For the demonstration store I'm building, I have chosen to use the New Standard theme. For my own tastes, it's a beautiful clean theme with plenty of nice features. Plus it's free so you can follow along with the examples I give.

Let's return to the theme store. In your admin,click on Themes in the navigation panel and then on the Visit the Theme Store button at the top-right. In the theme store, do a quick search for "standard" to find the New Standard theme. Click into the description page for the theme (see above). You've already seen the New Standard theme but there are quite a few features you haven't seen yet. Take a look through the theme information, take a look at the theme demo store and read about the theme features.

Let's install the New Standard theme: don't worry if you already have it, Shopify will just install a second copy. To do so return to the theme description page and click the Get Theme button. If at this stage you were installing a paid theme, you would now need to approve that it be charged to your account. On a separate note, remember that when you install a theme, all of the theme's styles will come with it. New Standard however has only one style.

Next, you will need to confirm the installation of the theme. You can click the main button Publish as my shop's theme to publish the theme straight away to your storefront. Or below the button, there are text links to download the theme as a .zip or to install as an unpublished theme. In both cases, you can put the theme live on your storefront later.

I'm going to publish the theme direct as my main theme as I have a new store with no customers yet. You will have to confirm a second time that you understand that the theme will become your current main theme. The installation may take a few minutes. When it's complete, click on the button Go to your Theme Manager.

Managing Your Installed Themes

This will bring you back to the themes section in your admin. You can, of course, get to this page anytime in your admin by clicking Themes in the navigation panel. Here you can see the themes that are installed for your store. You can see in the screenshot above, I have the newly installed "New Standard" theme as the published theme, and I have the "radiance" theme that came with my store as an unpublished theme.

At the top right, you'll see buttons to Upload a theme and Visit the Theme Store. We already looked at the theme store. Using the other button, you can upload a theme in the form of a .zip file. You might upload a theme if you were working on a theme locally on your computer or if you purchased a theme outside of the theme store.

The main part of the page is split in two: published themes and unpublished themes:

• The published or main theme is the one that is currently live on your store. Any changes made to it will be reflected immediately on your storefront. You can also have a mobile theme published.
• Unpublished themes are other themes that you have installed and that you can edit and preview, without affecting your storefront. This is very useful if you have a live store with customers and want to customize a new theme before you launch it.

For each theme installed, there is a set of controls offering the following:

• Theme settings: It is in this section that you can customize the colors, fonts, logo, etc. for your theme. We will look at this section in depth later in this chapter.
• Template editor: For those that are skilled in HTML and CSS, the template editor can be used to customize the theme to a much deeper level than the theme settings. Don't touch this section though if you don't know what you are doing, you could easily break your storefront!
• Export theme: Click on Export to get a zip archive of the theme. This can be handy as a backup of your theme if you ever need it.

• Duplicate theme: Using this button, you can duplicate or make a copy of a theme. This is useful if you want to create a new theme or style based on an existing theme you have or if you want to test changes to the main theme without affecting your live storefront. Simply duplicate the theme, make and verify your changes, and then publish the duplicated theme.
• Publish this theme: For the unpublished themes you will have the option to Publish the theme. Clicking this will give you two options: Publish as main theme or Publish as mobile theme. The first option will make this theme the main theme and publish it to your live store. The second option is for those store owners who would like a separate mobile theme. Though with more and more themes now being responsive, there is less need for this.

• Delete theme: For unpublished themes, you can delete the theme by clicking on the trash icon on the bottom left of the controls for that theme.
• Preview: For an unpublished theme, you also have the option to preview it. Using this, you can see how the theme looks on your store without your store's visitors seeing it. The preview of the theme is clearly marked (see below) as a preview. When you are finished previewing this other theme, click on the x on the red area to return to your storefront with the published theme.