Theme Copy Changing Actual Site - HELP!

[IanYVH]

I'd like to make a copy of our live theme so that I can make changes prior to making the changes live. I'm following all of the guides that say to simply make a copy of our live theme and then click customize... but when I save the change on the copy IT CHANGES OUR LIVE SITE! This isn't what I'm looking for. What am I doing wrong?

Thanks for any help!

[Ash]

Hey, @IanYVH!

My name is Ash and I work at Shopify. I'm happy to help out with this! 

If you're looking to make some offline updates to your store and have those completed in full before pushing them live, creating a duplicate of your theme is a great method. I understand you're currently trying this, but are noticing the changes to the duplicate are going live immediately. This should not be the case, so I'll provide some steps below to help clear up the process. 

• The first step is to head over to your Online Store> Themes section of the admin and duplicate the theme you want to edit. Here's a screenshot from my own store showing how this would be done for the currently active theme on an account: 

• Once you click "Duplicate", the copy of your theme will appear in the Theme Library, which is the list of themes below your active theme: 

• When making your offline changes, be sure you're doing it in the version of your theme that is in the Theme Library as shown in the above screenshot. Any changes made to the Current Theme at the top of the Online Store> Themes page will be live on your site: 
• When you're ready to make your offline changes live, you can publish the duplicate theme, and make it your new Current Theme: 

After going over the above steps, please double check in your store that the intended offline changes were indeed applied to the version of your theme in the Theme Library. You can reply back here to update me once you've done so. Looking forward to hearing back!

[IanYVH]

The problem is I am following those steps exactly and the changes to the duplicate theme are going live...

[Ash]

Thank you for getting back to me. That definitely sounds like a problem and not expected behaviour. Could I get you to try a few troubleshooting steps to see if they clear up the issue for you? Here are some steps I recommend trying: 

• Check your browser for any available updates and complete them if able
• Clear your browsers cache and cookies (https://kb.iu.edu/d/ahic)
• Access your admin in a private / incognito browsing session and try again
• Try in an alternate browser and complete the above steps again
• Try on an alternate device and complete the above steps again

If the issue still persists after those steps, could you please take a screen recording showing you make a customization to the unpublished theme, and then showing that customization appear on the live site? Looking forward to hearing back.