Getting started

What's in your download

The three zips are the same theme. A preset only decides the starting palette, heading font, a few settings, the words, the home page, the page templates, and the header and footer, and you can change all of them afterwards. Products, photos and demo text are not included: a fresh install shows your own products, and sections that need a product, a collection or an image show samples in the theme editor until you choose one.

Presets

The fourth palette, Liquorice (a charcoal page with mustard buttons and coral and sage blocks, good for leather makers), has no preset of its own: choose it in Theme settings › Colors on any preset.

The presets also differ in these settings:

All three presets turn on Show second image on hover (Theme settings › Product cards), which is off when the setting has never been saved.

Each preset's header and footer carry their own sample words:

• The announcement bar reads "Free shipping over $79 · Easy size exchanges" (Scruff), "Baked this morning · Local delivery Thursday and Saturday" (Barkery) or "Free shipping over $69 · Free returns for 30 days" (Whisker), with your opening hours at the left ("Brunswick shop open today, 9 to 5") and two links at the right. Those words are plain text. Rewrite them to match your shop.
• The menu promos sit under a top-level link called Walk (Scruff), Treats (Barkery), or Play and Sleep (Whisker). If your menu has no link with that title, change each promo's Menu item (chapter 3).
• The birthday banner says "Treat them to something from the birthday shelf." (Scruff), "Order a pupcake with their name on it." (Barkery) or "Treat them to a new toy." (Whisker).
• The footer has your shop name with a sample address and opening hours, three menu columns, Shop (your Main menu), Help (your Footer menu) and About (a menu with the handle about, which a new store doesn't have: create it or the column stays hidden), and a Follow along column with your social icons.

Every preset ships these templates, filled with its own words:

Assign a page template in admin under Online Store › Pages, in the page's Theme template field, and a product template in the product's Theme template field.

The presets link to two pages you need to create. In the Scruff preset the hero's Find their size and How to measure and the announcement bar's Find your size (Find their size in Whisker) go to /pages/size-guide, and every preset's announcement bar Help link goes to /pages/contact. Create a page called "Size guide" (its handle becomes size-guide) with the page.size-guide template, and a page called "Contact" with the page.contact template, or change the links. The presets' other buttons, tiles, captions and promos point at all products or your collections list until you choose your own links, so go through the home page and point each one at the right collection, product or page.

A fresh install doesn't show these until you've set them up:

• Featured product (the name tag in the Scruff and Whisker presets) shows shoppers nothing until you choose a Product; the theme editor shows a sample. Choose your engraved tag, or delete the section.
• Feeding promo shows only its words, across the full width, until you choose a Product that has a feeding guide; then the calculator card appears beside them (chapters 7 and 11). Choose your best-selling food, or delete the section.
• The collection tiles show their titles on plain colour, and open your list of all collections, until you choose a Collection for each.
• The hero and image tiles show simple line drawings in place of your photos until you choose images. That's on purpose, not broken.
• Fit badges appear only on products with a Size option once a shopper has added their pet, and Shop by size opens all products until you add the Size filter (chapters 8 and 13).

Install

1. In Shopify admin, go to Online Store.
2. In the Draft themes section, click Import theme › Upload zip file, choose the zip of the preset you want and click Upload. Don't unzip it first.
3. When the upload finishes, click Edit theme to open the theme editor and make it yours.
4. When you're ready, click Publish next to the theme in Draft themes, or in the top bar of the theme editor. You can upload a second preset next to it to compare; only the published theme is live.

First steps

1. Brand: Theme settings › Brand: your logo, or the shop name as a text logo in the heading font, and a favicon. A long shop name looks better with a smaller Text logo size on phones.
2. Colours and fonts: Theme settings › Colors › Colour palette, then Typography (chapter 2).
3. Menus: in admin, Content › Menus: build the main menu, the footer menu and, if you keep the footer's About column, a menu with the handle about (chapter 3). Rename or move the header's menu promos to one of your own top-level links.
4. Pages: create "Size guide" with the page.size-guide template and "Contact" with the page.contact template.
5. Sizes: name your size option Size (or list your own name in Size option names), use the same size names everywhere (XS, S, M, L, XL), and check Weight range per size and Default size table in Theme settings › Pet profile and › Sizing against your own sizes (chapters 8 and 9).
6. Metafields: create Scruff's metafield definitions and fill in the ones your products need (chapter 7). Species, per-product sizes, feeding guides, bag weights, free-from chips and ingredients read them.
7. Templates: give tags product.tag, embroidered collars product.embroidery, and food and treats product.food.
8. Personalisation: tag every product you engrave or embroider personalise, and if you charge for embroidery, create the fee product and choose it in Theme settings › Personalisation (chapter 10).
9. Autoship: install a subscription app, such as Shopify's free Shopify Subscriptions, create your delivery plans, and check the plan names say how many weeks (chapter 11).
10. Filters: install Shopify's free Search & Discovery app and add the Size, Species and Colour filters (chapter 13).
11. Real promises: the presets ship with demo words, and many of them are claims about your shop. They reach shoppers as soon as you publish, so rewrite or remove all of these until they only say what's true:
    • Free shipping over is set to 79 in the Scruff preset and 69 in Whisker, so the product page says "Free shipping over $79." and the cart counts down to it. Set it to your real threshold, or 0 if you don't offer free shipping (chapter 2).
    • The product page's Trust row ("Free size swaps · 60 days, in shop or by post", "Ships tomorrow · Order by 2 pm", "Stitched in Brunswick · Lifetime repairs", and in Barkery and Whisker their own versions), its Shipping and returns accordion ("Free shipping over $79. Size swaps are free for 60 days…"), and the hero's fact tile ("Size swaps are always free"). A trust row shows on every product that uses the template.
    • Every testimonial. The quotes, names and pets are invented. Replace them with real reviews or delete them. Publishing made-up reviews can break consumer law.
    • Prices, times and places written into the text, which don't update on their own: the announcement bar, the hero captions ("From $64 · 5 sizes"), the menu promos, "Brunswick", "Marrickville", "Fitzroy", the footer address and opening hours, and the contact page's "Visit the shop" text.
    • The newsletter: "Join the pack for 10% off" and "One email a fortnight". The theme doesn't send email or create discounts, so promise only what you'll send and set up (chapter 4).
    • The feeding promo's ticks: "Delivery every 2, 4, 6 or 8 weeks" and "Skip, swap or pause from your account" are only true once your subscription app offers those plans and that account page (chapter 11).
    • Barkery's FAQ answers about puppies, keeping times and grain-free baking.
12. Publish: when you've checked a product with sizes (with a pet saved), a tag, a food, the size guide page, the cart, and the home page on your phone.