I am currently working on a theme renewal project on Shopify and building a new store design. We are migrating from our current live theme, “Supply” (which is quite old), to a new theme called “Adelle,” while significantly updating the page layouts and overall structure.
While creating new templates for pages and collections within the draft “Adelle” theme, I realized I couldn’t assign these new templates to actual pages or collections in the Shopify admin. When I asked Shopify Sidekick, I was told that template assignment is only possible for the currently live theme.
As a workaround, it was suggested that I create templates with the exact same names in the live theme so that they appear as options in the admin panel. However, since our live theme “Supply” is deprecated and no longer supported, it won’t even allow me to add new templates.
Given this situation, is our only option to announce a maintenance window, publish the “Adelle” theme first, and then assign the templates to the pages/collections on the live site?
Ideally, we would like to keep “Supply” live while completing the template assignments and conducting full operational testing in the background before the launch.
I would highly appreciate any insights or advice on how to handle this.
This part is strange, as you should be able to create a new file in the code editor at least, empty if needed, or minimal code in the “Supply” theme. I mean, you should be able to add a template from the theme editor, also. Not sure what you see and what is blocking all this?
But yes, it should be possible to add template in live theme so you cnan work freely on development theme.
This is the only way. And, since old theme is not Shopify 2.0, the “Theme Edit” would not be able to add more templates.
However, it’s possible to add them via “Code edit”.
Duplicate your live theme via ... → Duplicate.
Keep duplicate as a backup or edit the duplicate and then make it Live via publishing. Either way you should have a backup
... → Edit code then follow screenshots:
Right-click “templates”, select “New file”
Type in a new file name, where “new-template” is its title. File can be empty, but must exist.
Thank you! That makes total sense now—since it’s not a Shopify 2.0 theme, I can only add templates via code editing.
Just to confirm my understanding: if I create all the necessary template files under the “templates” folder in this theme, will I then be able to link those templates with the pages and collections in the Shopify admin panel for the new theme?
However!! If you plan to assign new templates to objects, like Pages or Collections, you’d need to copy/paste default template contents into new files in old theme.
Because the system will try to use assigned template regardless of the theme.
If template does not exist in the old theme, it will fallback to default one, however, since you’ve now created them, old theme will use them.
Empty files will output nothing.
So these new templates need to have the same code as default in old theme.
Thank you for your follow up.
So, just to make sure I’ve got it right: even if I create new template files with the same names in the code editor, they won’t work properly if they’re empty. But if I copy and paste the code from the default template into them, they will function correctly?
Thank you for your quick response! So, just to clarify: If I copy and paste the default content into the new templates and assign them to the objects, the live theme will continue to display the default template content from the old theme, while the new theme will display the content of the new templates when viewed in preview mode. Is my understanding correct?
