Shopify is an e-commerce website that develops computer software for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems. This was built using a web application framework called Ruby on Rails.

Now to get started with Shopify, go to www.shopify.com by creating your own store by clicking the Getting Started button. You will be asked for your email address, password and store name. After this, Shopify will ask for some additional information then your Shopify store will be successfully created.

After your store is successfully created, you will be redirected to its admin interface, <your-shop-name>.myshopify.com/admin. You will also be able to check out your online store’s interface through this url, <your-shop-name>.myshopify.com. Right now, your online store contains a simple template and empty data. So let’s set up your store!

First, let’s add your products. You can add your products by navigating through the sidebar, Products > Products > Add Product. From here, just add the details of your product. Once it is saved, it will automatically be shown on your online store.

You can manage your orders by navigating through Orders > Orders. In here, you can update the order details. Currently, customers cannot checkout orders until you pay for a plan. There are Basic Shopify, Shopify and Advanced Shopify plans. Just choose which plans suit for your store.

Currently, your store’s theme using the Shopify’s default. You can change it by navigating through Online Store > Themes. There are free and paid pre-made themes that you can install and use for your shop. Just pick one that suits for you and install it. But if you want to customize your own, you can got the edit HTML/CSS option for the theme and you will be able to see the liquid files and other assets for the pages.

Shopify uses the liquid templating system for its pages. Its usage is similar to the Django’ templating system and Jinja2. You can check this documentation to learn more: https://shopify.github.io/liquid/.

You can also add About Us and Contact Us pages and other additional pages that you need for your store. Navigate through Online Store > Pages > Add Page and just add the details of the page that you to create. Also, don’t forget to select the template you want to use for this page.

You can also install additional apps for your store that would suit your need. There are apps like Order Printer that can print your invoices, Product Reviews that adds SEO-friendly review scores to your Google search results, and a lot more. There are free and paid apps that you can choose that you think would suit your store’s needs. There’s also a way to install your own apps to your store but we won’t discuss that now since that is an advanced topic.

You can update your store’s settings by navigating through the Settings page. You can update your store details, accepting of payments, checkout details, shipping details, tax details and account details. Just fill-up the details and you’re good to go.

And that’s how you create your own store in Shopify!

images courtesy of The Kingdom AU.