Redesign of an existing shopify store with new theme / how to move the old shop to new one?

[Jasminnniii]

Hello,

I am in the process of redesigning an existing Shopify store for a client. For this we have already purchased a new Shopify theme in the account of my customer.

Now, of course, when I work in the new theme, the current store is always accessed in the backend and so I can't, for example, change the navigation without also changing the current live navigation, access the templates of the new theme when I create a new page, etc.

Is there a way to completely rebuild the online store with the new theme independently and move the products / merchandise management of the current Shopify store over to the new one before launch, so that the customer is not affected and the already existing products / settings appear the same again in the new store? Or what is the easiest process in such a case? Taking the current shop down for a few days is not an option for my customer.

I am grateful for any feedback.

Jasmin

[tewe]

Hi @Jasminnniii ,

I have done something similar to test alternative themes, but that was so easy that I probably miss the point here.

What I have done is to open a test store in my developer account copied the products, customers, collections via the API (using Python) to the new store (one hour work) and did my customizing. When finished you can download your theme from the test store and upload it into the original store. I actually have done this with a non-free theme but I am afraid I did not come up with the idea to check the license first to see if this is allowed.

Regards
Thomas

[Gabe]

@Jasminnniii 

Yes, as Thomas says, feel free to use our dev stores for that, keeping in mind that some features are deactivated in development stores but most features that you need should be available.

See a link to our help center document on development stores and how they work, so you can look into this a bit further:

• Creating development stores
• Features and limitations of development stores