Change to built-in theme

[ascrapoftime]

I was looking at Shopsite's Built-in Themes and I was curious as to how to change my existing store which uses a custom template to one of the built-in themes. Is it as simple as changing the template from the one I am using to the one I want to use or would I have to start over from scratch? If so, does shopsite allow you to build a store on the side and then when complete, replace my current store?

[Jim]

A theme is composed of a number of different settings, templates for pages. product, shopping cart, customer registration etc.; colors for different things like text, links, backgrounds etc.; style of buttons on various screens, some use css for styling others are actual image buttons; Some themes have images that display in the header area; style sheet information for formatting all areas of the store.

To change from any templates to a ShopSite theme is as simple as going to Preferences > Themes > Select the theme and clicking the button to accept that them and then publishing your store.

Getting back to a previous non-ShopSite set of templates would be much more complicated because changing the theme will wipe out most user defined setting for templates, colors, buttons etc. So to get back to the way a store was, which was not using a ShopSite themes, would require setting all those setting back to what ever value they had before you switched to a ShopSite theme.

To test what your store would look like using a ShopSite theme it would probably be best to get a demo store ( shopsite.com/demo.html ) and then download the pages and products from your live store and then upload them to the demo store. You might want to also upload some of your images so you can see how the images look on pages.
Then you can switch the themes (Preferences > Themes) and see how your data looks in the various themes. Once you have found a look you like just choose that theme in your live store. NOTE the demo stores are using ShopSite 12 and your live store may not be using that version. So there may be some themes that are in the demo but not in your live store. Also the typical demo store is a Pro level store but you can get Manager and Starter level demo stores by going down the screen a bit when you sign up for the demo store. Make sure you get one that is the same type as your live store or you may see different features which your live store won't have.

[ascrapoftime]

Awesome, thanks for the help Jim!

I played with the demo store and got it set up how I wanted it:
http://i111.photobucket.com/albums/n126/brncsfns5621/4819aead-b83a-4da8-9b8f-7834d1a1431f_zps49b5a9b9.jpg

I then changed my live store to the template and started going through making sure that the settings were the same as in my demo store. But, I can not get the navigation bar separate from the main part of the page. This happens on all pages:
http://i111.photobucket.com/albums/n126/brncsfns5621/55cc56cb-b06f-40e0-830e-66e5453094cb_zps1ccb8fa0.jpg

Since I am using a template, where in the settings would I look for this?

[ascrapoftime]

Nevermind... right aligned it, it works.