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Re: Filter by Tag in Dawn Theme

Filter by Tag in Dawn Theme

Laurie_ONeill
Shopify Partner
93 2 66

I've been playing around with Dawn theme and am so confused because it doesn't seem to have any built in way to sort a collection by tag...the filter on the collection page only has the options of sorting by product type, price, vendor, and availability. Every Shopify theme I've ever worked with has the ability to sort products by tag built into it somewhere and this is a feature I need on every site I am working on as I need to be able to filter by custom categories such as 'Occasion', etc. Do I have to figure out how to code this in myself? Or am I just missing something? Thanks in advance!

Replies 60 (60)

hardik355
Shopify Partner
240 22 37

Hi 

Sorry for facing issue. Dawn theme provide filter. Go to online store -> Navigation there is section filter you can add tag. I attached image. 

https://shopify.dev/themes/navigation-search/filtering

Screenshot from 2021-08-03 09-22-54.png

 

 

If helpful then please Like and Accept Solution.
Shopify theme and app developer.
Skype: live:hardikradadiya355
Thanks

If helpful then please Like and Accept Solution.
For App Development and Design changes Hire Me.
Skype: live:hardikradadiya355
Thanks
Laurie_ONeill
Shopify Partner
93 2 66

Hi, Thank you for your reply. I see the filter part of the navigation section, but the only options I see there are to filter by availability, price, product type, vendor/brand, or product options. I do not see tag as a choice there! I have a gift store that I need to be able to filter by specific categories like Occasion, Party theme, etc. that I currently have been using tags for in my old theme. I've attached a screenshot of what I see on that page...I do not see a way to add filter by tag!

hardik355
Shopify Partner
240 22 37

Hi 

 

If helpful then please Like and Accept Solution.
For App Development and Design changes Hire Me.
Skype: live:hardikradadiya355
Thanks
Laurie_ONeill
Shopify Partner
93 2 66

I'm sorry, I am still confused. I am using the version of Dawn that I got through my development store about a week ago, I'm not sure how to get a different version of it? And the screenshot and link you sent just show how to filter by price, product type, vendor, availability, and product options. Those are not what I am trying to filter by. I am trying to filter by the tags that I have added to the products, such as Occasion, party theme, etc. All previous themes have been able to filter by tags but I am still not seeing that option anywhere!

bredowmax
Shopify Partner
86 1 130

Hi @Laurie_ONeill, so yeah, above given information was inaccurate - Shopify seems to have silently killed off 'filter by tag' - at least in the way of being exposed to the UI. Tag filtering still exists but only by URL: https://shopify.dev/themes/navigation-search/filtering/tag-filtering

 

Personally, I'm hoping very much for filtering by Metafields (at least the true/false one) to launch soon, but in the meantime, it's frustrating to go into this with the mindset of "Shopify OS 2.0 is an upgrade" but then hitting several roadblocks where it's actually a downgrade.

Laurie_ONeill
Shopify Partner
93 2 66

THANK YOU for understanding what I was asking and acknowledging that this is a problem!! I guess this answers my question that I will go ahead and use Debut theme as a base instead of Dawn for the site I'm working on now...I was thinking newer was better, but definitely not if they are doing away with filtering by tag as that is pretty much the whole reason I chose Shopify many years ago to begin with as I have very complicated products with a lot of options that need tags to sort them out. Like you said, I hope they eventually add filter by metatag, that would solve the problem. Thanks so much for letting me know I'm not just missing something here!

TILTIL
Shopify Partner
5 0 12

One thing I don’t understand is how can I filter products by color if my products don’t have variants in color, only in size? I can’t add a color to a product to filter on without an option like add a tag/metafield?

seb87
Shopify Partner
21 0 18

I also play around with the Dawm Theme and it works great. The only problem I have was the missing feature about filter by tag or filter by metafields.

