Reference · 8 min read
Shopify theme glossary: sections, blocks, presets, and more explained
Open the Shopify theme editor or read any theme's documentation and you'll hit a wall of jargon: sections, blocks, presets, schema, templates, metafields. None of it is complicated once someone explains it plainly — so here's the glossary that does exactly that. Bookmark it for the next time a tutorial assumes you already know.
Theme
The design layer of your store: layout, fonts, colours, and the structure of every page. Your products and orders live in Shopify itself, not the theme — which is why you can switch themes without losing content. Every store runs exactly one published theme at a time.
Section
The building blocks of a page. A homepage might stack a hero banner section, a featured-products section, a testimonial section, and a newsletter section. In the editor you add, remove, and drag sections to reorder them. Modern themes let you use sections on every page, not just the homepage — that's the headline feature of Online Store 2.0.
Block
The smaller pieces inside a section. A testimonial section might contain three testimonial blocks; a product page's info section contains blocks for the title, price, buy button, and description. Blocks can be added, removed, and reordered within their section — they're how you fine-tune a section's contents.
App block
A block provided by an app rather than the theme. When a reviews app offers an app block, you can drop its star-rating widget exactly where you want it on the product page, visually, with no code. App blocks are a big reason modern themes are easier to live with — apps slot in cleanly instead of injecting code.
Template
The page-level layout that says which sections appear on a type of page. Your product template defines what every product page looks like; your collection template defines collection pages. OS 2.0 themes let you create multiple templates of the same type — say, a special template for one flagship product — and assign them per page.
Preset
A ready-made starting configuration that ships with a theme — a curated combination of colours, fonts, and settings, sometimes presented as different "styles" of the same theme. Presets are why one theme can look like several: same engine, different starting outfit. Handy when you want a designed look without building it from scratch.
Schema
The behind-the-scenes definition of what a section or theme offers: its name, its settings, what blocks it accepts. When you see a theme's true name in a detector — even after a store renamed it — that's read from the theme's schema data. It's also why our theme detector can identify the real theme: the schema name survives renames. See what "custom theme" really means for how that plays out.
See schema names in action
Scan any store — we read the theme's true identity from its schema.
Theme settings
The global options that apply across your whole store — brand colours, typography, spacing, favicon. Change a colour here and it updates everywhere at once. This is the first stop when customising a theme, because it delivers the biggest visual change for the least effort.
Liquid
The templating language Shopify themes are written in. You'll see .liquid files if you ever open "Edit code." You don't need to learn Liquid to run a store — the visual editor covers almost everything — but it's what developers use to build and modify themes under the hood.
Metafields
Custom data fields you attach to products, collections, or pages — extra information beyond Shopify's standard fields. A furniture store might add "assembly time" or "wood type" metafields and display them on product pages. They're how stores show specialised information without hacking it into the description.
Online Store 2.0 (OS 2.0)
Shopify's modern theme architecture: sections on every page, app blocks, flexible templates, and better metafield support. Nearly all current themes — including Dawn — are OS 2.0. Full explainer: Online Store 2.0 themes explained.
Theme editor / customiser
The visual tool (Online Store → Themes → Customise) where all of the above comes together: you see your store live on one side and controls on the other. Changes preview instantly and go live only when you save and publish.
Published vs unpublished themes
Your published theme is the live one customers see. Unpublished themes sit in your library — perfect for testing a redesign or preparing a switch safely before flipping it live. Golden rule: build and test unpublished, publish when ready, and keep the old theme as a backup.
That's the vocabulary. With these dozen terms decoded, theme documentation and editor options stop being intimidating — and you can get on with the actual work of making your store look and sell the way you want.