I've developed a few shopify stores and found the workflow to be similar to working with Dreamweaver and FTP, but worse. There is no way to have a local copy, which means you are constantly either editing files directly in their web editor, or uploading your modified local copies to the server, waiting a few seconds, then refreshing the browser manually to see the results.
But the real nightmare only begins after you launch the shop. There's absolutely no way to test anything before putting it live. Want to add a feature, or fix a bug? Edit the code blindly, upload it and cross your fingers that it doesn't break everything.
I admire the developers who managed to develop these sites and maintain their sanity intact.
There are a number of approaches you can take for this. Many developers simply have a production and staging store. Another approach is to have a production and staging theme which you can preview.
The shopify_theme[1] gem or the new theme sync tool[2] help keep synchronization quick. I can see the problem in the lack of context objects that are available to a theme, and there was even a tool a long time ago that solved that.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 13.1 ms ] threadBut the real nightmare only begins after you launch the shop. There's absolutely no way to test anything before putting it live. Want to add a feature, or fix a bug? Edit the code blindly, upload it and cross your fingers that it doesn't break everything.
I admire the developers who managed to develop these sites and maintain their sanity intact.
The shopify_theme[1] gem or the new theme sync tool[2] help keep synchronization quick. I can see the problem in the lack of context objects that are available to a theme, and there was even a tool a long time ago that solved that.
Sadly, it was very difficult to keep in sync.
[1] https://github.com/shopify/shopify_theme [2] https://github.com/csaunders/phoenix