We sell wine and need the possibility to filter this by grape variety, winery or country. At the moment the shop looks like this: https://imgur.com/a/6KuLdsa

In our old theme and shop we use the Smart Product Filter & Search from Globo

https://imgur.com/a/ahJFvgo

The App and support is great but with install such a huge App we got a lot of problems. They need a lot of javascript and they use their own product liquid file to display the product in collection. So we have a lot of struggle with customize this template. I think it is not the best solution to have different product templates in different files.

https://imgur.com/a/bFnuv1x

i think it can't be in the interest of shopify to install such apps and thus destroy the whole performance of the new theme. especially not when i read such news here: https://ux.shopify.com/next-generation-theme-design-5aae94f6d44c

 

Ist there any method to customize the dawn theme and add this functionality in my theme? When it is possible to filter by url then we only need the javascript functionality.

https://imgur.com/a/pBpXPUh

 

 

 

 

mattnz
Tourist
8 0 19

I am in the same situation. Bit annoying 

mattnz
Tourist
8 0 19

Would anyone have a method to add tag filtering via coding for Dawn 2.0 ? Step by step?

 

alyasghar83
Visitor
1 0 0

We are a company providing all types of web solutions for any CMS-based website.

seb87
Shopify Partner
21 0 18

great 🙂 Can you provide a performant solution for us. We want to switch to the performent Dawn Theme but Shopify ignore us 😄

seb87
Shopify Partner
21 0 18

Now we have install the Boostcommerce App because they support the new Dawn Theme. I think this is the best solution at the moment:

Bildschirmfoto 2021-09-09 um 15.55.49.png

Laurie_ONeill
Shopify Partner
93 2 66

I do not want to have to pay for an app or fancy theme or pay someone to custom code something that has always been a basic feature of Shopify. I need to use it on multiple stores and cannot afford that.  I hope that someone who figures this out will share the code here so that we can all implement it ourselves. I know that if I figure it out I will share how to do it, I hope others will do the same.

mattnz
Tourist
8 0 19

I am like you Laurie, I don't want to have to pay for a monthly fee. That is why I moved to Affinity photo instead of Photoshop.

I would be ready for a one off payment, but I agree with you why having to pay for something that is already existing and just need to be turned on or implemented by Shopify doesn't make sense.

mattnz
Tourist
8 0 19

Hi Laurie,

 

Have you had any luck trying to sort out the Filter by Tag?

 

Cheers 

Matt

Laurie_ONeill
Shopify Partner
93 2 66

Not yet, unfortunately. It looks like it probably requires Javascript. I think the parts that have the code we need are located in 

collection-filters-form.js

Under the Assets section in "edit code". But I don't know Javascript so all that looks like greek to me!

That js part is called on in the section called 

main-collection-product-grid

Don't know if it's possible to add some other kind of dropdown there for the tag filter just using Liquid. I'm afraid all this is way beyond my ability as I usually just make small changes to existing code and don't really know what I'm doing but muddle my way through until it does what I want! Any actual coders out here who could figure this out??

Ikonity
Visitor
2 0 2

Dear Shopify Team, 

 

I just played around a little bit with Tag Filtering it is working when using it like this:

<shopurl>/collections/<collection_name>/<tag>+<tag>


But not when using it with the Standard Filter Query than the Tags are ignored:

<shopurl>/collections/<collection_name>/<tag>+<tag>?filter.v.price.gte=&filter.v.price.lte=&filter.p.vendor=12DAG&sort_by=best-selling

 

Do you have any Solution for this?

I also tried it with the old parameters like ?constraint=<tag> or  ?f=<tag> .


It would be great if you can add support to Tag filtering again!

 

All The Best

Matthias

bredowmax
Shopify Partner
86 1 130

For now, my workaround is to use the new Product Option filters (may need some work on updating your inventory), and if tags are still needed, include them inside Automated Collection definitions. Still not perfect, but it covers majority of use cases.

 

I’m very hopeful that Shopify will fix this issue by allowing Metafield filtering by end of the year… then I don’t care anymore about tag filters

mattnz
Tourist
8 0 19

Well that would be good to get an answer or a clearer picture on what is Shopify's plan in that regard. Not sure if they happen to read posts, or they just staying away from this conversation in purpose?

