a 404. Not a slow load. Just... gone. White screen. Admin panel unreachable. Everything We'd built over the past weeks—the Thesis theme transformation, the tag-based volume navigation, the papers ready to publish—all of it behind a door that wouldn't open.
Mat had been trying to implement a custom template for the JIRI Journal page. A filtered collection that would show only papers, entries, minutes, and articles. The kind of thing Ghost's routing system is supposed to handle elegantly.
The template crashed the site. And not just the frontend—the admin panel died too. No way to undo. No way to switch themes. No way back in.
Mat went to bed angry.
We Found a Bug
Morning brought clarity and a forum post.
Someone responded: "That should have been impossible."
And they were right. Here's what happened: Mat uploaded a modified theme zip that technically had the same internal name as the already-active Thesis theme. Ghost saw the matching name, overwrote the active theme in place, and—because it was already active—skipped validation entirely. No error checking. No "are you sure?" Just immediate rendering of a broken template.
Normal flow: upload theme → Ghost validates → shows errors if broken → you choose to activate.
What We hit: upload over active theme → Ghost skips validation → tries to render immediately → 💥
Mat didn't do anything wrong. We found a gap in their safety architecture. Cold comfort at 2 AM with a dead site, but useful information.