Private collection for tagged customers no longer working

Technical Q&A

Topic summary

Problem: A private collection restricted to customers tagged vip stopped working after theme changes. Users report errors like: Liquid error: Error in tag ‘section’ - ‘collection’ is not a valid section type and section/collection.liquid does not exist.

Context: A popular tutorial appears outdated with Shopify Online Store 2.0, where section names and structures changed.

Troubleshooting steps suggested:

  • Ensure tag consistency and casing (vip vs VIP); one user fixed access by matching Shopify’s automatic capitalization in code.
  • Check browser console for errors and test with an older theme in preview to isolate theme-related issues.

Working fixes reported:

  • Replace section ‘collection’ with ‘main-collection-product-grid’ within the conditional that checks customer.tags contains ‘vip’. Multiple users confirmed this restores access.

Mixed results: Some resolved the issue (including the original poster), while others still cannot access even after updating the section name and continue to get missing section errors.

Status: Partially resolved. The core change is to adapt code for Online Store 2.0; however, a definitive, universal 2.0 solution is not confirmed, and requests for a clear 2.0 guide remain open.

Summarized with AI on January 19. AI used: gpt-5.
2

Some things I would check:

  • Are the tags consistent? (for example “vip” is different than “VIP”)

  • Are there any console errors on your site that could be interfering with code logic? (if you’re not familiar with the console see https://speedboostr.com/finding-and-fixing-console-errors/)

  • Does this functionality work on an older theme in preview mode? (that will tell you if changes to a new theme caused the problem)

  • Does it function for certain users, or no users

Those checks should help you narrow down the problem (and hopefully solve it). If you can’t figure it out and would like a professional Shopify developer to take a look, reach out to my team at speedboostr.com/contact. We work on Shopify sites and apps every day.