Test Compatibility
What is Test Compatibility?
Shoplift tests rely on templates and themes to deliver different experiences to your visitors. If your theme is missing templates required by your test, a few things could happen:
Pages can display incorrect content
Test data can be compromised
Site visitors can get frustrated
To prevent this, Shoplift disables the selection of themes with missing templates during test creation and will automatically pause tests if it detects configuration issues. These measures ensure the data collected by your test is reliable.
When Selecting a Theme
When setting up theme tests, you might see themes in your library disabled for selection, with a tooltip that mentions: "This theme is missing templates that are currently used by your products, collections, and pages."
If you see this message, it means that some of your store's pages (i.e. products, collections, landing pages, or blogs) are "assigned" to a template in your current theme that does not exist in the theme you're previewing. Because the template can't be accessed by the theme you're previewing, visitors on that theme would reach a faulty page instead of the intended templated page. To prevent this, Shoplift disables the selection of themes with missing templates.
Why does it matter?
For example, let's say Product A is assigned to Template A. If you were to test a theme without Template A, visitors assigned to that theme would reach a faulty page when attempting to view Product A. The templates in your original and variant themes do not need to be the exact same, but they must share the same name so that Shopify can correctly reference them.
When a Test is Paused
For Template Tests: If you're running a test on a specific template (like a product page or collection page) and that template gets removed from your theme, the test will be paused. The test uses the template to display different versions to visitors, so if the template no longer exists, visitors can't access it and the test becomes invalid. A template can be removed from your theme if you delete that template or publish a new theme that doesn't include that template.
For Theme Tests: If you're running a theme test and your live theme is modified to include a new template on pages visitors can access (as opposed to unpublished templates), the test will be paused. Because the new template can't be accessed from the variant theme, visitors on the variant would reach a faulty page, which would upset customers and invalidate your test.
How to Add Required Templates
Click "View Details" or "See missing templates" to open a list of the templates that your store configuration requires. Each of these templates needs to be added to the theme indicated in the top left. In the above example, a product template "test-1" needs to be added to the theme "Copy of Timely Demo Theme."
Adding Templates to Your Theme:
Step 1: Before you can add the missing template, you need to find the theme that has the missing template.
For theme testing, the missing template will be in your live theme and you will need to add it to an unpublished theme.
For template testing, the missing template will be in an unpublished theme and you will need to add it to your live theme. However, if no theme version exists with this template, you will need to create a new template in your live theme with the same name (i.e. the missing template shown above is "test-1").
Step 2: Once you find the theme with the missing template, click "Edit code."
Step 3: In the theme code editor, use the left navigation bar to locate the missing template. Select the missing template, highlight all of the template's code, and copy the code to your clipboard.
Step 4: Find the theme that you need to add the missing template to (i.e. "Copy of Timely Demo Theme). Open the code editor and click "Add a new template." Select the type of template you are missing (i.e. a product template) and provide the name of the missing template (i.e. "test-1"). Be sure the name exactly matches the name of the missing template. Create the template, and replace the entirety of the generated code with the code you copied to your clipboard.
Step 5: Hit "Save", and return to Shoplift. Click "Recheck theme". If you have copied all of the required templates to your unpublished theme, you will now be able to select the theme for a theme test.
Have a question? Reach out to Customer Support, and we'd be happy to help you.
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