How to Master the Dynamic Table of Contents in Vanta

Long-form content deserves better navigation. Vanta ships with a dynamic Table of Contents that builds itself from your headings, highlights the section being read, and stays completely under your editorial control. This guide covers how it works and how to bend it to your will.

How the TOC builds itself

When a post loads, Vanta scans the article body for h2, h3 and h4 headings and assembles a nested, clickable outline at the top of the post. There is nothing to configure while writing: structure your article with headings as you normally would, and the outline appears — with smooth scrolling and per-level indentation baked in.

Turning it on and off

The TOC is governed from Ghost Admin under Settings, Design, Theme settings — no code involved. Enable Reading Tools site-wide, and every qualifying article gets the outline automatically. For one-off exceptions, add the internal tag #no-toc to a post and Vanta will skip it, which is handy for interviews, link roundups, and other formats where an outline adds noise instead of clarity.

Writing headings that make great outlines

The TOC is only as good as the headings feeding it. Keep h2s short and scannable — they are doing double duty as navigation labels. Reserve h3s for genuine sub-points rather than emphasis, and avoid skipping levels: an h4 directly under an h2 reads fine in prose but produces a lopsided outline.

What readers actually do with it

On articles longer than a thousand words, readers use the outline two ways: to preview whether the piece answers their question, and to jump back to a section they half-remember after finishing. Both behaviors reward the same writing habit — sections that state their promise in the heading and deliver it in the body.