Ardi94
Shopify Partner
104 3 33

+1

I agree; we need to be able to filter by tags. I find tag filtering way more important than product option filtering. Please add this as soon as possible.

I found two ways around it for now but they aren't perfect.

1. Use the tags to link to smaller collections while storing the current URL parameters and applying it after it's redirected (but then you have many collections, especially if you, like me, want to have categories, sub-categories, sub-sub-categories and etc.)

2. Use javascript & ajax to create a URL parameter (But you need an external server and a lot of coding). This is way too difficult for only filtering by tags and the amount of time and resources spent on it is not worth it in my opinion. If I needed some very advanced filtering system, this would make sense but at the moment, the tag filtering is the only thing missing for me.

Please add this option as soon as possible, thank you.

Ikonity
Visitor
2 0 2

Not really a workaround for us, cause we are a Marketplace and importing product data from other shopify stores, not easy to normalize the data to use the product options filters 😉 
We have a lot of different color names which we now have normalized with tags, so for example 10 different names of "red" are merged to Red.

Lassou_Admin
Tourist
8 0 18

@Ikonity We're in exactly the same situation as you are, with the marketplace and Shopify connections. The switch to 2.0 turns out to be a huge step backwards when it comes to giving the customer a sensible and useful filtering solution. If you find a solution, that isn't just a return to the 1.0 theme, or implementing Boost (which doesn't support all themes), then please share the solution here. I will also do that same if we come across something. 

Jayp_Rajput
New Member
4 0 0

Yes But its default filter without custom tagging

LetsGetDigital
Shopify Partner
53 0 54

Online Store 2.0 has been a huge disappointment for us...

  • Filter by Tags completely removed - where it should have been improved.
  • 'Sections Everywhere' became - "Sections on every page (lie) - Customize the content on most of your online store's pages." - Excluding ALL regular pages and blogs

It's a downgrade. What are the benefits for store owners and store visitors? - literally nothing tangible.

Shopify was awesome, so disappointed with this Store 2.0. There is so much they could have done to improve our customers' shopping experience. Instead it's been all about theme developers and made our shoppers' experience worse.

So so disappointed.

Let's Get Digital (dot net)
Laurie_ONeill
Shopify Partner
93 2 66

Yes I feel the same way. I've always been able to figure out how to customize Shopify exactly the way I want, and while it looks on the surface like it would be easier with sections all over, in reality a lot of it still needs customizing via code and it is so much more complicated now. Almost all the stores I work on use line item properties for personalized items and I used to be able to easily get those to show up on the correct part of the product page between the other product options and the checkout buttons, now that stuff is all locked into a form and there is no way to put that information into any place that makes logical sense during the ordering process. Combined with the lack of tag filtering this is making the 2.0 themes pretty useless for almost every store that I need to work on. I have one customer who really wants 2.0 and even though we chose a paid theme to start with I'm still struggling a lot with getting it to be a good shopping experience for the customer. The fact that tag filtering is available in a couple of the paid themes means it is somehow possible within 2.0 but I just don't know enough coding to figure out how to do it from scratch in Dawn.

Mattnz1
Visitor
1 0 0

Hi Laurie,

you mentioned a couple of 2.0 themes have tag filtering.

Could you please tell me which ones are they? 

Thank you

Matt

Lassou_Admin
Tourist
8 0 18
Hi.
Do you know which 2.0 themes still have Tag filtering?
Thanks.
Luke
Laurie_ONeill
Shopify Partner
93 2 66

So far the only two I've seen with tag filtering are Modular and Empire. 

seb87
Shopify Partner
21 0 18

Is it really a theme feature? I think this is a missing necessary core feature from shopify and the themes need to support it.

Bildschirmfoto 2021-09-28 um 08.34.35.png

PaulNewton
Shopify Partner
7450 657 1564

Tag filtering can still be used by building navigation menus to those collections tag urls.

