Poll Templates, Sample Polls and Themes — What's the Difference in Whocan?

There is a moment, when you start using Whocan, where three words start to blur into each other: poll template, sample poll, and theme. They show up next to each other in the product, in the URL bar, and in the help articles — and people regularly mix them up. So here is the short, no-nonsense version of what each one actually is, with examples and when to use which.

If you only read the next paragraph, that’s the whole picture:

A poll template is the type of poll — scheduling, invitation, potluck, and so on. A sample poll is a ready-made example of one of those polls that you can vote in live and then clone with one click. A theme is the visual skin on top — the background image, colours, and fonts. Type tells the poll what to ask. Sample shows you how it looks filled in. Theme decides what it looks like on the screen.

Now the longer version, with examples.

1. Poll Templates — the type of poll

A poll template is the kind of question you are asking. Whocan currently ships nine of them, and each one is a pre-configured set of fields, answer formats and default settings that fit one specific situation.

The nine templates:

1. Scheduling Poll — propose dates and times, everyone marks which slots work for them. Best for team meetings, parent-teacher evenings, board calls.
2. Invitation — a digital invitation page with RSVP (yes / no / maybe). Best for birthdays, weddings, baby showers.
3. Potluck — sign-up list for who brings what, with quantities. Best for friendsgiving dinners, office parties, school events.
4. Doodle Poll — the matrix layout people know from Doodle (dates as rows, voters as columns), with the option to mix date rows and free-text rows in the same poll. Same scheduling job as the Scheduling Poll, different visual layout.
5. Class Booking — register attendees with optional capacity limits per slot. Best for workshops, yoga classes, parent-teacher conferences.
6. Online Poll — opinions and surveys with sliders, multiple choice, dropdowns and free text. Best for “where should we eat” or “what colour for the new logo”.
7. Assign Tasks — distribute tasks across a group, with optional deadlines. Best for chore rotas, classroom helpers, club duties.
8. Group Order — collect items with quantities from each person. Best for pizza orders, group lunches, fundraiser sign-ups.
9. Advanced — full manual control over every setting, for when none of the above fits.

The poll template is the first thing you pick when you create a poll. It is also what changes the URL of the landing page you came in on: /en/scheduling-poll/, /en/free-online-invitations-with-rsvp/, /en/potluck-sign-up-sheet/ etc. are all landing pages for specific templates.

When to think about templates: at the very start, when you decide what you are organising. If you want a deep dive into every setting each template flips on, see the complete guide to all poll templates.

Try it: start a poll — you pick the template on the first screen.

2. Sample Polls — live demos you can clone

A sample poll is a real, working poll that lives at a public URL — and the important thing is that everything inside it is already filled in for you. Not just the layout. Every single moving part is populated with realistic example content so you can see exactly what a working poll of that template looks like in the wild.

What “already filled in” actually means:

• A realistic title and description are already set — not “Sample Poll 1”, but a real, plausible event title and a real description that explains the situation, just like you would write yourself. So you immediately see what good copy looks like for that template.
• Example options are already populated. A scheduling sample comes with several proposed dates and times already entered. A potluck sample comes with a curated bring-list (mains, sides, drinks, desserts). An invitation sample has a date, a location and a respond-by date. You see the shape and density a real poll has — not an empty form.
• Dummy votes are already in there. Half a dozen made-up participants have already voted. That is the part you cannot see from a screenshot or a feature list: what the response table actually looks like once people start voting. The matrix of voters versus options, the running totals, the “who said yes” column — all of it is right there, populated, exactly as it will be for your real poll once people start clicking.

Add all three together and a sample poll is essentially a finished, mid-flight poll someone else has been running for you to look at. You see the title styling. You see the description. You see the options. You see the table of votes filling up. That is far more informative than a blank template.

Sample polls live under /en/poll-templates/, the public listing page. From there you can browse the currently published samples, open any one of them, vote inside it yourself if you want to feel the voting flow, and clone it into your own account with one click.

