Moving from another theme

Switching to Wonpa from a theme you already run means part of your work comes with you and part of it has to be built again. This page sorts out which is which, then gives you an order to work in so your live storefront keeps serving buyers while you set Wonpa up.

What carries over and what doesn't

A theme reads your store at render time; it doesn't own your catalog. So a theme change leaves your store data alone. What it does not bring across is anything you configured inside the old theme.

Untouched by the switch

• Products, variants, SKUs, prices, compare-at prices, and images.
• Collections, along with the images and descriptions set on them.
• Customers, companies, and company locations.
• Orders and order history. Where a buyer reads them depends on which version of customer accounts your store runs — see Customer accounts.
• Navigation menus. You build these in your Shopify admin under Content → Menus, outside the theme, so the menus themselves survive — see the next list for the part that doesn't.
• Store policies. Wonpa's footer prints whichever policies you publish under Settings → Policies.
• Pages and blog articles.
• Product metafields, including the wonpa ones Wonpa reads.
• Storefront filters and their value order, which come from the Search & Discovery app rather than the theme.
• Quantity rules and quantity price breaks set on variants.
• Markets, languages, and currencies.

Has to be set up again in Wonpa

• Every theme setting: Brand, Typography, Layout, Buttons, Cart, Search, Social, Colors, Product cards, and Wholesale.
• Section content on every template, starting with the home page.
• Header, announcement bar, and footer content.
• Which menu each menu setting points at — Header → Menu, Announcement bar → Utility menu, and the Menu setting on each footer Link list block. The menus exist; the pointers don't.
• Custom CSS, JavaScript, and Liquid.
• App blocks and app embeds you enabled in the old theme.
• Non-default template assignments. The template name stays on the product, collection, or page, but Wonpa renders its own default template for that resource when it has no template by that name.

Nothing in the second list can be imported, and that isn't a Wonpa limitation. Two themes almost never share a section type or a setting id, so a section from your old theme has no counterpart in Wonpa to be copied into. Theme updates breaks down which file holds each kind of customization — the same reason a new copy of Wonpa starts from stock settings.

Before you switch

While the old theme is still published, capture what you'd rather not re-derive. Theme updates already lists what to write down: color values, fonts and size percentages, layout values, cart and wholesale numbers, and your home page section order. That list applies here unchanged. Coming from a different theme, add three items to it.

• Template assignments. Note every page, product, and collection your old theme put on a non-default template. Wonpa ships one template per resource, plus four alternate page templates: about, contact, faq, and quick-order.
• App placements. List each app that puts something on the storefront, and where its block sits on which page.
• A screenshot of the old home page, top to bottom. Section order is the piece that's hardest to reconstruct from memory later.

Note

Keep the old theme in your theme library after you publish Wonpa. Republishing it is the fastest way back if something is off, and it stays readable as a reference for settings you forgot to write down.

Switch in this order

1. Install Wonpa and leave it unpublished. Your old theme keeps serving traffic through every step below. See Installing Wonpa.

2. Set the look first, because it applies everywhere. Upload Logo and Favicon under Theme settings → Brand, then work through Theme settings → Colors, Theme settings → Typography, and Theme settings → Layout. Wonpa has four color schemes, listed in the editor as Scheme 1 through Scheme 4. See Style and look.

3. Rebuild the home page. The shipped home page is a stack of Wonpa sections pointing at demo images and collections that don't exist in your store, so replace their content rather than starting from an empty template. See Rebuild the demo homepage.

4. Reconnect the menus. Point Header → Menu, each footer Link list block, and Announcement bar → Utility menu at the menus you already have. A menu whose children have their own children renders as a mega menu — see Header navigation.

5. Re-assign templates. For each page you noted earlier, set the Wonpa template that fits under Online Store → Pages. The quick order page needs this step even on a fresh store: add a page, then assign the quick-order template.

6. Configure the wholesale settings in order, following Wholesale setup.

7. Re-place your app blocks, covered below.

8. Run the launch checklist, preview the home page, a collection, a product page, and the cart, then publish.

Custom code from your old theme

Custom CSS, JavaScript, and Liquid from the old theme can't be pasted into Wonpa as-is. Old CSS targets class names and a DOM structure Wonpa doesn't produce, and old Liquid references sections, snippets, and setting ids that don't exist here. Treat each customization as something to re-implement against Wonpa's own markup, not to port.

Note

Duplicate Wonpa in Online Store → Themes and make code changes on the duplicate. Preview it there, then apply the change to the theme you publish. Editing code on a published theme puts a syntax error straight in front of buyers.

For anything that is only a snippet to drop onto a page — a tracking tag, an app embed, a small block of markup — use the Custom Liquid section instead of editing theme files. It lives as ordinary section content, so it's visible in the editor and easy to move.

Re-adding your apps

An app's data stays with the app; its storefront placement lives in the theme. The apps stay installed through the switch, so what you re-do is the placement.

1. Add the Apps section to the page where the app belongs, then add the app's block inside it. This works on any page, holds up to eight blocks, and renders them in order. See App blocks.
2. On a product page, the Product section also accepts app blocks directly. That's the right spot for a reviews widget, a badge, or an upsell that has to sit inline with the product details.
3. Apps that output raw code rather than a block go in a Custom Liquid section or block.

No other section accepts app blocks, so if the app isn't listed under Add block, add the Apps section and place it there.

Note

Wonpa renders its own reviews block from a wonpa.reviews product metafield. If a reviews app already holds your reviews, keep using that app's block — Wonpa only reads the metafield and never writes it. See Product metafields.

Wonpa settings your old theme didn't have

A retail theme has no equivalent for these, so they start at their defaults and each needs a decision from you.

Setting or feature	Where	What it needs
Hide prices for guests	Theme settings → Wholesale	Off by default. Turn it on for a closed wholesale store — see Login-gated wholesale pricing.
Show volume pricing table	Theme settings → Wholesale	On by default, but it needs quantity price breaks on the selected variant, or a wonpa.tiers metafield as the fallback. See Volume pricing tiers.
Size matrix	Automatic	A product with exactly two options. There is no setting to turn it on — see Size matrix ordering.
Show company location switcher	Theme settings → Wholesale	A signed-in B2B customer with more than one company location. See Company and location switcher.
Enable quote requests	Theme settings → Wholesale	On by default. It gates the Quote request banner section, which stays hidden on the storefront while the setting is off.
Minimum order amount	Theme settings → Wholesale	A subtotal in whole currency units. Zero hides the meter — see Progress meters.
Show MSRP and margin	Theme settings → Product cards	Compare-at prices on your variants.
Quick order page	Online Store → Pages	A page on the quick-order template, then a link to it. See Quick order page.

Note

Quantity price breaks, quantity rules, and B2B catalogs are part of Shopify's B2B features, available on every plan. B2B sign-in does require the current version of Shopify's customer accounts. Until you set these up the storefront still works: quantities fall back to a minimum of one with no increment, and buyers see your regular product prices.

Wonpa reads four product metafields under the wonpa namespace — fabric, tiers, curve, and reviews. If your old theme read comparable values under a different namespace, those values are still on your products, but Wonpa won't find them until you copy them into the keys and shapes it expects. See Product metafields.

Related

• Installing Wonpa
• Theme updates
• Rebuild the demo homepage
• Wholesale setup
• Launch checklist