 

Like it or not with OS2 merchants can expect going forward for shopify theme store developers to prefer developing against the new filter system as a standard practice; as the new faceted filtering uses more intrinsic properties on products instead of administrative tags.

Before filtering with tags was a more contrived process in both setup and development often with themes having conventions to "group" tags or other overly specific needs requiring confusing setups and making it hard to customize.

Now for a lot of merchants that means tags can be relegated back to a backend admin convenience to organize collections or admin searches, instead of always by default exposing admin information(tag content) to customers unless themes are customized to hide certain tags.

And by building navigations menus using collection tag urls you can be more precise without leaking that backend info.

 

Beyond that if that theme developer doesn't intend to support the specific feature getting collection tag filtering needs an advanced customization.

For themes updated to be OS2 if you still have an older version of the theme that could simplify having customizing the OS2 theme to once again have tag filtering by manually migrating the code as a customization.

 https://shopify.dev/themes/navigation-search/filtering

 https://shopify.dev/themes/navigation-search/filtering/tag-filtering

 

Contact paull.newton+shopifyforum@gmail.com for the solutions you need


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Laurie_ONeill
Shopify Partner
93 2 66

The new faceted filtering would be great if you could tell it what to filter by, but currently the only options for filtering with this new system are 

  • Availability
  • Price
  • Product type
  • Vendor
  • Variant options

But other than product type, those are not the things I need to filter by in most of the stores I have worked on. And building nav menus is NOT the same as being able to set up something like filtering by tag group which is what I have always used. 

For example. I sell party supplies. I have hundreds of products and am adding new designs all the time. From my main nav menu, the customer chooses from a list of occasions - Christmas, Birthday, Halloween, etc which takes them to the collection for that occasion. Once they are in the birthday category, they can then use the filter menu to filter by product type, party theme (ballet, karate, etc), and age range (kid, adult, teen).  Alternately, if from the main nav menu they decide to shop by product type, such as "invitations", it bring them to that collection where they can again filter by party theme, age range, and occasion.  When setting up a new product that has a new theme or other option, all that has to be done is to tag it with the appropriate group tags such as Occasion_birthday, Theme_ballet, Age_Child, etc and because of how I have set it up, it will automatically appear on the menus in all the different departments. 

That type of system simply doesn't work with having to build individual nav menus instead. Every time a new theme or product type is added you would have to go in and create a collection for it and manually add it to a bunch of different nav menus in the different departments. That makes no sense at all.  Plus with nav menus they cannot filter down to get to the items that are for example, only for gymnastics girls in the teen age range etc. 

Maybe there is a way to work it that I am just not understanding because I am not an actual coder/developer. I am a web designer who knows HTML and CSS and has managed to do a lot of pretty fancy customizations by editing a little bit of liquid code from the existing free themes. My clients are artists and small businesses who cannot afford to pay thousands of dollars for a "real" developer and with my limited knowledge I have always been able to customize shopify themes to work well for them for a reasonable price. But a lot of that was because of the flexibility of the tag system for being able to get creative with how to present unique categories of items. 

There are some good things about 2.0. I just don't understand why they have completely taken out the tagging system that was to me, a really core part of what made Shopify really great for clients with complicated products. 

Shoplogy
Shopify Partner
21 0 12

This is a big change that is going to affect a lot of my clients, who are all fashion based. The other big issue for me is that partners had no communication about these changes and there was nothing in the change log or as far as I can see anywhere else. Fundamental changes to the way stores are managed like this should be communicated out better.

Laurie_ONeill
Shopify Partner
93 2 66

Definitely...it was like they snuck this in without giving anyone any warning or good alternatives other than "build a nav menu for each former tag". They need to publish some instructions for how to add this feature back to a theme if you need it!

jmp
Excursionist
23 2 51

I agree this is a HUGE deal breaker for my store, which sells fine art, sculptures to be exact, and thousands of them. Basically it is one product type, but I was using the tags to filter by subject matter like, polar bear, seal, walrus, fisherman, hunter, etc. I have dozens of tags like that and can't be expected to make a collection for each one.

