Shopify Caching

Occasionally, Shopify will cache liquid files on your live theme to ensure optimal performance when loading for your website visitors.

Unfortunately, this also means that certain changes to liquid files that are present in your theme may not be served to your website visitors for a period of time.

What issues can occur if my theme code is being cached by Shopify?

If your theme's liquid code is being cached by Shopify, then it's possible that some changes you make as part of your tests will not go live to your customers until the cache is refreshed.

Sometimes, caches will refresh quite quickly, but it has also been observed to remain stale for as long as several days. If this happens, then it's possible that your test variants may not show the changes you are intending to test to your website visitors for an equal amount of time.

How can I resolve issues related to caching?

If you notice that the changes you are testing are not showing up on your test variants in your live tests, a reliable method to force Shopify to refresh the cache for your theme's liquid code has been to publish a fresh version of your theme.

So long as the theme you publish is a 1:1 copy of your current theme, your Shoplift tests will continue to run uninterrupted.

What should I know about pagespeed impacts of Shopify caching?

As Shopify only caches your live theme, there may be performance differences between live themes and unpublished themes. For merchants concerned about potential differences, consider leveraging a third-party caching or edge delivery solution when running theme tests to ensure that both themes are cached equivalently and provide relatively similar performance.