Changes go live when previewing duplicate theme - how to fix?

Store Design
1

Hi all

I wanted to experiment with some changes in my store, without going live with them immediately.
As I understood after searching. You need to duplicate your theme, then edit the duplicate, and when you preview the duplicate, the you will see what it would look like if it was live, BUT without it actually making changes to the live store.

However, when I makes changes in my duplicate, and press save in the duplicate (ofc without pressing publish), then the changes go live in my store. Have I misunderstood something, or am I just doing it wrong?

I really appreciate your help!

Ill translate since it’s in danish. So heres the steps i took:

I take my live theme, go to actions, then press duplicate

Duplicate.png
Duplicate.png675×381 97.3 KB

Then i go down to the duplicated theme, and hit edit, and i make whatever changes I want.

Edit theme.png
Edit theme.png679×106 5.76 KB

Then i go back to the theme section, under the duplicated theme, i press actions and choose preview.

Preview.png
Preview.png655×473 24.1 KB

After Ive done this, and go to my live store, the changes has been made to the live store as well.
I have a hard time wrapping my head around why it would do this, and I havent been able to find anyone with a similar problem. So odds are Im doing something wrong. But I just have no idea what, hopefully one of you can help me, it would be greatly appreciated!

2

Hi @29Dall , this actually doesn’t make much sense, is it possible that you customized live theme by mistake?

There is no way that you customized duplicated theme and those changes went live without you publishing those or copying settings_data.json (if you’re not using shopify 2.0 theme) file on live theme.

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Thanks so much for your response. I’m glad I’m lot the only one puzzled about this. I’ve tried doing this over and over again, and also just before writing this reply, just to make quadruple sure, that’s the exact way I’ve done it.

But even if I just, for example, hide a section in duplicate theme, then press save (without publishing) go to preview, that section will be removed from the live store. Even though I’ve only edited the duplicate. And I’ve made sure that I was editing the duplicate because it would say duplicate in the title of the theme editor. Do you have any idea what I can do from here?

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4

Hi @29Dall I’m very curious about this.

Can you check id’s of those themes and see are those numbers different?

You can find theme id when you go to edit code, id will show in the url.

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5

Hi, and thanks again for trying to help out! The IDs were different. However, I’ve managed to find out what caused the issue. So apparently, when I use the same browser to preview and to go the the live store URL, it shows as if the change has gone live. Switch browser, and the website is intact as if nothing has changed. So I guess I just panicked for nothing :sweat_smile:

However, I much appreciate you taking the time to help :blush: Have a wonderful day/evening wherever you are!

6

You’re welcome!

Ooooooh :slightly_smiling_face: Well, it’s clear now. To avoid that, tou can open live theme in the same browser, just click on that little aye that says view your live store. :slightly_smiling_face:

Have a wonderful day!

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7

that doesnt work it still goes live. It happens to me to

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