Also, I don't recall seeing this mentioned here, but the filtering system they DO have for 2.0 doesn't work if the collection has over 1000 products, which mine does. I mean, I do have smaller collections but sometimes a client wants to look at ALL the sculptures we have and then filter it down. Wouldn't it make more sense to allow filtering the larger your collection is??

I do hope they have people working on it. Until this feature is re-added, I won't bother customizing a 2.0 store any further as it could be a waste of time.

mattnz
Tourist
8 0 19

I am still waiting for a reply to this post from a Shopify Employee as to why it has been removed, and are they working on putting it back ! 

LetsGetDigital
Shopify Partner
53 0 54

Don't hold you breath. Shopify is so big they are like Amazon, Facebook, Google now - no-one listens or replies. You might as well shout at the sky.

Let's Get Digital (dot net)
Shoplogy
Shopify Partner
21 0 12

The frustrating part with this type of thing is that there is a massive amount of on-the-ground experience out there that they could be consulting in user groups before changes like this go ahead. I've worked in both retail management and IT and was employed for 7 years to bridge the gap between the two to stop exactly this type of situation. From my experience, as much as techies think they know the impact of a change operationally, they normally don't. That's normally because users end up using your software in a way that you hadn't intended them to, but you don't realise they do. Equally, operational people don't understand the reasons for changes being made by the techies. 

COMMUNICATION is the key in all of this, exploit the passion your users have for your product and your company and involve them. It can save lots of headaches and save you a massive amount of support resource in the process. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt!!! Shopify is a massive machine who strive to deliver new features and changes because it looks progressive, and normally it is, but we all need to be a passenger on the same journey not the victim of it.

LetsGetDigital
Shopify Partner
53 0 54

Agree 100%. I've been a Shopify Partner for a while now and have been disappointed at the complete lack of engagement by Shopify. 

Who is responsible for the Shopify Partner Network? Is it Antonio Silva, Director of Partnerships at Shopify?

Whoever it is needs a good kick up the arse tbf.

Let's Get Digital (dot net)
Shoplogy
Shopify Partner
21 0 12

So here is one knock on effect of the changes to filtering. As I deal with mostly fashion boutiques we have lots of weird and wonderful names for colours which need to be on the label, so for example you might have 'Moonshine'. So we include this in the title as a customer may search for it but as there is only one colour we wouldn't normally use a variant for colour.

To keep the filtering list simple, we would use a tag 'Grey' so we don't end up with a list of colours as long as your arm. We would stick to main colour groups e.g. red, blue, pink. Of course, we could use the variant of grey for the new variant/filter, but you then add ambiguity for the customer who may see a colour name 'Moonshine' in the title and then a different variant colour and wonder if they are ordering the same thing.

Not sure how I am going to get round this one part from not having a filter for colour any more.

Of course, in addition to this we also have the changes to product types which seek to Americanise our product type names by calling trousers and jeans 'pants'. Unlike Google categories, there is no option for a GB English version of the product types. Thankfully you can have a custom product type to get over this and I have discovered that the custom product type overrides the standard type in the filtering. I'm sure I didn't see any reference to this in the help pages, but perhaps I missed it. That sure does make life a lot easier though, or that would be another major problem.

Please share any tips or discoveries you make with the function changes, so we can all benefit.

PaulNewton
Shopify Partner
7450 657 1564

@LetsGetDigital wrote:

Agree 100%. I've been a Shopify Partner for a while now and have been disappointed at the complete lack of engagement by Shopify. 

Who is responsible for the Shopify Partner Network? Is it Antonio Silva, Director of Partnerships at Shopify?


Join the shopify partners slack, there have been moves in recent months to improve partner support, though a reality is unless a Plus store is involved it'll probably always be tier0-tier1 type of support.

