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Themes: Changing Your Website's Look

Last updated on May 21, 2026 05:08

Your content is the heart of your website, but the Theme is its face. Themes control the visual design, layout, colors, and typography of your site.

PolyCMS features a unique, powerful Multi-Theme Engine that gives you new control over your site's appearance without touching a line of code.

Managing Your Themes

To view and manage your designs, navigate to Appearance > Themes in the admin sidebar.

Here you will see a grid of all the themes currently installed on your server (such as FlexiWhite, Modern Business, or Aurora Travel).

To change the overall look of your website, simply hover over the theme you want to use and click Activate. Your entire site will instantly transform to use the new design.

The Power of Multi-Theme Architecture

Most traditional website builders only allow you to have one active theme at a time. PolyCMS breaks this limitation with its Dual Activation Roles:

1. The Main Theme

You always have one Main Theme active. This theme provides the global structure of your website, including the default header, footer, global CSS styles, and the default look for all your blog posts and products.

2. Sub Themes

You can activate multiple Sub Themes simultaneously alongside your Main Theme.

Why is this useful? Imagine your Main Theme is a standard corporate blog, but you are running a special Black Friday marketing campaign. You can install a highly-optimized Landing Page Theme, activate it as a Sub Theme, and assign that specific layout to just one single page.

The rest of your website remains corporate, but that specific URL uses the marketing layout!

Assigning Templates

When a theme (or sub-theme) is active, it provides specific "Templates" to the system.

To use these templates:

  • Go to Content > Pages (or Posts).

  • Create or edit a page.

  • Look at the right sidebar for the Template dropdown.

  • Select a specialized layout (e.g., "Full Width Landing Page" or "Contact Form Layout").

By combining Main Themes for consistency and Sub Themes for specialized landing pages, PolyCMS gives web designers and marketers the comprehensive flexibility.