Choosing a Starter
A starter is the first version of a new site. It gives you a useful foundation to edit, rather than a blank screen. All starters work with the same Plyed canvas, code editor, AI, publishing, assets, and Git backup.
Choose a starter when you create a project.
Every starter opens with the same three pages already built — Home, About, and Contact — plus a header and footer, so you’re never starting from a blank canvas.
Choose Plain for most websites: a portfolio, company site, landing page, blog, documentation site, or anything where you want a clean beginning.
It gives you a responsive Astro site styled with Tailwind, ready to make your own. Every page is a normal full page load — the simplest, most predictable foundation. This is the best default when you are unsure.
Motion
Section titled “Motion”Choose Motion when movement is part of the experience: a creative portfolio, editorial site, product story, or more expressive marketing site.
It starts from the same kind of editable site as Plain, with smooth scrolling and seamless page transitions already wired up — navigating between pages swaps the content in place instead of a hard reload. Use it when those details will help the site feel intentional; Plain is usually a lighter fit for a straightforward site.
Shopify
Section titled “Shopify”Choose Shopify when you are building a storefront.
It adds a Shop page and a page per product, plus a cart and checkout flow, on top of the same Home/About/Contact foundation. You can explore and edit the whole experience with the included demo catalogue before connecting a real store.
When you are ready to use Shopify products, add your store domain and a Storefront access token in Environment (left rail). Use a Storefront token created for this purpose—never a private Shopify admin token. See Environment Variables for help adding those values.
Every starter, whichever you pick
Section titled “Every starter, whichever you pick”All three share the same reusable header, footer, buttons, and cards under the hood, the same component library and icon set from the Add panel, ready-made behaviours like scroll-reveal and a marquee you can drop onto any page, and an optional connection to Sanity CMS. None of that depends on which starter you choose — only the starting pages, animation, and Shopify’s storefront do.
If you change your mind
Section titled “If you change your mind”The starter is chosen when the project is created. You can freely redesign and edit the project afterwards, but Plyed does not convert one starter into another automatically.
If you need a different foundation, create a new project with that starter, then copy pages or sections across. Sections copied between projects keep their visible structure and Tailwind styling; bring over custom images, CSS, and code separately. See Editing on the Canvas for the copy workflow.