Simpson Desert Guide
A bespoke Ghost site for a self-published offroad e-book. Eight page templates, each built for its own kind of content, a fair amount of tasteful animation, and paid membership so the book can be read a chapter at a time.
Give a self-published desert guide the sort of presentation a proper publisher would put behind it, and let readers become paying members one chapter at a time.
The Challenge
A self-published e-book rarely gets the presentation a traditionally published one does. Stefan needed more than a landing page: a site that pulls you into the trip, earns trust through reviews and the author's actual credentials, and then, without any drama, turns a reader into a member who unlocks the book chapter by chapter.
The Solution
Ghost was the right platform because it is built for publishing and membership rather than having them bolted on afterwards. The theme was written from scratch. All eight pages (Homepage, Author, Reviews, What's Inside, Packing List, Video, Table of Contents and Contact) got their own template, each shaped around how that content is best read.
Then the details: fireflies drifting through the hero image, a slow Ken Burns pan on the photographs, things that reveal themselves as you scroll, and a small sticky menu for the longer pages. The packing list is a printable, tickable checklist, on the reasonable assumption that you will want it on paper when there is no signal.
Screens & Details
The interactions that make the project what it is.
What Shipped
Have something that needs
building properly?
A shop that actually sells things, some awkward bit of logic nobody else wants to touch, or just a second opinion on what you already have. The workshop is open.