In the days following Shopify Editions, many questions arose:
- Will paid themes be getting Theme Blocks?
- Will Dawn be getting Theme Blocks?
- Can you automatically / easily update from Dawn to Horizon?
I’ll try to answer these for you and explain the reasons.
💡 If you missed my last email, about Horizon & theme blocks, here’s a quick recap:
“Theme Blocks” refers to Shopify’s update to the visual customizer. In Horizon, you can now:
- Add global blocks to any section across the site. Any section has a wide range of block types to choose from.
- Nest blocks inside blocks inside blocks - up to 8 levels deep, and move them around.
This turns Shopify themes into page-builders. Allowing a lot of flexibility.
Dawn will not be getting theme blocks
Dawn will become a legacy theme.
That doesn’t necessarily mean Dawn will be outdated.
Shopify will continue to update Dawn (and its siblings) with smaller improvements to support merchants still using it - hundreds of thousands of them.
So I think Dawn will still be usable for years to come.
However, they will not completely overhaul Dawn to use theme blocks.
Why?
Shopify’s theme updater and Horizon
The problem has to do with Shopify’s automatic theme update feature, which has always caused problems.
If you are reading my newsletter, you’ve probably modified your theme’s code at some point, and you know you cannot automatically update without moving your code changes manually.
The new section & block structure of Horizon causes a similar issue.
The Horizon theme code and architecture is so radically different, that there is no way to move existing section & block content to the new theme. There is no corresponding section/block to map existing content to.
This is why Shopify has created an entirely new theme from scratch.
And no, you won’t be able to automatically move your content from Dawn to Horizon. You need to treat this as a full redesign of your website.
It’s a problem for premium themes
Theme developers such as Maestroo are now in a difficult spot and are speaking out about it.
Customers are asking for the new features, but rolling out an update on the new system would mean releasing a theme that is incompatible with the previous versions.
If a customer tried to update, they would find most of their storefront content is missing - everything that you set up in the sections & blocks on all your templates. It’s like switching to an entirely new theme. This would result in thousands of support requests and complaints.
At this point, they may as well create a new theme entirely, just as Shopify has done with Horizon.
[Shopify] completely escaped the whole complexity of backward compatibility by releasing a new theme, not a Dawn upgrade.
–– @mic_gallego on twitter (Maestrooo co-founder)
But then store owners would need to buy the new theme, right?
What happens to those who purchased Prestige for example, with the promise of lifetime updates?
What about those who don’t want a new theme, they want Prestige. Should theme devs now publish Prestige v2 while still supporting Prestige v1? What a confusing mess for both developers and users.
So will premium themes get theme blocks? When?
Check out this Reddit comment from the developer of Maestrooo themes:
We don’t plan to “upgrade” in the short term.
The main reason is that Shopify went the easy route by creating a new theme, rather than upgrading Dawn. In our case, we are stuck. Due to how automatic upgrade works in Shopify, if we update all the sections to use theme blocks, existing merchants would be automatically upgraded and, because the architecture does not match, all existing merchants would experience a lot of issues and lost data.
Contrary to what did Shopify with their new theme, we need to be extremly cautious and, until Shopify gives us the tools to confidently by able to do such updates without breaking existing themes, we won’t do it.
–– bakura10 on reddit (Maestrooo developer)
I suspect many other theme developers share the same view.
What does this mean for merchants?
I think it means that theme developers will be very slow to update to the new system.
Ideally, Shopify releases some updates to the theme updater, which then allows theme developers to immediately and safely publish their updated themes with theme blocks.
But realistically, if Shopify doesn’t solve this somehow, then the introduction of new blocks will be gradual - a couple of new sections and blocks at a time.
Do not expect to see your premium theme with 40+ sections suddenly upgraded to 40+ Horizon-style sections with theme blocks and AI blocks. There isn’t a way to do that right now without breaking compatibility.
I’m thinking of it like this - the technology is out there at least, with Horizon as an example, and we should be seeing cool new stuff from theme developers from now over the next months/years.
Is Horizon better than premium themes?
I don’t think it’s a big problem to stay with your current theme for a while.
I’m not convinced that Horizon and theme blocks is a must-have for everyone.
Many premium themes are very well-designed already, and keeping it simple is often the best approach.
Horizon is so flexible that you could accidentally make your theme ugly if you don’t have an eye for design. In which case, you would have been better off with a theme that is beautiful out of the box and restricts you somewhat.
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I hope this newsletter answered some of your questions.
In the next one, I’ll talk about other Shopify Editions features.
See you then!