How we present Blank Canvas based themes in signup/for new sites

[sixhours]

This is a long one, so please bear with me. :)

• Sign up for a new site on an existing user account
• Choose Fredrickson theme because I've actually been thinking about setting up a Linktree-style site, and this would be perfect! The thumbnail and preview look like this, for reference:

• Select the eCommerce plan and purchase it
• I get dropped into the WooCommerce setup flow, where I eventually see a design selection screen like this:

The "currently active theme" looks nothing like the one I picked. The white square makes it look broken. I was legitimately confused.

• Proceed without changing my current theme. Land on WooCommerce Dashboard, where there's no reference to the theme or what my site looks like after having paid for it:

• Click around trying to find something to do with design selection or customization; eventually go to WordPress Dashboard, which looks like this:

• Again, I'd end up clicking around a bit. Thankfully I know to go to Appearance -> Themes, where again, my theme is represented as a blank white rectangle. Do I have to build it myself? This is so disconcerting! I want to see this cool design I picked out in signup, but now it's like it doesn't exist:

It's also not listed in the themes below...

Maybe this is only an issue because I'm used to "old school" WordPress and I think in terms of a theme with a specific design instead of block patterns. But again, I have yet to see my site, and I've literally forgotten where to go to do that. 🙃

• Oh right, click on the site card. OK, this is better!

• From here, I click Edit, because I want to start customizing my site and use a different color palette:

The editor doesn't look like my website. :( At this point, I don't know how I would change the colors, although I have a suspicion I won't be able to do it here.

Edit: I tried choosing the same theme on a Simple site and see a much more accurate representation in the editor with the correct colors; maybe a difference between Atomic and Simple? Or ECommerce plans and free plans?

Is this kind of issue specific to themes based on Blank Canvas? Could we persist the original design throughout the onboarding process so it doesn't feel like your theme "disappears" after signup?

[mreishus]

Agree this is confusing.

• /new lets me choose Fredrickson when I'm making a new blog. However, when I visit Appearance -> Themes, the Blank Canvas theme is selected.
• /start creates a site using Hever for me, and if I visit Appearance -> Themes, I don't see Fredrickson as a choice to switch to. Does Fredrickson only exist in /new signup, and if you missed that, you can't get it? (Possibly because it uses headstart to create content?)

I'm thinking Fredrickson is not a theme, but something one level up? We ran into them in anchor, but I forgot the technical name for them. Maybe it was something like starter template.

• Fredrickson is based on the "Blank Canvas" theme.
• Gilbert and Riley are based on the "Spearhead" theme

[ianstewart]

The editor doesn't look like my website. :( At this point, I don't know how I would change the colors, although I have a suspicion I won't be able to do it here.

This looks like a Theme Bug.

[mreishus]

I also made a site with /new and choosing the "Brice" design. When I was done, I visited Appearance -> Themes and the "Mayland" theme was selected, which confused me, because my site looked completely different from the Mayland thumbnail.

[ianstewart]

Is this kind of issue specific to themes based on Blank Canvas? Could we persist the original design throughout the onboarding process so it doesn't feel like your theme "disappears" after signup?

@simison and I started talking about this issue in Slack I think there are some issues here to figure out from the onboarding side. (Let's keep the Design Selection label here for now though.)

[simison]

get dropped into the WooCommerce setup flow, where I eventually see a design selection screen like this:

Assuming we ship design picker soon in signup flow, this step at Woo onboaridng is duplicative on .com and should likely be skipped. "I just chose a theme and now you want me to choose again?"

Separately, our design picker doesn't have eCommerce theme as an option. See 52-GH-view-design