The theme designer upgrade gives you a template that you have more control over than our standard templates. The benefit is that you can change your own banner, background image and control the colour of the template without paying for design work.

For pricing information, please feel free to contact our Customer Sales Department on 0844 774 7777.

The theme designer is available by going to the Design Selection section of the control panel. You will see the standard template selection as usual with an additional button to switch to the Theme Designer tab.

Here you can configure the editable template. There are a few changes you can make:

Selecting template colours

To the left you will see a colourful circle with a another coloured squared in the middle. This area allows you to control the colour of your template. To make the process easier you select a colour and the system will automatically create a matching palette of colours to use across the template.

To change the colour select the general colour you want by moving the selector in the outer circle. You then move the selector inside the square to choose the exact shade of that colour you would like to use as the basis for your palette.

Note: if you know the hex code for the exact colour you want to use then enter this without the # symbol in the box below the colour wheel and click update to use this.

Once you have selected a colour you will see 6 palettes of colours created by our system. Select the palette you would like to use for your template.

The last option allows you to either set the default colour of the main text on your site to either be black or use a colour from the palette you already created.

Note: this text colour option doesn't override the colour of text that has had the colour changed manually in the Page Builder.

Changing banner images

To the right you can change the banner and background of your website. You will see a preview of the template to allow you to see the effect of any colour changes or image changes you make to the template.

If you click on the banner area in the preview you can browse and select an image for your banner. Once you select the desired image the banner designer will appear.

Banner designer

You can use the window to the left to select the part of the image that will be used in the final banner. A preview of the final banner is displayed to the left with a few options below this.

The banner designer will automatically crop* the image so that it fits nicely within the template. If you have designed a banner to fit the exact area or do not want the system to crop the image the select “Yes” under the Disable image cropping section.

If your image is larger than 1000 pixels wide then the system will still reduce the size of the image to fit but will not crop the image.

The banner designer also allows you to easily add text to the banner image. To do this use the Text Overlay area to select a font, font size, colour and position for the text. Type what text you would like to appear on the banner and select whether to give it a shadow before clicking the update button to update the preview.

Click Save to save the image and upload it to your template.

Background image

By default the background of your Theme Designer template will be a solid colour from the colour palette you created earlier. If you would rather use an image in the background then you can click on the upload icon [insert image]. Once your image is uploaded you can either set the image to repeat or to be stretched to fit the screen.

Turning the theme designer on

Once you have set the template up and are ready to turn it on tick the box at the top labelled “Use this custom theme for my website instead of a pre-built template” and then click the Save site theme button to activate your changes.

*cropping reduces the size of an image by cutting parts of the image away rather than resizing which shrinks an image without cutting any of it away.

If you do need any further assistance with using Theme Designer in general, please feel free to place a support ticket by clicking here, emailing support@freestart.com, or calling our direct support line on 0844 774 2974.