Pick your piece

Many stones are one of a kind: no two citrine points are the same, and your shoppers want to choose the very one they'll hold. Pick your piece shows a one-of-a-kind product stone by stone: each piece as a photo card with its own picture, weight and size, sold pieces marked "Found a home", and an optional Intuitively chosen card for shoppers who'd rather you chose for them.

Set up a one-of-a-kind product

Sell all the stones of one kind (say, your citrine points) as one product with one variant per stone:

1. In admin, create the product ("Citrine point") with its description, type and crystal metafields (chapter 7), which every piece shares.
2. Under Variants, add an option named Piece (or Specimen). Altar finds it by its name, matched without regard to capitals: the names it looks for are in Theme settings › Crystals and rituals › Piece option names ("Piece, Specimen"). To use your own name, such as Stone, add it there, separated by a comma ("Piece, Specimen, Stone").
3. Add one value per stone. Short values read best: A, B, C… or 1, 2, 3. A value of three characters or fewer shows with the option's name in front, "Piece A"; a longer value ("Sunrise") shows as it is.
4. Give each variant its own photo of that stone: click the variant and choose its image (add every stone's photo to the product's media first). Photograph them the same way, on the same ground and light, so the grid reads as a set. Piece photos are cropped square, so keep the stone in the middle.
5. Give each variant its price (pieces can differ: a bigger stone can cost more) and inventory 1, with inventory tracked and Continue selling when out of stock off. A stone that sells then becomes unavailable on its own.
6. Fill each variant's Piece weight (custom.specimen_weight, for example 142 g) and Piece size (custom.specimen_size, for example 6.2 × 4.8 cm) in the variant's Metafields (chapter 7, step 2).
7. Optional: add one more value, Intuitively chosen (exactly as Theme settings › Crystals and rituals › Intuitively chosen value spells it, without regard to capitals), as its own variant, with the stock you hold of that kind that you haven't photographed, and its price. That's the "we'll choose for you" card (below).

Keep the piece option as the product's only option if you can. Altar does handle a second option (a pouch or no pouch, say), and then each card leads to that stone's variant with the other options as the shopper has them, but every combination needs its own variant and stock.

What shoppers see

In the product page's buy box, the variant picker shows the piece option as a grid of photo cards under a label, "Piece: B", with "4 of 6 pieces left" on the right (the block's Show pieces left, on). The grid is four cards to a row on computers (the Variant picker block's Piece columns on computers: 3 or 4) and three on phones (two on the very narrowest). Each card has:

• the stone's own photo, with a round radio button over its corner,
• its name, "Piece B", and its price when the pieces' prices differ (when every piece costs the same, the price shows once, above),
• its weight and size, "142 g" and "6.2 × 4.8 cm".

Choosing a piece rings its card in the accent, brings its photo into the gallery, updates the price and the page's address (so a shopper can share the link to that exact stone), and names it on the add button: "Add piece B to bag · $72.00". There's no quantity selector, no stock line and no back-in-stock request: each piece is one unit, so "Only 1 left" would be true of every stone.

The grid is a real radio group for keyboard and screen reader users: Tab moves into the grid on the chosen piece, the arrow keys move between pieces and skip the sold ones, and each card is read out in full ("Piece B, 142 grams, 6.2 by 4.8 cm, $72.00").

The Intuitively chosen card (when the product has that value) comes last, as a wide card across two columns: a drawn medallion (or the variant's own image, if you give it one), the value's name, its price and the line from Intuitively chosen line ("We'll choose one for you, by feel"). Choosing it sets the button to "Add to bag · $58.00", and adding it adds its own variant. It isn't counted in "4 of 6 pieces left". Unlike a piece, it is ordinary stock: it gets the quantity selector (when Show quantity selector is on), the stock line ("Only 3 left") and the back-in-stock request like any product, a shopper can add it again when it is already in the bag, and its bag line has the usual quantity stepper.

Elsewhere in the store, a product with a piece option:

• wears the One of a kind badge on its card, unless it is sold out or on sale;
• shows Choose instead of Add on its card, which opens quick view with the same piece grid;
• never shows "Only 3 left" or swatches on its card;
• shows its piece in the bag as "Piece B · 142 g", with "One of a kind" where the quantity stepper would be (an Intuitively chosen line keeps its stepper).

When a piece sells

When a stone's single unit sells, Shopify marks its variant unavailable, and Altar:

• fades that card's photo, writes "Found a home" over it (Theme settings › Crystals and rituals › Sold piece label) and stops it being chosen; screen readers hear "Piece C, Found a home". The label always sits on one line: where a card's photo is too narrow for it (three cards a row on a phone, or in quick view), the card says Sold instead ("In bag" for "In your bag"; change both words in Online Store › Themes › … › Edit default theme content, searching for "Sold"). A label of eight characters or fewer is used as it is everywhere;
• lowers the count ("3 of 6 pieces left");
• shows the sold label on that piece in the home page's Pieces showcase (below), with its photo faded.

A shopper who already has a piece in their bag sees "In your bag" over its photo, and the add button reads "Already in your bag" and can't be pressed, so nobody adds the same stone twice.

Sold pieces stay in the grid as a quiet record of stones that found a home. When you'd rather they went, delete their variants in admin. When every piece has sold (and the Intuitively chosen variant is out of stock too, if you have one), the product shows Sold out like any other.

The Pieces showcase

On the home page, the Featured product section with Layout set to Pieces showcase (the Altar preset's "Every stone is one of a kind. Choose yours.") shows up to six of a product's pieces as small tarot cards in three columns, each with its photo, "Piece A" and its weight, and each a link to that piece on the product page. Sold pieces carry the sold label in their cartouche, with a faded photo. Beside them sit the section's Eyebrow, Heading, Text, a Button label button to the product ("Choose your piece") and the pieces-left count. The Intuitively chosen card isn't shown here. Choose your one-of-a-kind product in the section's Product; a product without a piece option shows the ordinary product details instead.

Settings at a glance

A product without a piece option shows its options as ordinary pills, swatches or a select. In the theme editor it also shows the sample piece grid, tagged Sample, so you can see the feature before your first one-of-a-kind product is set up (chapter 6).