Can I remove my online store and just keep the headless version?

Technical Q&A
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1

Can i delete the Online Store?
Hi yall! i’m developing a shopify headless storefront. (thanks Nuxt!)
By default i got my domain.myshopify.com shop.
the headless one goes under domain.com.

What i was wondering is: What happen if i “delete” the online store to keep just the headless?
i’ll be using shopify just for:

  • checkout
  • backend

if you ask why, here’s the long story short:
both web sites can cause a replica of the content (which seems to not be liked by google)
and connected store like Facebook or Goole are linking to the wrong website (myshopify)

those this makes any sense or am i fool?!

Thanks

2

I believe you can remove the online store sales channel (Shopify admin, click Settings > Apps and sales channels > delete “Online Store”) … but I definitely wouldn’t recommend it.

I don’t really understand what you’re trying to do here.

If you had a ‘headless storefront’ (ie. no website / just selling on social media & in-person), then you wouldn’t have a domain name (because there wouldn’t be anything to link it to).

3

Sorry, maybe i just made it unclear.
my headless website is the actual “selling point”. I got no in-person shop, the social media are just connected to it.

my point is to “avoid” that user is redirect to my domain.myshopify.com address anymore.
i just would like a “full headless” shopify. (the user should be redirect to myshopify only for the checkout stuff)

4

So just to clarify:

  • You have a website build (not on Shopify)

  • You want to sell Shopify products on it this third-party website

  • You only want people to go to Shopify for the checkout

Sounds like you’d be best served by using the “Shopify Buy Button Sales Channel”:

https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/online-sales-channels/buy-button

5

No, i red about “Shopify Buy Button Sales Channel”, but is not fitting my needs :pensive_face:

The goal is a pure headless shopify store.

maybe the solution is under some configuration that tells shopify that my shop is domain.com and not domain.myshopify.com, but actually i didn’t find any solution like that (maybe i’m not able to find it or to search the right path)

6

Did you find a solution to your problem? I’m facing the same. As I read, you need the shopify online store but you can redirect from it to your own storefront. I haven’t tryed yet but there’s even a Liquid theme especially for that. I found it in this post: https://community.shopify.com/c/hydrogen-headless-and-storefront/disable-shopify-front-end/td-p/937499

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7

same problem here, I have a website built with Storefront API and using Next js to build my custom frontend. I am trying to uninstall the online store because when a checkout url is generated it has “shopname.myshopify” which is annoying, I want to point it to a domain I purchased under which there is a live site already (I am using the API mainly to build the shop page and single product). In order to do that I need uninstall the online store but it doesn’t seem I am able to do it.

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8

Did you change your primary domain on shopify? That should solve your problem.
Check this out: https://help.shopify.com/de/en/manual/domains/domain-type/change-primary-domain
Sorry it’s german, I bet there is also an english version of it.

9

Good day, did u have a solution for that? I’m also trying to deploy my custom NextJS frontend which interacts with the shopify data via storefront api client. I wish to use the custom domain that Ive purchased in Shopify for my custom frontend, while also keeping that domain for the checkout url, but seems like the domain can’t be assigned properly on Vercel even I’ve update the DNS settings at Shopify.

10

How have they not fixed this? I had to redirect my online store channel. It’s super frustrating as all of the third party channels (Meta, TikTok, Pinterest etc) link to the shopify storefront or primary domain set in Shopify instead of my headless store. Considering looking into MedusaJS as Shopify doesn’t even allow uninstalling the online store channel, it just throws an error “Can’t downgrade plan” as they’v removed the Lite plan but obviously not fixed their code to support removing the channel on the basic plan

11

The only thing i came up through is setting a variable on top of the liquid default theme that says that the “real” URL is domain.com and not domain.myshopify

To clarify:
in the file layout/theme.liquid
on the first ilne i’ve added

{% assign new_website = 'https://mywebsite.com' %}

in the same page i’ve added this js snippet

// Redirect + handle discount codes
      var discountCode = getCookie('discount_code');
      if (discountCode) {
        window.location.replace(`{{new_website}}/discount/${discountCode}?redirect=${window.location.pathname}`);
      } else {
        window.location.replace(`{{new_website}}${window.location.pathname}`);
      }

this is to redirect on my headless website when someone click on the discount mail, and to redirect all the traffic when browsing…

maybe is not the best solution, but it works for me :slightly_smiling_face:

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