Blueprint and Developer Mode

Deprecated

This is archived documentation for the legacy Blueprint theme framework. For current storefront documentation, see Stencil or Catalyst.

Restricted/Grandfathered Access As of November 2016, new BigCommerce stores are being offered themes exclusively from BigCommerce’s new Stencil theme platform. For existing stores, the control panel’s Themes Marketplace and My Themes pages will show only those Blueprint themes that have been applied to the store and/or purchased before November 2016.

This means that the workflow below will work only for stores that have applied or purchased at least one Blueprint theme before November 2016. For information about developing on the current Stencil platform, please consult the Stencil documentation.

A Foundation for Creating Themes

Our (legacy) Blueprint “Classic Next” base theme provides a starting point for creating a new theme. This theme includes responsive support out-of-the-box, so it works with lower resolutions like those on mobile devices. The visual design has been stripped back, so you can create from a clean canvas.

View the demo

Setting Up Your Environment

Follow these steps to start developing using the Blueprint theme:

1

Enable the Blueprint theme

To enable the Blueprint theme on your store, simply log in to the control panel, and place /index.php?ToDo=viewTemplates&dev=enable after /admin. (For example: https://store-123abmy.mybigcommerce.com/admin/index.php?ToDo=viewTemplates&dev=enable.)

2

Apply the Blueprint theme

Apply the Blueprint theme.

3

Connect via WebDAV

Connect to the site using WebDAV.

5

Edit and upload files

To make a change to a file, just download the file, edit it, and then upload your altered version.

6

Upload changes via WebDAV

Every time you make changes to any files, you will need to upload them through WebDAV for the changes to be reflected on your site.