Customizing a Framer Template

Start from a copy, not the original

Never edit the template you bought in place. Remix or duplicate the project first and do all of your work in the copy. The untouched original becomes your reference: when something looks wrong later, you can open both side by side and see exactly what changed.

Name the copy after your project, not the template. A month from now, “Acme site” is findable and “Template copy 3” is not.

Map the pages before touching anything

Open the Pages panel and read the whole sitemap before changing a single layer. Templates usually mix two kinds of pages: regular pages where content lives on the canvas, and CMS pages that render one page per collection entry. Knowing which is which tells you where each piece of visible content actually comes from.

Click through every page on the canvas at desktop width. Note which sections repeat across pages — navigation, footers, CTAs — because those are usually shared components, and editing one edits them everywhere.

Restyle text and color first

Do the global styling pass before touching content. Update the text styles (headings, body, captions) and color variables to your brand, and let the changes cascade through the template. This is the highest-leverage edit you can make: one afternoon in the style panel re-skins the entire site.

Resist restyling individual layers. If you find yourself changing the same color on ten different elements, stop — that color should be a shared style or variable instead.

Swap static content in place

Now replace the template’s copy and images with yours, selecting each element and editing it where it sits. When an element is hard to click on the canvas — buried under overlays or inside a tall stack — find it by name in the Layers tab instead. Keep the layout structures — stacks, grids, sections — exactly as the designer left them. Templates break when customization fights the layout; they shine when content flows through it.

Swap images at matching aspect ratios. If the template shows a wide hero image, replace it with a wide image, not a portrait crop that the frame then has to awkwardly conceal.

Connect dynamic content through the CMS

Anything that repeats — blog posts, listings, team members, testimonials — is probably CMS-driven. Open the CMS panel, find the collection feeding the section you’re looking at, and edit the entries there instead of on the canvas. Add one test entry first and watch it appear on the live page; that confirms you’ve found the right collection before you migrate all your content.

Featured or pinned flags are common: a toggle on the entry that promotes it to the homepage or index pages. Learn what each flag does before bulk-editing, or your homepage will rearrange itself by surprise.

Wire up forms and interactive pieces

Forms ship pointing at the template author’s demo endpoints. Open every form — contact, newsletter, checkout — and point it at your own destination before launch. Submit a test entry to each one and confirm it arrives where you expect.

For components with settings panels (sliders, galleries, pricing toggles), read the component’s options before rebuilding anything custom. Most “missing features” are a checkbox the template already provides.

Run the publish checklist

Before publishing, walk this list: test entries removed from the CMS, forms pointing at your endpoints, favicon and site title updated, tablet and phone breakpoints reviewed page by page, and one full click-through of every page in preview mode. Templates make the last ten percent easy to skip and expensive to forget.

That concludes the guide. Work copy-first, style globally, respect the layout, drive repeats through the CMS, and verify every form — and the template will feel like it was designed for you.