Getting started

1. Install the theme

From the Shopify Theme Store, choose the preset you want and add it to your store. The theme arrives in Online Store → Themes as a draft, called Strata. Nothing on your live store changes until you publish it.

If you bought the theme once, you can install it on as many development stores as you like and on the one live store it is licensed for.

2. Choose or change the preset

A preset is a complete set of theme settings — colours, fonts, spacing, button and card shapes. Strata ships with three:

Preset	Built for	Look
Strata	A design studio with a few dozen pieces	Editorial. Warm off-white, graphite, one filament orange, serif headlines, default rhythm, layered cards
Halo	A jewellery or accessories studio with a handful of pieces	Intimate. Warm near-black with brass, serif headlines, spacing at 95%, framed cards, two products per row
Plinth	An artist, gallery or collectibles shop with dozens of works	Gallery. Paper white and ink, small uppercase grotesque with wide tracking, spacing at 115%, no buttons on cards

To switch preset later: Online Store → Themes → Customize → Theme settings, and use the style picker at the top of the panel.

Switching a preset replaces your colour schemes, fonts, spacing, button, field and card settings. It does not touch your sections, your content or your templates. Duplicate the theme first if you want a way back (Themes → … → Duplicate).

The three presets differ by much more than colour: spacing scale, heading ratio, letter spacing, card style, corner radii, form field style, swatch shape, products per row and which card button is on. That is why a preset is worth switching to rather than rebuilding by hand.

3. The first fifteen minutes

In this order, because each step makes the next one easier to judge:

1. Branding. Theme settings → Branding: upload your Logo, set Logo width, upload a Favicon (32 × 32 PNG).
2. Colours. Theme settings → Color schemes. Edit the four schemes rather than adding new ones at first — every section picks a scheme by name, so renaming the palette changes the whole store at once. Keep text on background at 4.5:1 or better; the shipped schemes are already checked.
3. Typography. Theme settings → Typography: Heading font, Body font, Base size. Leave Heading size steps and Heading letter spacing until the fonts are chosen.
4. Menus. Shopify admin → Content → Menus. The header reads your main-menu; the footer columns read footer. Build these before you touch the header section, or you will be styling an empty menu.
5. Header. Open the home page in the editor, click the header: pick the Menu, decide on Sticky on scroll, and add a Mega menu block if you have one.
6. The home page. Work top to bottom. Every section can be reordered, hidden (the eye icon) or removed. Sections you do not need should be removed, not left empty — an empty section still costs a little page weight.
7. The product page. Open any product in the editor and go through the blocks. This is where Strata differs most from other themes: see The product page.
8. Cart. Theme settings → Cart: Cart behavior (drawer or page) and, if you offer it, the Free shipping threshold.

4. Set up before you publish

These live in the Shopify admin, not in the theme, and several of Strata’s features stay invisible until they exist.

In the admin	Why the theme needs it
Settings → Policies	The footer’s Copyright and policies block links your refund, privacy, terms and shipping policies. Without them the links are simply absent.
Settings → Markets	Fills the country and currency selector in the footer bottom bar.
Settings → Languages	Fills the language selector. Strata ships with English and Romanian.
Settings → Payments	Fills the Payment icons block and enables dynamic checkout buttons and Shop Pay Installments.
Settings → Shipping and delivery → Local pickup	Makes the product page’s Pickup availability block appear.
Settings → Custom data → Products	The metafield definitions behind Size reference, Spec sheet and Made to order. See Metafields.
Search & Discovery (free Shopify app)	Product filters on collection and search pages, and complementary product recommendations.
Apps → Shop channel	Follow on Shop in the footer bottom bar needs Shop Pay turned on.

5. Product data that makes the theme work

Strata reads ordinary Shopify product data. The more of it you fill in, the more the theme has to show:

• Five photographs per product is what the theme is laid out for: a hero shot, a three-quarter angle (used as the hover image on cards), a macro detail, the product in a room, and one shot beside something for scale.
• An image per variant, so colour swatches on cards can swap the photo.
• Measurements in custom.width / custom.height / custom.depth as Dimension metafields — this is what the scale drawing draws.
• “Continue selling when out of stock” on the variants of pieces you make per order. That is how the theme knows to say “Made to order” instead of “Sold out”.
• A tag (by default new) on anything that should carry a New badge.

6. Publish

Online Store → Themes → … → Publish. Before you do, walk the five pages the theme is judged on, on a phone as well as a desktop: home, a collection, a product, the cart, and search. Check that your own longest product title and longest collection title still fit.

Updating the theme later

Shopify handles two kinds of update for a Theme Store theme:

• Automated updates — bug and security fixes only. They are applied for you and never change your look, content or settings.
• Manual updates — new features and design changes. You start these yourself, from the update notification on the theme’s version number in Online Store → Themes.

For a manual update:

1. If you have edited the theme’s code, save a copy of your changes first.
2. Read the release notes, then choose Add to draft themes. Your published theme is never changed under you — the update arrives as a separate draft called “Updated copy of…”.
3. Everything you did in the theme editor — settings, templates, sections, blocks, app embeds — is copied into the new version. Code edits come across only when they do not conflict with the update; the theme card tells you whether yours were included, and if they were not, you copy them over yourself.
4. Open the draft and walk the same five pages (home, collection, product, cart, search) on desktop and on a phone.
5. Publish.

See also the FAQ.