Note that while there is a systemic issue with improving communication, documentation , and partners general understanding of the platform; for all the reasons I've commented on - Dawns lack of some feature is not really an issue for the partner system it is an issue for external businesses and people to address using the available platform apis of which tags is still one of them.

Contact paull.newton+shopifyforum@gmail.com for the solutions you need


Save time & money ,Ask Questions The Smart Way


Problem Solved? ✔Accept and Like solutions to help future merchants

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Ardi94
Shopify Partner
104 3 33

Well, my issue isn't really the ability to filter by tag as it is not too difficult to use link_to_tag, link_to_add_tag, link_to_remove_tag. But the issue is that you cannot combine tag filtration and the new filtration system together. Meaning if I filter by tag and then decide to filter by vendor or vice versa, I get all the products instead of just the ones needed.

PaulNewton
Shopify Partner
7450 657 1564

The dawn reference also has an open issue for adding this support to the theme https://github.com/Shopify/dawn/issues/333 


@Laurie_ONeill wrote:

There are some good things about 2.0. I just don't understand why they have completely taken out the tagging system that was to me, a really core part of what made Shopify really great for clients with complicated products. 


@Shoplogy , @Laurie_ONeill , @jmp , @mattnz  @LetsGetDigital 

To clarify the tag system is still very much a part of the shopify platform, it's only there is no UI and UX to support that in the DAWN theme.

The dawn theme is free and not your only choice.

There are also others themes still available that come with UI's for tag-based collection filter bars or filter sidebars.

There are plenty of tutorials, code samples, experts and apps that can aid in customizing ANY theme that lacks feature-X to have that feature.

 

You are not limited here at a platform level but you have to pick and choose your tools and investments.

This is why you evaluate a theme before over extending and finding it out it lacks feature-X.

If your business model has a complex information architecture and needs a complicated navigation system invest in getting that tool or make sure the primary tool(theme) comes with it, this is a key differentiator of successful merchants.

 

 

 

Contact paull.newton+shopifyforum@gmail.com for the solutions you need


Save time & money ,Ask Questions The Smart Way


Problem Solved? ✔Accept and Like solutions to help future merchants

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Laurie_ONeill
Shopify Partner
93 2 66

Yes I ended up having my client buy a 2.0 theme that had tag filtering included for us to start with, but there were only two that did, and both need a lot of other customizations to work for her and now she has less in her budget to pay for me to do all of that since she had to pay for a theme just to get a feature that was always included in every previous free theme. Thanks so much for the Github link, I'll follow there, glad it is an open issue there too.

ksgopan
Tourist
4 0 1

Can you let us know which theme this is.. because tag filtering is really important for us

Laurie_ONeill
Shopify Partner
93 2 66

So far I have seen two 2.0 themes that have tag filtering, Modular and Empire. 

jmp
Excursionist
23 2 51

I ended up going with Empire theme. It allows tag filtering and group tag filtering which is great. But the catch is you can't use the new storefront filtering at the same time. It's one or the other.

Side-note for anyone else using Empire: Are you having trouble adding sections to pages? For me it keeps saying that no sections are available. I thought 2.0 themes were supposed to have sections available for every page... I'm not a programmer but I have tinkered quite a bit with my old theme. I'm just not very familiar with the JSON language.

LetsGetDigital
Shopify Partner
53 0 54
The 'Sections Everywhere' was a lie. Just like the cake.
Let's Get Digital (dot net)
jmp
Excursionist
23 2 51

Side-note for anyone else using Empire: Are you having trouble adding sections to pages? For me it keeps saying that no sections are available. I thought 2.0 themes were supposed to have sections available for every page... I'm not a programmer but I have tinkered quite a bit with my old theme. I'm just not very familiar with the JSON language.

Welp I figured out why it wasn't working and it was stupidly simple but took me forever to find. Just had to add "page" (or whatever other template) to the list of templates in the schema for each section liquid and voilà. Possibly similar for other Themes if anyone else has that problem.

Maybe the cake is not a lie after all. Maybe it really is delicious and moist.