A new site builder is struggling to manually reorder collections on their Shopify store. They’re concerned they may have chosen the wrong template initially but are reluctant to start over given the effort invested.
Current Issue:
Cannot locate the Navigation option under Online Store as referenced in a previous solution thread
Unable to follow existing documentation due to missing menu options in their template
Context:
Building site with no prior experience
Encountering multiple obstacles potentially related to template choice
Found a marked-as-solved thread but instructions don’t match their interface
Status: Seeking help to either locate the correct settings or find an alternative method to manually reorder collections within their current template setup.
Summarized with AI on October 30.
AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
As I begin to build my site, with no prior knowledge of how to do so, I’m finding constant obstacles that may simply be a case of having chosen the wrong template upon which to build my site in the first place.
It’s been so difficult to get to where I am that I’m loathe to go back & start again (& frankly, none of the pre-existing templates were really what I was after so I figured “just pick one”!)
So now I need to know if I can manually change (or force) the order of my collections?
I found this article, which is marked as solved so I suspect any additional comments by myself would be overlooked. Unfortunately, I can’t figure out what I need to do based on these suggestions, so I need a bit more help. It might be the template thing again, but I can’t find some of the references in the solution.
For example, it says “go to Online Store, Navigation and click Add Menu”
Well, when I go to Online Store, there is no option for Navigation, so I’m immediately stuck.
Instead of looking under “Online Store,” you can now find your navigation menus by following these steps:
From your Shopify admin, go to Content.
Within the Content section, you will find Menus. This is the new home for your navigation settings.
Once you are in the “Menus” section, you can edit your main menu and any other menus you have created.
Manually Changing the Order of Collections in Your Menu
After navigating to Content > Menus and selecting your main menu, you can reorder the collections that appear in your site’s navigation bar. Here’s how:
In your list of menu items, you’ll see a grid of dots to the left of each item.
Click and drag the grid icon to move a collection link up or down in the list.
Once you have the desired order, click the “Save menu” button.
This will change the order in which your collections appear in your website’s main navigation menu.
Also, you mentioned that you suspected your template might be part of the issue, and you are correct that different themes can have different levels of flexibility. Newer themes generally offer more drag-and-drop functionality for arranging elements on a page. If you find that your theme is very restrictive, you might consider switching to a theme that better suits your needs in the long run.
Thanks so much for your reply. Would I be right in thinking that I could manually order my collections so that they appear in the order I might want them on the home page when you first get there, as described above, but give the customer the option to re-order them A-Z, best selling etc should they wish to do so?
First, you would arrange the collections in the specific order you want them to appear to visitors initially. This is typically done within your theme’s editor, as we discussed previously.
Go to Online Store > Themes and click Customize.
Navigate to the page where your collections are displayed (often the homepage or a “Collections List” page).
In the theme editor’s side panel, find the section for the collection list.
In this section, you will manually add each collection you want to display and drag them into your desired order.
Unfortunately I don’t seem to be seeing things quite as you describe them (or I’m just being thick again).
When I go to the Navigation section, I’m seeing the main sections (which I can re-order) but the collections are not listed there as a set of separate items. Perhaps because they are all within the “catalog” section?
When I go to the list of collections itself, they are not in the correct order. I can use the controls top right to re-order the list, but they move back to these out of order positions every time I visit this page.
If I name my collections: (for example) Birds 01, Birds 02, Flowers 01, Flowers 02, etc. will they sort correctly by default on my page even though they’re defaulting to “most recently updated” in my collections list?
Thanks. There may not be anything to solve. If, when I name my collections carefully, they then sort by name by default on my home page, that will probably be fine.
I just with they’d stay where I put them when I go to the list!
You need to be more specific on what and where do you want to sort.
Are you talking about sorting collection cards on your storefront?
Or products on collection page on your storefront?
Or Collections in Admin? Or products in admin?
The solution you’ve referred to was about sorting collection cards in the list of collections kind of section on the storefront. For specific theme, which may not be needed for yours, or may not be applicable.
Yes, thank you. Sorry, it’s all a bit complicated & I can’t tell what information is useful & what isn’t.
Okay, so I think naming my collections properly will cause the to be listed in the order I wan’t, so that particuar issue (which was linked to an earlier desig choice that I’ve since abandoned) has gone away, I think.
And I can only post one screenshot per post because I’m new so what I’m asking is a bit broken up, but…
Here is the home page of my store, as it currently stands. I’m using “Ritual” as the template.
There were 6 boxes on the original template & somehow I managed to get one of my own collections in…
And yes, unfortunately, you can’t sort this list – it’s always alphabetical.
This is where a theme edit, similar to one you’ve mentioned initially may help, but I do not recommend editing theme code – often you can reach your goal with proper configuration.
Your last screenshot is from admin and the way you sort your collections there is not reflected on the storefront.
You can, however, use other sections, say “Multicolumn” where you can add “columns” not from the list, but as blocks in a section and then you should be able to sort these “columns” using drag-and-drop.
I do have one little question that I feel is related…
Over on Squarespace, when I write the titles for my gallery thumbnails, I can use “ “ to force a line break. Can I do that for my collection titles? If not, is there any other way to force a line break?
Forum engine accepts some HTML, so if you need to share code, use </> button or type ` code ` to inline smaller pieces.
I would use <br> in titles with caution.
First, themes may escape these and you will get Image <br/> title or Image <br/> title showing instead of
Image
title
Second, you would want to also use this trick elsewhere, say in product titles and it would look nice, but then you’d want to feed your products to Google and this would not be good anymore.
