Theme Customisations Dissapearing on Update

Vinnydude
Shopify Partner
21 1 5

I'm in the process of building a theme and I've currently got my home page setup using the theme sections.

So in admin, if I go to Online Store > Themes > Customise, I can use that to update various slides and content throughout the home page.

This is great BUT, if I push an update to the theme (using shopify theme push) all of the customisation is being reset!!!


Am I missing something here?! How am I supposed to update my theme without it killing all the options?!

Replies 5 (5)

Elias
Shopify Staff
2771 274 483

Hey, @Vinnydude.

Thank you for reaching out and posting this question!

I just wanted to help clarify that you're not missing anything, as our guide on updating themes does suggest that the updates do not include the customizations from the previous theme. While there is some work involved when updating a theme, you don't need to recreate anything that is set up through the admin (eg. collections, pages, blogs, or navigations). I understand this isn't ideal and it sounds like more work is involved; however, to summarize, there is only two aspects that you'd need to redo - the customizations in the Storefront editor and any custom coding or app integrations.

That being said, themes usually don't require updating too often and, most of the time, this is done for new features that is needed for the store. Nonetheless, some updates may also be vastly different from their predecessors, so I'm not sure if the ability to keep all the customizations or custom coding/app integrations would yield the same results every time. 

Do you update your theme often and why? Which theme are you currently using?

Elias | Social Care @ Shopify 
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Vinnydude
Shopify Partner
21 1 5

A bit of background on this would have been helpful for you!

I'm developing a new theme and I'm using the theme customisation to edit content on the home page.

After digging into this further, the customisation gets stored in the same file as where the blocks are setup, so obviously when I push an update to the theme, it will wipe it.

This means I need to pull down the theme before doing any work on it.

 

Having the content and the cms bundled together like this into one file is not the best at all and I was pretty shocked when I realised that was what was happening.

Sneaky
Shopify Partner
32 3 18

Did you ever find a solution?

I was hoping that I can do a theme update for a theme I am also developing that will retain all the settings.  If there are no settings for any settings added, it should just set those new settings to the defaults.

Vinnydude
Shopify Partner
21 1 5

Hey Sneaky,

 

Unfortunately not I'm afraid.

 

The only advice I can give is if you are making updates on a theme, make sure you pull it down before starting work.

diego_ezfy
Shopify Partner
2935 562 883

@Vinnydude 

This is likely one of the two:

1. You're customizing one theme and previewing another;
2. Your website's cache is loading a previous version of your website.

To fix this, please make sure the theme you are customizing is published (the published theme is the one that shows up first):

diego_ezfy_0-1631668069056.png

 

And, after that, open your website on an incognito page. Each browser has a different way to open up an incognito page. 

You may also want to check out this link with information about published/unpublished themes, and how to preview them accurately. 

Kind regards,
Diego

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