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Instant Site templates

Templates are pre-designed website layouts that provide a quick, consistent starting point for creating your site. They serve as a site draft where you rearrange and add content to create your own website. 

Your Instant Site offers 60+ templates tailored to different business niches. All templates are fully customizable and free to use, so you can add, edit, and remove any content such as text, images, colors, fonts, navigation menu, site sections and pages to shape a site that matches your style and business needs.

In case you have something specific in mind, you can create your own custom template from scratch.

This article is for the latest version of Instant Site. If you have the old Instant Site version, read the Configuring Instant Site design (legacy version) instead. Not sure which version you're using? Find out now.

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Customizing a site template

In Instant Site, a template is a one-page pre-designed website layout that consists of sections. A section is a block of content that may include images, text, products, navigation menu, promo bars and so on. You can rearrange, add, remove sections, and change their content, therefore creating your own site. When you edit your templates, your changes display in real time in the editor preview. You can also add pages to better organize content.

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You will find detailed instructions on various editing processes in the Instant Site section of the Help Center:

If your brand requires designs or capabilities not currently covered by Ecwid’s default range of templates, you can develop your own custom template. You can do the coding yourself, hire a third-party developer, or order help from Ecwid’s customization team. See development guidelines for Instant Site templates →

Switching to another site template

When you open the Instant Site editor for the first time, you will be prompted to choose a template right away. Later, you can choose a different template to change your site’s design and structure.

Keep in mind that switching to another site template affects edits you made such as adding your copy and images. Here’s how it works:

  • Any changes you’ve made to an initial template won’t save after you switch to a new template and publish it. That includes text and images editing, navigation menu changes, SEO settings, and edits of your online store. That means, you have to design the site content from scratch.
  • In case you’ve added pages to your initial template, those pages with all the edits will save after switching to another template. However, you will need to add links to the pages to your navigation menu once again.
  • Before clicking Publish after switching to a new template, you can revert to the previous template with all your changes intact by clicking the Undo button at the top right of the editor.

To change a site template:

  1. From your Ecwid admin, go to Website → Edit Site.
  2. Click Settings → Templates. To view business-related templates, switch between tags at the top.
  3. Click Preview Template to view it. Click Apply Template to switch to it.
    Until you click Publish, you can revert to the previous template by clicking Undo → Revert to last published version.
  4. Click Publish to apply template.

Developing an Instant Site template

In addition to ready-made site templates that are available in the Instant Site template library, there’s an option to create your own custom template. It can have any custom functionalities tailored to your needs such as a booking section, form for collecting customer emails, social media integration, and so on.

You either build your custom template from existing site sections from the Instant Site library or add your own sections and mix them with the default templates.

You need a good knowledge of Typescript and its Vue framework to build templates. To perform the task, you can hire a developer, ask someone from your IT team to do this, or submit a request to the Ecwid’s customization team

Learn more about creating an Instant Site template →

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