Looking for Advice

Retired Boards Appdev Store Design

Topic summary

A developer new to Shopify is seeking guidance on building an e-commerce site for a potential client who currently uses Square PoS and needs appointment booking, inventory management, and merchandise sales capabilities.

Key Questions:

  • Learning Curve & Customization: How long to learn Liquid templating and customize a theme? Should they start with an existing theme or build from scratch?
  • Pricing & Timeline: How to price a ~5-page site with e-commerce and appointment booking (including UI design in Figma)? What’s a reasonable project timeline?
  • Community Resources: Where to find Shopify-specific blogs, tutorials, and communities beyond Reddit?

Advice Provided:

  • Liquid Learning: With HTML/CSS/JS background, Liquid shouldn’t be steep. Resources include YouTube channels (Coding with Jan, Chris the Freelancer), Shopify Academy, and developer docs. Shopify CLI helps set up local development environments.
  • Theme Approach: Strongly recommended to build on existing themes (like Dawn or Theme Store options) rather than from scratch, which could take 6+ months.
  • Community: Shopify Partner Slack and Shopify Partner Blog are good resources for staying current.

Note: The original post contains reversed/garbled text in sections, suggesting formatting issues. The client plans to handle content creation themselves, and SEO/marketing isn’t needed due to word-of-mouth business model.

Summarized with AI on November 8. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Hi all,

TLDR: I’m a newb at Shopify and I need advice!

I’m new to Shopify and I’m looking for advice from you Shopify dev vets or even store owners who would be able to help me out with their experience with devs!

I have had some priliminary with a potential client and I’ve begun to learn Shopify through Shopify Academy as I believe that this would be the best CMS system which a potential client will need rather than going with another one. I have looked at Squarespace given that it integrates well with Square PoS and Square appointments, but I don’t like the lack of support on Reddit and it seems as though the community is a lot smaller for no-code devs / owners. I also don’t like how changes made on the dashboard will not reflect on the local Git repo either.

They’re currently using Square PoS , need a booking appointment app and an inventory management system since they are wanting to sell merch. I’ve done some priliminary research and it’s a shame that Square Appointments doesn’t or won’t have an implementation for their appointment booking system right now for Shopify.

My potential client was going to switch PoS because a couple other companies offer everything including their appointment booking system and PoS, but their costs just seem ridiculous for what he wants to do. I’ve never worked with Shopify before, but a customized theme is something I assume would needs to be done based off of the reference website which he sent me.

I have been doing research such as basic pricing for what their traffic would be according to plans as well as the app monthly pricing suited to their needs to present after this weekend.

Here are a few questions which I have:

1.) I have a coding background and am comfortable with HTML, CSS and JS (or enough to make things work and implement things) How long do you think it would take to customize a theme? Yes, I understand that Shopify has their own templating language, Liquid, which I would need to learn. Is the learning curve super steep or is it easier for someone with a coding background to learn vs someone who doesn’t have one?

1B.) Would going with a theme that already exists be an easier way to go and customizing it vs starting from scratch?

Without divulging too much information about the reference site which he provided, I could easily do it within a few hours if I was to do it with PURE CSS, HTML or React if that helps. It’s nothing too crazy, but the only two things would be really implementing a form and the appointment booking sytem. I assume that implementing an app would be pretty straight forward since it has over 300 + reviews and is sitting at 5 star average.

2.) What other communities are you involved in that besides Reddit and the Shopify forums? Are there any specific Shopify blogs that are must follows to keep up with trends and provide tuts like other sites such as WPBeginner?

3.) The budget is a pretty wide range. I don’t want to overcharge, but at the same time I don’t want to undersell myself. I will probably also be designing the UI with Figma. How should I price roughly a 5 page website with ecomm and this appointment booking app including a layout design? I will probably also be designing the UI with Figma as well. What is the timeframe I should also allow myself to have to complete this project?

He said he would add all the content (writing and pictures) himself so I wouldn’t necessairly need to add that part for him. SEO and Marketing is not needed since most of his business is word of mouth.

Thank you all in advance and I’m looking forward to connecting with you all!

Cheers!

2

Hi DloCodes,

Welcome to the Shopify Dev community! I’ll try to answer some of your questions below:

1: If you’re comfortable with HTML & JS already, the learning curve for Liquid should not be very steep. There are a lot of resources on YouTube (like Coding with Jans channel, and Chris the Freelancer), as well as our own Intro to Liquid, and our developer docs that will help you learn how to use Liquid. Liquid allows you to output store data with Liquid objects, display those objects using different logic with Liquid tags, and manipulate store data with Liquid filters. Once you’ve gotten your head around how those three models work together you’ll be able to start making customisations to Shopify themes. The Shopify CLI tool is really helpful for setting up a local development environment which also allows you to push or pull changes to and from a live store.

1b: 100% would recommend building on top of an existing theme vs building one from scratch. Building a theme from scratch could take upwards of six months, which sounds unnecessary for this specific project. I’d recommend building on top of Dawn which is Shopify’s free theme, or if there’s a theme on the Shopify Theme Store that’s a close fit to what you need, you could also use one of those as your base.

2: Some good places to keep up to date with what is happening are:

3: I may not be the best person to ask for advice on this - so hopefully other members of the dev community can chime in here.

Best of luck and let me know if you have any other questions!