Customize WooCommerce Block Theme: Cmsmart Stores

Applies to the Cmsmart Stores 2.0 release line — parent theme 2.0.0–2.2.0, the Printstores child theme family 2.0.0 and Cmsmart Product Designer 2.18.0–2.18.3 — built with Store Setup v2 · Updated October 2026. This guide shows how to customize WooCommerce block theme settings on a Cmsmart Store — colors, fonts, header and footer — in WordPress's own Site Editor, no code required.

This picks up right after installing a Cmsmart Store with Store Setup v2 or the manual theme files, and before each store's own product and pricing setup — start with Set up Cmsmart Print Shop Store as the worked example, or the matching guide for Gift, T-Shirt, Boxed, 3D Print, Boxed 2, B2B or Marketplace stores.

What's the cost of leaving a new Cmsmart Store on its sample branding?

The pains we see in the hour after a Store Setup v2 install finishes, before a store is ready to share:

• Sample catalogue, sample name. Every store set up through Store Setup v2 runs with sample data from the first minute, so a store still titled and stocked after the demo is visible to anyone who finds the URL from day one.
• No Customizer to fall back on. The Printstores, B2B and Marketplace themes are all WordPress block themes, so the old Appearance > Customize screen isn't where colors and fonts live; every site-wide style change happens in the Site Editor's Styles panel instead.
• Three moving pieces to keep straight. A finished store depends on the parent theme, the child theme, Cmsmart Stores Blocks and Cmsmart Product Designer all staying active together; a deactivated plugin breaks header blocks or the design tool with no obvious message pointing at the cause.
• Developer cost for small tweaks. Paying an agency by the hour to swap a header layout or a color palette is expensive for changes most owners can make themselves once they know where the Site Editor keeps them.
• A live store that still says "sample". Leaving placeholder copy and the sample catalogue live too long after launch reads as unfinished to the first real visitors.

What could your store's branding look like without touching code?

None of that touches a theme file, and it doesn't require removing the sample catalogue first — branding and cataloguing happen in either order. If you'd rather hand branding to Cmsmart, see Cmsmart Store preset installation & demo import.

How does Cmsmart let you customize WooCommerce block theme settings?

The building blocks a Store Setup v2 (or manually installed) store arrives with:

• Parent theme. Cmsmart Stores (cmsmart-stores), 2.2.0 in the current release zips, supplies the shared template structure every child theme builds on.
• Child theme. One of the six Printstores child themes at 2.0.0 — Print Shop, Gift, T-Shirt, Boxed, 3D Print or Boxed 2 — or Cmsmart B2B Store / Cmsmart Marketplace Store 2.0.1, each on its own parent theme.
• Cmsmart Stores Blocks (2.1.2). The plugin behind the slider, carousel, product tabs and mega-menu blocks the store themes use in their templates.
• Cmsmart Product Designer (2.18.3). The on-page product customizer for buyers; it doesn't change how you style the store, but it has to stay active for design-enabled products to work.
• Site Editor (Appearance > Editor). Templates and template parts — Header and Footer included — open here for direct editing.
• Styles panel. Typography, Colors, Background, Shadows and Layout apply across the whole site at once, the way WordPress's own Styles documentation describes; set your brand colors and fonts here.

What's the business value of branding your store properly before launch?

How do you set up and brand the Site Editor on a Cmsmart Store?

1. Finish installing your store first — either with Store Setup v2's installer file or the manual theme files route — before you start branding.
2. Open Appearance > Themes and confirm your child theme (for example Cmsmart Print Shop Store) shows Active, with the Cmsmart Stores parent theme installed next to it.
3. Open Plugins and confirm WooCommerce, Cmsmart Stores Blocks and Cmsmart Product Designer all show Active before you move on to design.
4. Go to Settings > General and set your Site Title and Tagline, then upload your logo as the Site Icon.
5. Open Appearance > Editor to launch the Site Editor.
6. Under Patterns > Template parts, open the Header template part: replace the logo through the Site Logo block, and check the menu and cart/account icons.
7. Still under Template parts, open the Footer template part and update its columns, support links and copyright line to match your business.
8. Click the Styles icon, open Colors and set your own brand palette; the change applies across every page immediately.
9. In Styles, open Typography and set your heading and body fonts.
10. Click Save in the Site Editor to publish your changes.

Products, print options and the "Setting Cmsmart" pricing box are covered in each store's own setup guide — see Cmsmart Print Shop Store once branding is in place.

Once saved, the dashboard's own post-install checklist is worth working through:

• Load demo images (paid key): Cmsmart > Store Setup > Load demo images, for the sample catalogue's full images instead of placeholders.
• Remove sample data later in Cmsmart > Store Setup once you're ready to go live with real products.
• Follow Tutorial: run your store, or the Launch checklist on My Stores, for what's left before launch.

Keep it up to date. New versions appear in two places: the dashboard's Theme files & changelog panel, which lists every store with its current version, and each plugin's own update notice under Plugins once Cmsmart Stores Blocks or Cmsmart Product Designer has a new release.

Going further: what if you want a fully custom store design?

What we build on top of a branded store, project by project:

• Bespoke header and homepage design. A layout beyond the theme's built-in template parts, built to match an existing brand identity exactly.
• Catalogue and brand migration. Replacing the sample catalogue with products and styling moved over from an existing WooCommerce store or a different platform.
• Custom patterns. Purpose-built sections — a price-matrix table, a gang-sheet pricing explainer, a 3D preview block — that the standard pattern library doesn't include.
• B2B and Marketplace theming. Cmsmart B2B Store and Cmsmart Marketplace Store run on their own parent theme and plugin; we adapt vendor dashboards and multi-vendor branding project by project.
• Plugin and performance audits. Reviewing a store's plugin list and page weight as it grows past the three core pieces.

Delivery runs the same way for every engagement: discovery, solution design, build sprints, QA on a staging copy, launch, then support. See the delivery model at Cmsmart ecommerce projects.

Get my Cmsmart Store custom-branded

Why work with Cmsmart on your store's branding?

Cmsmart has delivered 6,300+ client projects and runs 1,800+ live stores in 80+ countries, rated 4.2 on Trustpilot (404 reviews). One long-time plugin user put it this way:

"We have had the NB Designer plugin installed for three years and have experienced absolutely no problems during that time. It is wonderful to see their commitment to continuous development, with new features being added frequently to keep the software current and highly capable." — Web Developer, Trustpilot review

Related reading: the Cmsmart Print Shop Store product page, the Cmsmart Product Designer plugin page, our web-to-print solutions hub, current Cmsmart plans and pricing, the Cmsmart Product Designer user guides, and a live demo of the Print Shop store used as the worked example here.

Further reading

• WooCommerce documentation
• WordPress.org