Cloning an existing shopify site to a new site

daveh0
Shopify Partner
9 0 3

Is there really NO way to duplicate an entire Shopify store? By this, I mean theme files, navigation, pages, posts, images, apps etc? I'm actually not overly concerned with the "store". part of it as my tasks are all enhancements to the pages and blog posts.... I have tried several apps (alone and in combination... Matrixify and Exlm...), but none seem to be able to do it all... definitely not navigation or apps. most images seem to be missing but not all - this is kind of confusing. Certain CSS seems to be left intact while other styles are missing. In addition to not being able to show the client an accurate depiction of the enhancements, I'm terrified to use these tools to copy changes back for fear that something is going to be overwritten.

Has anyone nailed down a good process for establishing a good dev and/or stage environment for a live Shopify store?

Replies 4 (4)

Dirk
Shopify Staff
2209 247 502

Hey, @daveh0 

Happy to help out! Check out the app called Duplicate. The app page has a full list of features and their pricing structure. Product exports are free - everything else comes with a cost. With that said, these duplication apps are generally limited in the sense that while they can migrate over products, collections, theme files, etc. They do not have the ability to migrate over navigation structures, installed apps, etc. These would need to be manually re-added. 

With that said, what is your goal here? Are you a developer that builds stores for your clients and then you want to transfer ownership over to them so that they now possess the store? If there is anything else I can help you with, please let me know.

 

Dirk | Social Care @ Shopify 
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daveh0
Shopify Partner
9 0 3

@Dirk   thanks for the reply. If store settings, images and navigation cannot be copied/exported... not by an app, not by any custom code... seems Shopify API doesn't allow it how the heck can this be considered a viable solution for anything other than an ecomm engine and blog? I am a web developer. I've been hired to give a facelift to a several of the "Pages" on the client's site. I can't make changes to the live store for several reasons (top ones being that I need to be able to preview them as I go and they need to be approved by client before being published - neither of those are possible while working in the live store) and I can't get an accurate version of them on a dev store without manually inputting the settings for each individual page, downloading and re-upoading images and manually recreating navigation. I am at a loss. Am I missing something?

Dirk
Shopify Staff
2209 247 502

Ah yes, @daveh0 I see what you are saying.

Luckily in the specific case example that you brought up, there is actually a way you can make the changes to your client's store (on their store) without it affecting the live/published page.

Let's say you are editing a contact page of theirs. They currently have a few basic content pieces and elements. However, you want to add some additional content/features to it. What you can do is create a new page (let's call it Contact 2.0) and you copy/paste all of HTML source code from the original contact page to contact 2.0. From there, you do your edits and set it up to your liking. What you then can do is set the page visibility to 'hidden' so that it does not live for the front-facing customer to see:

Then, once your client approves the edits you can publish this page and delete the old one OR copy/paste the HTML code from contact 2.0 over to the original contact page.

Dirk | Social Care @ Shopify 
 - Was my reply helpful? Click Like to let me know! 
 - Was your question answered? Mark it as an Accepted Solution
 - To learn more visit the Shopify Help Center or the Shopify Blog

Renars
Shopify Partner
284 31 332

Hi @daveh0 

Renars here from Matrixify app.
Thank you for mentioning our app here and sorry about such a late reply.

I hope that you have found the solution for this, if not we would love to help you to migrate your store data to the development store.

Indeed a lot of details, such as Navigation, apps do not have access to. But actual data such as Products, Collections, Customers, Pages, Blog Posts, etc. sure can be migrated including all their images.
Here we have a great tutorial on how to use the app to migrate Shopify store details that we do have the ability to export.

I hope that you can find our app useful for this task, and if you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to our support directly.

Matrixify | Bulk Import Export Update | https://apps.shopify.com/excel-export-import | https://matrixify.app