Using a new theme without Shopify importing my existing products and data from current theme

Store Design
1

Hello,

I currently have a store subbytech.com and I’m looking to go to another theme. When I load a new theme up, Shopify uses the data from my current theme and puts it into the new theme. I want to be able to work at the new theme from scratch with no data in it. Is this possible? I want to keep the same domain etc. I want to be able to set up a new theme from scratch (products, collections, colours, etc) then when it is done, import customer reviews and then go live with the new theme, but still keep the old theme running while I’m working on the new one. Is this possible? At the minute when I work on the new theme, shopify is accessing the old theme products and collections and trying to populate the new theme with that info, which I don’t want.

2

Hi, @MrPaul_McCaw !

My name is Lilith, I’m on the Social Care team at Shopify.

I’d love to help here the best I can. I’ll need a bit more detail on what you’re trying to complete and what your end goal is. However, I can provide some general information below in the meantime until you’re able to provide those extra details.

From the information you’ve provided I understand that you may be trying to achieve 1 of 2 things:

A. Start a second business with different products and collections that are separate or different from the one you have on your account now.

OR

B. Create and code a new theme from scratch without the use of the templates currently provided.

To help clarify things, you can work on a new theme while your current site is live. You can add up to 20 themes to your store under Online Store > Themes. Your live one will always show up at the top with a small general preview of it and your unpublished ones will always show underneath that live one. We have a guide that you can refer to about this, and it also includes a video on how to publish a new theme when ready.

It’s expected that your account will use the information from it to help populate the theme templates for you. You can edit your themes section by section if you want in any way you’d like. Nothing will be shown live to the public until you decide to publish the theme you’re working on. The only time a theme will show the changes you make right away after saving is if you’re changing anything on the current published site.

You can also modify the products and collections you have by going into your admin and into Products and changing things up. This will change things for your live site as well. If you remove a product or collection, that will no longer show up on the current site. If you add or edit anything in any product or collection, that will show up on your current site. You can’t change products and collection details within the theme, you can only do that in your admin.

Let’s work on helping you with the 2 options that I presume you might want to achieve.

A: Second site with different products and business altogether

In this case, you’ll need a new account. You can only have one business per site or in other words, one published website for each account. This means that the products you have added to your account will be the only ones you can add to your themes or site.

In your question you mentioned I want to be able to set up a new theme from scratch (products, collections, colours, etc). By this, it sounds like you might be looking to start a brand new site with different products and collections. If so, this can only be done by opening a new account and populating the new account with the new products. However, you cannot connect one domain to more than one account. One website per domain is a general rule for any internet site. In other words, you can only point to one site with that domain.

B: Theme coding from scratch

If you want to build a brand new theme that doesn’t use any of the template sections you have in your unpublished theme, you can do this.

We have a full guide for developers looking to build a brand new theme from top to bottom. If you’re not comfortable with coding, I highly recommend hiring one of our partners to help you with this. You can find a suitable Shopify Partner in the Experts Marketplace or request a quote by following this guide here.

Remember that this is only if you’re not wanting to use the theme you have. You mentioned I want to be able to work at the new theme from scratch with no data in it. This sounds like you might be wanting to build a new template altogether. If not, let me know.

Other notes

I took some time to review your current site. I see you’ve put a lot of effort into creating information that is relevant to your target customer. That’s great!

Using a few tools from the internet I found that your site is not receiving a lot of traffic. I know you’re working on a new theme, but I’m not sure if you intend on building this new theme for your current business in that domain. If you are, that’s great, if not, I’d recommend taking a look at simplifying some aspects of your homepage. In addition, to gain a stronger footing on organic search traffic, check out some tips for SEO we have here](https://bit.ly/2RNkDzW) as well.

The simpler and easier it is for customers to view your site the higher the time they will spend on it. Of course, more time on a site will usually lead to higher add-to-carts and sales conversions. Always try to optimize the experience for mobile-first as much as you can. Since your business serves a technology need (charging products) it’s likely that your customer targets will be using mostly mobile devices to shop and view sites. Try to view your site with your phone and see how many scrolls it takes to reach the footer, if you’re needing more than 4-5 scrolls or so, you may lose the attention of your customer. Keep it clean, simple, and quick to digest.

Your current reviews list at the end of your homepage does take quite a bit of room and on a mobile device, this can be a negative thing for your add to cart rates. Instead of populating many reviews on that page, I recommend featuring 3-5 testimonials on your homepage, and if you want you can also include a page dedicated to adding those reviews all in there. You can use this blog’s ideas here to help you with considering where and how to place those valuable reviews.

Let me know how you do with the information above! I’m happy to answer any questions you think of as you work on your business.

3

Thanks for your reply. I may however need to re-word my initial query.

I currently have a live site www.subbytech.com (lets call it theme #1 (it’s a Brooklyn theme that I’ve edited myself) with the Subbytech products/collections available to customers.

I want to set up a new theme for my store (lets call the new theme, theme #2), but when I try and set up a new theme, the theme #2 setup also uses the live products I have on theme #1 so I can’t edit or adjust the collections or products on theme #2, as they will also take effect on my theme #1 store, which I don’t want.

I want to be able to work on theme #2, without having any changes happen to theme #1 My goal would be to set up theme #2, then when it’s ready, make theme #2 the main live store and remove theme #1 from being the main live store and use theme #1 as just a backup in case of emergency.

Basically work on theme #2 without any risk of any changes to theme #1’s products/collections

Is this possible? Is there a way to work on one theme (#2), without affecting the other theme (#1)?

Thanks for your help :slightly_smiling_face:

Paul [email removed] Subbytech

4

@MrPaul_McCaw Thanks for the follow-up.

If I understand correctly, you’re wanting to work on a new theme with the same business you have now. However, you want to change your products and collections in the new theme instead of within the admin under Products.

I provided a brief breakdown on how editing other unpublished themes work in my first reply, but to give you a quick recap: Yes, you can work on other themes while you have one published without affecting it, but all of your products and collections can only be edited within the Products section of your account (not the theme). The theme will only be able to show/display the information and products you have entered under Products in your admin. Same with your collections under Products > Collections.

Basically, your theme is just a way for you to organize the information that you entered in your admin into a visible and accessible format for your customers. It doesn’t control the information you have in your admin. Think of your theme as the exterior paint of a house, and the admin as your inner workings of that house. The paint cannot change the frame or other parts of the house. This is an oversimplified analogy, however, it’s essentially the way that a theme works at its basic level.

If you’re using an existing theme from the theme store, you simply modify your sections to reflect your chosen products and collections existing in your admin. You can create new products and collections in your admin and choose those in the theme sections.

You can create a test collection for your new theme to test things out if you wish. This way you can test that collection and its corresponding products without it showing up on your live site. Remember that you can only choose to show products and collections that you enter within your admin, you cannot create brand new products and collections at the theme level.

5

NO, I understand what the client is looking for and it seems once a store is set up you are stuck with all the products and layout when uploading a new theme. sounds tooo cumbersome to make any changes once store is initially set up.

6

Looks like it may be easier to go somewhere else to set up a new theme and store away from Shopify.