What is in Shopify development?
11 Ecompanda guides on shopify development, newest first. Themes, Liquid, metafields and the code behind a Shopify store.
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Themes, Liquid, metafields and the code behind a Shopify store.
Metafields add your own fields to things Shopify already has, such as a care guide on a product or a tier on a customer. Metaobjects are standalone records with several fields, such as a size guide or an FAQ item. You create a definition, fill in values in the admin, then show them in your theme through dynamic sources or Liquid.
Liquid is the template language Shopify themes use to turn store data into HTML on Shopify's servers. You print data with double curly braces, make decisions with tags, and reshape output with filters. Use render for snippets, check values with blank, limit your loops, and run Theme Check before you publish. This guide covers the current tags, patterns and 2026 changes.
Online Store 2.0 is the theme architecture Shopify announced in June 2021. Its core is the JSON template, which lets merchants add and reorder sections on most pages, connect settings to metafields, and install apps as blocks without editing code. Newer themes such as Horizon go further with theme blocks. Upgrading from a vintage theme is optional, but you lose these features if you stay.
Dawn is Shopify's free reference theme, maintained by Shopify and free to use on any store. Most changes belong in the theme editor, small ones in custom CSS, and only the leftovers in code. Work on a duplicate, preview it, publish it, and keep edits few, because every code edit is something you must carry through future theme updates.
To meet WCAG 2.2 level AA on Shopify, start from a well-built theme such as Dawn, then fix what no theme can fix for you: colour contrast, keyboard focus, heading order, alt text, form errors and moving content. Test with a scanner, a keyboard pass and a screen reader, because scanners find only part of the problems. This is a guide, not legal advice.
Most slow Shopify themes are slowed by the same few things: third-party app scripts, a hero image the browser finds too late, images that are bigger than the screen needs, fonts that swap in and shift the page, and JavaScript that blocks taps. Measure with real visitor data first, then fix those in order, and check the result against what visitors actually see.
Customize a Shopify theme safely by working in order: try settings, sections and app blocks first, make every change on a duplicate or development theme, keep custom code in its own files under version control, run Theme Check, work through a short QA checklist, then publish with the old theme kept as your rollback. Stop customizing when the theme itself is the problem.
Shopify gives you a Custom CSS box at theme level (1,500 characters, every page except checkout) and at section level (500 characters). Anything bigger belongs in your theme code, as an asset file or a stylesheet tag. Work on a duplicate theme, find selectors with browser DevTools, and write rules that survive theme updates.
A Shopify page is built from a JSON template, or a section group for the header and footer, that lists sections in order. Each section is a Liquid file with a schema, and inside it merchants add, remove and reorder blocks. Blocks come in three kinds: section blocks, theme blocks that can nest, and app blocks supplied by installed apps.
Build a custom Shopify theme when your design, content model or performance goals cannot be reached by adapting an existing theme. Otherwise adapt one. Developers start from Shopify's Skeleton theme or Dawn with Shopify CLI, check the code with Theme Check, deploy through GitHub, and plan for ongoing maintenance, because a custom theme has no vendor updating it for you.
Pick a theme by working backwards from your own store. Write down your catalog size, product page needs and must-have apps, shortlist three themes from the Shopify Theme Store, drop any that fail a few hard gates, then test each with your own products and score them with fixed weights. Judge speed, accessibility and support on your content, not on the demo.
