Why Is The Content Blocks Limited To Just 12?

[TomValentino]

Hello - 

Just wondering if anyone know's why all of the content blocks are limited to just 12 on the new 2.0 of Shopify?

We tried to increase it in the code, but it keeps on remaining limited at 12.

Does anyone know how to overcome this so we can add more? Or know if Shopify has any plans to increase this?

Thanks

[KetanKumar]

@TomValentino 

oh sorry for that one your have add more just change simple code 

change section code block limit or share section code son i will check and update

[TomValentino]

Thanks for the reply.

We updated it to a max of 100, but then it's still limited to 12.

It used to work fine on the old theme, but then we updated it to Shopify 2.0 and the maximum we can now get is 12?

Is this part of the new 2.0? And if so, is it going to be like it forever/any way around it?

Thanks

[TomValentino]

@KetanKumar

[valenciab]

Same issue in me, I try the codes in old theme and its working fine but in Shopify 2.0 it was only limited to 12 😞 

Do you guys have any workaround in the Shopify 2.0? 

[sarahholden]

Very frustrating! I hope this won't be the case forever. 

I'm creating an FAQ page for a site and there will be way more than 12 questions. The only workaround I've been able to figure out so far is to repeat that section after it has 12 blocks, but I already see holes in that solution for more advanced designs. 

[KetanKumar]

@sarahholden 

sorry for that issue can you please share your code here so i will check and update

[sarahholden]

@KetanKumar The only workaround I could come up with for my site was to repeat the section by clicking the "Add Section" button, and adding another section of the same type. So, in Tom's case, adding another multicolumn section right after the first multicolumn section, and maxing out each section with 12 blocks. It's not ideal, but it's my temporary solve since I need this functionality now for a site I'm building.

For Tom's use case the only new code that might be needed would be to add an additional class to the multicolumn wrapper and use CSS to make sure there's no gap when two multicolumn sections are added to the page directly after one another. 

Also...I was able to add 16 blocks when I went to make this demo. I wonder if they changed the limit? That seems promising. Very strange! 

  

[thanos982]

Same problem here. When I actually update the data in the json file the limit increases to 16 but it's still not enough for my needs.

Anyone from the Shopify team that could respond to this?

[Ninthony]

Definitely weird, just took a look at Dawn theme. There's no max_blocks property in the schema so I have no idea why you wouldn't be able to add more. Oddly enough I am able to add 16 blocks... out of 12 apparently:

Thought that was funny. It would be nice for a member of Shopify staff to at least confirm that this is expected behavior. If so, why, and is it going to be rectified? 

[bredowmax]

So the limit was indeed reduced from 250(?) to only 12. Following the backlash, Shopify decided to up it to 16. However, I still cannot see 16 on my theme (I saw something like 16/16, then 16/12 as well, and now I cannot get any more than 12 anymore)

I really hope that Content update coming this winter will eliminate this (huge) bottleneck

[Axel31]

Je rencontre ce meme problème actuellement, impossible de faire une FAQ correcte avec seulement 12 blocks. Une réponse de Shopify serait la bienvenue, si ce n'est pas une mise a jour, au moins nous donner un code pour débloquer cette situation ... 

Merci par avance. 

[maxrfinch]

With the legacy theme I was able to build a complicated "ingredients" section, with images for each ingredient of our teas. I used blocks for each ingredient, complete with an image, link to a collection of teas with that ingredient, and a blurb about that ingredient. 

Now with only 16 blocks, this is impossible to do. What the heck Shopify? Why??

[John_Biggs]

This is so screwed up. We have so many pages with over 16 categories. Are we supposed to change our entire website structure because of this? Create BS subcategories? At the very least they could have a "category list addition" that is designed to snug up to the regular one and make it appear as a single unit to users.

[HamishD]

This seems to have been done for load speeds but really screws a lot of people, and their store designs, over - is there a way around if really needed, Shopify?

[maxrfinch]

It possibly was to "improve load speeds", but that option should have been left to the theme developer to adjust – not Shopify. Some things make sense on Shopify's end, like removing SCSS, but a one size fits all "16 block limit" really messes up with stores like ours where we have a reason for the excess blocks.

I've contacted Shopify+ and created another thread on this topic, they don't seem too keen on providing an explanation or fix for this. We've resorted to looking for an app developer to build a custom app for our needs, which isn't a viable option for many other businesses.

[Shaunumb]

I've been away from Shopify for a number of years and now I've come back I'm delighted by Sections etc, but confused and somewhat frustrated about limitations of other development decisions. 

There are many scenarios why a website owner would require more than 16 repeatable Blocks in a section. It seems somewhat backward to have to include two or three sections to fulfil this need and wouldn't seem to speed anything up on either the Shopify admin or the client/developer side of things. 

At the moment I'm attempting to create a collapsible accordion for an FAQ section with around 25 items; which is a fairly standard thing to do. With the 16 block limitation I would have to create two separate accordions in two sections; and then I would have to do something inefficient in the section liquid file like create a 'top of accordion' option and a 'bottom of accordion' option to ensure I can 'stitch' these two sections together at the front-end. This also makes these things more confusing than they need to be for the client. 

There may be a good reason why 16 has been chosen as a limit – I wait to be educated by someone more knowledgable than myself!

[Shaunumb]

Just found that having options for 'top of accordion' and 'bottom of accordion' wouldn't work as a <section> DIV is always included between sections! 

So now, the only solution I can see to create an accordion of more than 16 items is to add the content 'flat' via the WYSIWIG on a Page with a <div class="accordion"> wrapped around the content, then include the Page as a Section and use some JS to wrap appropriate DIVs around the the content areas by looking at the Headings (H3s) ... seems complex for what I thought was going to be an easy task!

[maxrfinch]

Perhaps another idea would be to break your FAQ's into different sections based on topics. Ours is broken into sections including "About Us", "Orders and Shipping", "Matcha FAQ", and "Loose Leaf Tea FAQ".

Of course, if one of these sections have more than 16, you'll want to refine that more or be SOL.

Another option, since it seems you understand how to code, would be to build it out in your meta as a JSON object and then use liquid to display that. You could go even a step further and write it in as JSON-LD so web crawlers can easily pick it up for SEO purposes. You can use this website to easily generate your FAQ, then use liquid to parse through all objects within "mainEntity". Then at the end of the FAQ section, just output this object as is within a script tag with type "type="application/ld+json"

https://saijogeorge.com/json-ld-schema-generator/faq/

[Shaunumb]

Another option, since it seems you understand how to code, would be to build it out in your meta as a JSON object and then use liquid to display that

Oh, that would be interesting – are there any links to examples that you know of? Thanks for the suggestion @maxrfinch.

I've got a bit of a hack-job going on now with two sections and the JS just looks for the block items and headings and ignores the wrapping DIVs between sections. Styling feels a bit 'hacky' too. Happy to post code here if anyone requests or needs it, but it seems a little off-topic from the OP's question.