Hello Shopifiers,
Is it possible to link Shopify product images to external URLs so that any changes to the source image automatically update on the storefront?
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Hi @mosaeed
Yes, anything is possible, to some degree, but not fully, I think, but your reason is not great.
So how could you approach it? Add a new Metaobject named ExternaImage with name (that will be alt) and an image external link. Then add a new Product Metafield, as a list on metaobjects, just created ExternalImage. Then, for each product, fill those External image data and links. Next part is changing code, on product page, product card that is used on collections and different sections, cart, emails. Think the first issue might be displaying external product images in checkout and later on the customer account order detail page. But maybe you can make an app that will switch those images. But if you have any app that uses your products, you can not switch the way it works and change to your external images.
So you see possible, but a bit of hustle. And may I ask why you would do that? How many times do you plan to change images? You have an option in Files for each image to replace it, for exampe if you optimaze image, then replace the same image, and in front, it will be automatically updated.
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Why would you want that? Are you trying to take someone else’s products? Sounds like scraping other sites for their images which could be considered theft. You might not want to do that if it’s a particularly letigious company… That would most definitely get you banned from Google Merchant Center as well.
Your product images ought to be your own, or at least an industry standard that everyone can use.
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Our company uses an external image hosting service. Sothat we need to link Shopify product images to external image URLs so that any changes to the source images are automatically reflected on the storefront without manually updating the images in Shopify
Again, same question: how many times will you change those images?
Even if it is some external CDN, I think it will be slower then Shopify native one. So you have an option to import images with CSV or in bulk with a few paid apps. That is also an alternative to manual upload for each product.
Or way I suggested, though I do not recommend it.