Script updated to handle products with only one variant (aka no variant selector)
Topic summary
Core Tutorial:
This advanced tutorial explains how to enable pre-orders for out-of-stock products by creating an alternate product template and modifying payment settings. The process differs between sectioned themes (post-October 2016) and non-sectioned themes.
Key Steps:
- Change payment settings to manually capture payment authorization (7-day window for Shopify Payments, longer for third-party gateways)
- Create a new product template named ‘pre-order’
- Modify the ‘Add to Cart’ button text to display ‘Pre-Order’
- Assign the template to specific products
- Optionally adjust inventory settings to allow purchases at zero stock
Common Issues & Solutions:
- Missing code: Many users cannot locate the specified code snippets. Solution: Check theme.liquid file or use conditional logic that checks template suffix
- Dynamic checkout buttons: Must be disabled to prevent conflicts with pre-order functionality
- ‘Buy Now’ button persists: Disable dynamic checkout in theme customization settings
- All products show pre-order: The basic tutorial doesn’t distinguish between in-stock and out-of-stock items; requires additional conditional logic to check variant availability
- Template not appearing: Ensure the section file is properly created and saved
Advanced Solution:
User Alex-Miller shared code that automatically switches between ‘Add to Cart’ and ‘Pre-Order’ based on actual stock levels using variant availability checks within JavaScript.
Limitations:
- Not compatible with dynamic checkout buttons
- Requires manual template switching per product
- May not work with Shopify Lite
- Code varies significantly across themes