Finding the right starting point
How the template catalog works, what the badges mean, and what happens when you pick one.
What a template is
A template is a complete, working website — pages, sections, photographs, and words already in place — designed in-house by our team. You don't start from a blank page. You start from a finished one and make it yours.
Every template runs on the same platform, so the difference between them isn't what they can do. It's how they're put together: which pages they include, how the home page is arranged, and the character of the type and color. That arrangement is the part worth choosing carefully — the words, images, and colors are all yours to change afterwards, in a few clicks.
Every template is included on every plan, at no extra charge. Choosing a more elaborate design never costs more than choosing a simple one.
Where to browse them
There are two places to look, and they show the same catalog:
- The Templates page on tropic-arts.com — open to anyone, no account needed. Filter by industry, sort by Featured or Newest, and open any template to click around it.
- Inside your account, when you add a site — after a few questions about your business, three templates are suggested and Browse all templates opens the whole catalog. Click Launch new site at the top of Home.
Both lists are drawn from the same place, so a design you spot on the public site will be waiting in the gallery when you sign in.
Reading a template card
In the gallery each card is a picture and a name. Click one to open the template's own page, which tells you the rest:
- The picture — a screenshot of the template's home page, refreshed as the template changes, and shown larger on its page.
- The name, with a New tag for a template's first two weeks in the catalog.
- Industry tags — the kind of business the design was drawn for, like Restaurants & Food or Home Services. A template can carry more than one.
- Feature badges — the parts the template ships with already built, such as an online store or online booking.
- A short description — a line or two on what the template is for and what's in it.
What the feature badges mean
A badge means the template arrives with those pages and sections already designed:
- Online store — sell products with a shopping cart and checkout.
- Products page — a dedicated shop, catalog, or menu page for browsing what you sell.
- Online booking — take appointments, reservations, or quote requests online.
- Subscriptions — recurring plans, memberships, or subscription boxes.
- Real estate listings — pages for featuring individual homes.
- Journal — a blog or editorial section for stories and updates.
A badge is a head start, not a fence. The features belong to the platform rather than the design, so a template without the Online store badge can still switch its cart on later in Settings → Store, once the site is on the Store plan. What the badge saves you is the building: the pages, sections, and layout are already made and styled to match.
Filtering by industry
The chips above the gallery narrow the list to one industry at a time, and All brings everything back. They're a shortcut to designs drawn with your kind of business in mind — a menu page for a restaurant, a services list for a trade, a gallery for a photographer.
Don't read them too strictly, though. The tag describes where a design came from, not who's allowed to use it. A photographer's template can make a beautiful site for a jeweler, and a restaurant layout with a menu page suits anyone with a printed list of things. If the shape fits, the label doesn't matter.
Previewing before you commit
Preview, on each template's page, opens that template's own live website in a new tab. Nothing is created and nothing is charged — it's just the site, running. Some things are worth doing while you're in there:
- Click through the pages in the navigation, not only the home page. Inside pages are where templates differ most.
- Read the sections as shapes rather than words — a row of three cards, a full-width photograph, a price table. Those shapes are what you'll be filling in.
- Open the same preview on your phone. Every template is built to reflow on small screens, and it's worth seeing how this one does it.
- Notice which pages you'd actually keep. Deleting a page you don't need takes a moment; inventing one that isn't there is more work.
Choosing well
Two templates can look alike and be built for quite different jobs. When you're torn between them, three things help:
Choose for structure, not color. Palette, fonts, logo, and photography are all yours to change afterwards. The arrangement of the pages is the thing you're really picking.
Choose for the work you'll actually do. A template with a journal is a promise to write; one with a booking page is a promise to keep a calendar. Take the one you'll keep up with.
Choose the closest fit, not the perfect one. There's no prize for finding an exact match — every template is meant to be pulled apart and rebuilt around your business.
Starting a site from a template
Templates are offered when you add a site, right after the questions about your business:
- On Choose a design, pick one of the three templates suggested for your business — or click Browse all templates, open the one you want, and click Use this template.
- The site takes its name from the business name you gave. It's used in browser tabs, search results, and the emails your site sends, and you can rename it later.
- Set the website address, or leave it blank and we'll build one from the name. Your site lives there under tropic-arts.com; if the address is already taken we add a number.
- Click Create site. The site is built from the template right away.
- You land in the AI website builder next — describe the look and feel you want and it writes your site from the template's own sections. Skipping it is perfectly fine; you'll get the template exactly as designed.
A new site starts as a draft, behind an Opening Soon screen, so nothing is public while you work on it. You lift that gate by turning off Draft mode on the Home panel in the side navigation — which needs a paid plan. On the free trial you can build and preview as much as you like.
What comes across, and what doesn't
Your new site is a copy of the template's pages: the layout, the sections, the demo words and images — all of it yours to edit or delete. Three things are handled specially:
- A privacy policy and terms of use are created fresh for your site, with standard text you can edit, rather than copied from the template.
- Inquiry and booking forms are rewired to your own forms, so what people send reaches you and nowhere else — messages in your Inbox, bookings in Appointments.
- Your catalog starts empty. Products, posts, services, appointments, and customers belong to your site alone — so a shop or journal page will look bare until you add your own, and you're never left deleting someone else's demo data. If you started from your current website, the posts and products you kept from it are brought in once the site is created.
The demo copy is there to show you the shape of a finished page — how long a headline runs, how much text a section wants. Replace it as you go. It was never meant to be kept.
Changing your template later
You can move to a different template through a version. In your site's Settings, open Versions, click Create version, and pick the other template under Theme. Your products, journal posts, locations, and matching words and photos carry over; page layouts, navigation, and section colors start fresh from the new design. The version stays private until you click Apply to live, and your current site is saved as a backup first.
In practice you may not need to. Most of what people want from a different template — a new color scheme, a different order on the home page, an extra page, a section swapped out — you can do in the editor on the site you already have.
Pages that exist only on your current site aren't carried across to a version on another template, so look through its preview for anything you added yourself before you apply it.
Frequently asked questions
No. Every template is included on every plan — any design, no extra charge. What your plan affects is what the site can do once it's live: selling online needs the Store plan, and going live at all needs a paid plan.
Not at all. The tags say what a design was drawn for, not who may use it. Plenty of people start from a template made for another trade because the structure suited them better. Choose the one whose pages match what you want to say.
Twice over. Preview opens the template's real website so you can click through every page, and creating a site from it costs nothing on the free trial — the site stays a private draft until you activate it.
Yes, through a version on the other template: your products, posts, locations, and matching words and photos carry over, and the layouts start fresh from the new design. Preview it privately, then Apply to live — your current site is saved as a backup first. If you're stuck between two, ask us and we'll talk it through.
Far less than you'd expect. Once your own words, photographs, logo, and colors are in, two sites from the same template rarely read as relatives — the copy and imagery carry most of the character.
Yes. On the Store plan, turn the shopping cart on in Settings → Store and a cart appears in your header. You'll be adding the shop pages yourself rather than getting them ready-made, which is the head start a template with the Online store badge gives you.
That the template was published recently — it stays for a design's first two weeks in the catalog. It's a way to spot what's arrived since you last looked, nothing more.
Choose Build a custom theme when you add a site, and the AI designs one around your business — its own colors, fonts, and pages. Or get in touch: we're a design studio before anything else, and we'd rather hear what you need than watch you settle.