Presets

A preset is the pre-configured arrangement of settings, typography, colour and homepage composition a theme loads when a store installs it. It is a starting point, not a finished store.

Whirligig ships one preset, named Whirligig. That is the whole list. Themes in this category commonly ship four or five, and shipping one is a deliberate decision rather than an oversight: a preset here means a complete design and a complete set of photography, and one that is finished is worth more than four that are approximations. If that changes, it will change in the Changelog rather than quietly.

The preset comes with a complete demo store branded Timbre, a fictional workshop in Troy, New York making handpans, tongue drums, kalimbas, bronze bowls, chimes and whirligigs, each one tuned by ear and sold with the sound it makes.

The capability is the theme; the character is the preset.

The Whirligig preset

A workshop register: warm metal on pale stone, disciplined type, and a lot of measurement on the page. The restraint is in the number of moves rather than their size, which is why the same preset that runs a 15px card title also runs a 212px display headline.

• Typography - Instrument Serif for headings, Archivo for body, Inconsolata for subheadings, labels, prices, note names and every readout. Heading size scale stays at 100%; the large type is set per section, not globally. Buttons are set in the subheading face, in caps, with wide tracking, so they read as controls.
• Colour - Four schemes. A pale cool stone #F1F0ED as the ground, a #E6E5E0 panel a half step above it, one dark steel #22292C showpiece used exactly once per page, and a saturated bronze #7A3F1C accent block. The only functional accent that touches a control is bronze #8C4A22. Every pairing, buttons included, was measured against WCAG AA before it was written down.
• Appearance - 1300px page width, relaxed section spacing, square corners on buttons and inputs. Radius appears in exactly three places, all of them drawn from round objects: the tone field's note buttons, the nodal plate rim, and the audition button on a register card.
• Motion - Weighted. Things settle rather than bounce; a struck instrument's decay is the reference.
• Merchandising - A steep price ladder handled by one system. The demo runs from an $18 whirly tube to a $2,800 handpan on the same card, with the same filters and the same audition control. The primary browse axis is not category, it is scale, with family, voice and material behind it.

The homepage composition

Eighteen sections, in this order:

#	Section	What it does
1	Overture	The display headline, cut by the strike line and developing as you scroll
2	Manifesto pan	A single sentence at 150px, panning horizontally with scroll
3	The register	The signature. 38 products laid out on a pitch axis, read by the strike line
4	Nodal field	Circular membrane figures drawn on canvas, on the one dark block of the page
5	Collection list	Browse by scale
6	Multi-column	Voice: bright, warm, or dark
7	Featured collection	Recorded this week
8	Shop the look	The practitioner kit
9	Hot spots	An annotated instrument: the ding, the tone field, the gu, the shoulder
10	Specification table	Materials, and what each one costs you, with a footnote column
11	Images with text scrolling	Shell, nitriding, tuning, recording, with hard specs per chapter
12	Media grid	The bench: hands, files, the recording corner
13	Image with text	Bowls as bronze objects, on the bronze accent scheme
14	Creator spotlight	The tuner, the pull quote, and the order of work
15	Process steps	The method
16	Video	The recording corner
17	Blog posts	Bench Notes
18	Newsletter	Keep in touch

The register is where the audio layer is most visible. The featured collection's cards carry their own audition players, and the overture and the manifesto both respond to the strike line as it passes through them. The rest are well-built versions of sections you already know, which is the point: a theme that only works on its signature page is not a theme.

What the demo store carries that the theme does not

The preset installs templates and settings. It does not install products, and it cannot install recordings, because those are store data rather than theme code. The demo's 38 recordings, 266 note slices and per-product pitch metafields live on the demo store.

So a fresh install of the preset gives you the composition with your own catalogue in it. The register, the pitch ruler and the tone field will be quiet until your products carry the metafields. Getting started has the exact keys and shapes.

The preset's sample copy and placeholder images are tuned to its register. Replace them with your own.

How presets work

Presets live in the theme's config/settings_data.json. On first install the theme loads the preset; your edits in the editor become the live configuration from then on. The preset stays as the reset reference.

Resetting to the preset

1. In the Shopify admin, go to Online Store → Themes.
2. Click Actions → Delete on the Whirligig theme, then reinstall.

Caution: reinstalling discards all customization. To keep your current configuration, copy config/settings_data.json via Actions → Edit code before deleting.

Deleting the theme does not touch your products or their metafields, so a reinstall does not cost you your recordings.

Notes

• Presets are not templates. Templates are per-page layout files; a preset is install-time global configuration.
• The preset configures the section library, the templates and the settings. The underlying theme capability is the same either way.