I would like feedback on how to safely promote templates from Test to Stage to Prod. I run into this same problem for any new templates, but today’s example is a Page template.
I have the following setup:
- A github repo with three branches: test, stage, and prod.
- A Shopify development store that we use for testing and development. The theme connects to Github using the Test branch.
- A Shopify production store that we use for selling to customers. The theme uses the Prod branch.
- This store also has a the Stage branch connected as another theme.
I set this Stage setup to test changes on Prod before setting them live. Using the live databases for Products, etc. But I have issues with smoothly promoting some content from Test to Stage. Here’s the scenario I have right now:
- Create a new page and a new template on Test.
- Make changes on the new page and template on Test.
- Promote Theme changes to Stage.
- Export Page via Matrixify, or manually recreate the page on Stage.
- ISSUE: I am unable to set the new page to the new template. Because the template doesn’t exist in my Prod branch. To apply the template to the page, I would have to either push the changes all the way to Prod or push Stage to be my active theme for a few moments.
I know that theoretically, I can create the empty template and push that down the pipeline, then make the page, make the changes, etc later. But this is a highly error prone manual process change.
Do you have any recommendations for how to deal with this in a more sustainable way?