How to Become a Shopify Developer: A Complete Beginner's Guide

Shopify development is often jokingly referred to as the "IKEA furniture" of web development. Much like IKEA instructions, Shopify documentation comes from a specific school of thought: if it works on the first try, it might have been too easy.

From early onset carpal tunnel to the late-night debugging sessions that leave you looking ghostly pale, the life of a Shopify developer is unique. But if you are wondering how to sign up for this experience, you are in the right place.

In this guide, I will cover exactly how to break into the Shopify development space, drawing from years of experience in the field. Let's break down the roadmap.

1. The Holy Trinity: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

First things first, we need to address the fundamentals. HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are the underlying technologies of every website you visit, and Shopify stores are no exception. Having a solid grasp of these fundamentals is non-negotiable.

If you are a complete beginner, there are excellent free resources available to get you up to speed:

• The Odin Project: A highly recommended open-source curriculum.
• Free Code Camp: Interactive learning for web fundamentals.
• YouTube: There are countless tutorials available to help you build your first static sites.

2. Master Liquid: The Templating Language

Once you understand the web fundamentals, it is time to learn Liquid. Liquid is Shopify’s proprietary templating language. Think of it as HTML "Mad Libs"—it connects your store's data to the HTML visual structure. You fill in the blanks with Liquid tags, and Shopify renders the webpage.

How to Learn Liquid

Contrary to the IKEA joke earlier, Shopify's documentation is actually excellent. The best way to learn Liquid is to read through the official Shopify Liquid Reference.

3. Know the Shopify Admin

The final piece of the puzzle before diving into code is knowing the Shopify Admin like the back of your hand. As a developer, you will spend as much time in the admin dashboard as you do in your code editor. You need to understand how products, collections, and settings are managed to build effective themes.

4. Understanding Theme Architecture

Now that you have the puzzle pieces, it is time to put them together. To do this, you should create a Shopify Partner account (which is free) and set up a Development Store.

Install a free theme (like Dawn), open the code editor, and familiarize yourself with the folder structure. Here is a breakdown of the key directories you will encounter:

The Directory Structure

• Assets (/assets): This directory houses the files needed to run your theme, such as your JavaScript and CSS files.

• Layout (/layout): This includes your site's main layout files. The most important file here is theme.liquid. This acts as the HTML skeleton that wraps the content on nearly every page of your site.

• Locales (/locales): These files allow theme developers to include translations for theme settings, enabling merchants to use the theme in languages other than English.

• Sections (/sections): This contains the code for major section blocks. As of Online Store 2.0, these sections can be included in any template on your store, making them highly modular.

• Snippets (/snippets): This folder contains smaller pieces of HTML, CSS, or JavaScript that you want to reuse across your store (e.g., a product card or a specific button style).

• Templates (/templates): This houses the data for the various page types on your store (products, collections, blogs). In modern themes, these are often JSON files. Note: For the most part, you won't edit these directly; you will modify them through the Shopify Admin Customizer.

Conclusion

Breaking into Shopify development requires a mix of core web development skills, specific platform knowledge, and hands-on practice with the theme architecture. By mastering HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Liquid, and understanding how the theme files interact, you will be well on your way to becoming a proficient Shopify Front-End Developer.

If you want to dive deeper, start building your own custom sections and exploring the vast capabilities of Online Store 2.0.