Three concrete examples:

• A scheduling poll sample for a team retro: title “Q2 retrospective — pick your slot”, description, three proposed dates with start/end times, and six dummy voters whose check-marks are already spread across the date columns. You can see at a glance which slot has the most yeses.
• A potluck sample for a school BBQ: title and short pitch, a bring-list with categories (salads, mains, drinks, desserts, equipment), and dummy parents who have already claimed items with quantities — so the sign-up table is already half full.
• An invitation sample for a kid’s birthday: invitation-styled headline, location, respond-by date, the ballons theme on the background, and a handful of RSVPs (yes / no / maybe) already coming in so you see the response counter in action.

Sample polls are also what gets embedded into Whocan’s own landing pages as the small “live demo” iframe — that little voting widget you see on /en/scheduling-poll/ and friends is rendering an actual sample poll, not a screenshot.

When to think about sample polls: when you want to see what a template looks like with the title, the options, and the response table all populated at once. Or when you want a head start — pick the sample closest to your situation and clone it.

Try it: open the sample polls listing and click into one. Scroll down to the votes table — that’s the part you cannot fake with a screenshot.

3. Themes — the visual skin

A theme is purely visual. It does not change what the poll asks or how people vote. What it does define is everything about how the page looks:

• The background image — the photo or illustration behind the poll. Calendar pages for scheduling polls, balloons for birthday invitations, a grilled-vegetable shot for a BBQ, a pumpkin scene for Halloween, etc.
• The background and accent colours — every theme carries a colour palette that drives the page background tint, the title colour, the buttons and the small accent strips. Built-in palettes include things like yellow-white, red-black, blue, green, default (dark plum on dark plum), and many more.
• The font family for the title, description and date labels — Whocan ships a curated list of typefaces you can pair with any theme: Montserrat, Lato, Open Sans and Merriweather for clean and professional looks; Georgia and Playfair Display for editorial / formal events; Dancing Script and Great Vibes for handwritten, romantic invitations.
• The layout style — how compact or airy the title, description and respond-by-date blocks are arranged on top of the background.

Everything inside a theme is customisable. Each theme is just a sensible default combination of “background + palette + font + layout”. Once you have picked one, you can override any of those pieces individually inside the editor:

• Swap to a different colour palette without changing the background image.
• Pick a different font for the title and description — for example, keep the ballons background but switch from the default sans-serif to Great Vibes for a more handwritten feel.
• Upload your own photo and use it as the background — about 1 in 5 Whocan invitations carries a user-uploaded photo instead of one of the built-ins. That feature is described in the original personalize your polls with themes post.
• Adjust background size and blur (cover / contain / blurred overlay) so your text stays readable on top of busy photos.

So the mental model is: pick a theme as a starting point, then customise any of the three layers (image, colours, fonts) until it looks the way you want.

When to think about themes: after you have picked a template and started filling in your poll. The theme picker shows up in the editor, and you can swap themes — or individual layers — as often as you want without losing any data.

Try it: create any poll, then open the theme picker in the editor sidebar. Pick a theme, then drill into the font and colour panels to see what changes.

How the three stack together

Most polls go through all three layers in this order:

1. Pick a template — scheduling, invitation, potluck, etc. This decides the fields and the voting interface.
2. Optionally start from a sample poll — clone an existing real-world example and edit it, instead of starting from a blank template.
3. Apply a theme — pick the visual style that matches the occasion, or upload your own photo.

You do not have to use all three. Most people use steps 1 and 3 and skip 2. Some people start from a sample and never touch the theme. The point is that they are independent layers, and now you know which one to reach for when.

Quick reference

Concept	What it is	Where you choose it	Example
Poll Template	The type of poll (9 options)	First screen when you create a poll	Scheduling, Invitation, Potluck, Doodle
Sample Poll	A pre-filled live example you can clone	/en/poll-templates/ listing	Team-retro scheduling sample, kid’s birthday invite sample
Theme	The visual style applied on top	Theme picker inside the editor	calendar, ballons, potluck, halloween

If you want to go deeper on any of the three: the poll templates deep-dive covers every setting each template flips on, the poll templates listing is where the live sample polls live, and the personalize your polls post is the origin story of the theme system. For one specific template at full depth, the first spoke in the per-template series is live: the Scheduling Poll guide.

Or just start a poll — you will see all three in context within about thirty seconds.