Three independent choices shape how your site looks and what it leads with. You can change any of them at any time without losing your content:
- Theme — visual chrome. Typography, card shapes, layout rhythm. Four options: Default, Magazine, Floating, Brutalist.
- Content focus — which sections lead the homepage and in what order. For faculty profiles: Modern Academic, Research Focused, Minimal Portfolio, Teaching Scholar. For lab groups: Lab Group.
- Color scheme — palette. Five presets plus a custom picker.
Step 1: site type
During onboarding (and later in Site → Site type) you'll pick:
- Faculty profile — a single researcher's homepage. Best for individual academics, instructors, and independent researchers.
- Lab group — a research lab with members, joint publications, and shared news. Makes "Team" first-class content.
Site type determines which content focuses are available (faculty types or lab type) and which navigation items appear by default.
Step 2: theme
In Dashboard → Website builder, scroll to the Theme card and pick one of the four. Each theme has its own typographic personality, card style, and Hero variant. See Themes for what each one looks like.
On iOS, theme is the headline pick in onboarding and Site Settings — content focus is auto-set to the right default for your site type, so you don't have to think about it there.
Step 3: content focus
Below the Theme card, the Content focus card shows the four faculty options (lab-group is auto-picked for lab sites). The right pick depends on what you most want a visitor to see first:
- Modern Academic — research, publications, news, team, press, and teaching all surface. The most balanced option.
- Research Focused — publications, grants, and metrics lead.
- Minimal Portfolio — bio, selected publications, and awards only. Stripped down.
- Teaching Scholar — courses, teaching philosophy, and research lead.
See Content focus for a deeper walkthrough.
Step 4: color scheme
Pick from five preset palettes or build a custom one (primary + accent + background). See Color schemes.
Switching later
Switching any of these is non-destructive. Your publications, lab members, photos, and custom pages all carry over. Each change applies to your draft immediately; your live site only updates when you republish, so you can audition combinations freely.
What if no combination fits?
On Pro you can use the visual page editor to build custom pages that override the defaults of your theme + content focus. See Custom pages for details.