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THEME DOCUMENTATION · VERSION 1.0.0

Set up POLYMATH.

POLYMATH is a native Shopify Liquid theme for Online Store 2.0, built as one engine with twenty-five looks. Every ZIP holds the same sections, the same settings and all twenty-five style presets; what differs is which preset is switched on and which page layouts are already built. You install the demo closest to your store, restyle it from Theme settings if you want, and replace the demo content with your own. This guide describes the theme as built. You can walk through all twenty-five stores before installing anything, at products.smartechor.com/polymath — those are static snapshots, so cart, search and checkout there do nothing. POLYMATH is a pre-release: it has not been submitted to or approved by any marketplace, and no page on this site says otherwise.

Start with your store

Everything happens in your Shopify admin in a browser. Nothing is installed on your computer. POLYMATH needs a store on a plan that allows custom themes, which every current paid plan and every trial store is.

  1. Unzip the download. Inside are twenty-five demo ZIPs named POLYMATH-1.0.0-<demo>.zip, one POLYMATH-1.0.0-all-styles.zip and the offline help file. Install one of them, not several.
  2. Choose a demo ZIP if one of the twenty-five is close to the store you want: you get its home page, product template, About template, header and footer already laid out. Choose the all-styles ZIP to build your pages yourself; you can still switch to any of the twenty-five presets afterwards, you just do not get that demo’s layouts.
  3. In Shopify, open Online Store → Themes → Add theme → Upload zip file, and choose the inner ZIP as it is. Do not unzip it first and do not re-zip a folder: Shopify expects sections, snippets and templates at the top level. Uploading the outer download archive will be rejected.
  4. The theme appears in your library as POLYMATH. It is not live. Use … → Preview to look at it, or Customize to start work.
  5. Set your logo, menus, colours and products, then install Shopify’s free Search & Discovery app if you want collection filters — the theme renders whatever you configure there.
  6. Check home, a collection, a product, the cart, search and an article in preview on a phone as well as a desktop, then Publish. Your previous theme moves to the library unchanged, and your products, pages, customers and orders are untouched.

Changing demo later: upload the other demo’s ZIP as a second theme rather than converting the first. Page layouts travel only in their own ZIP.

Style presets

All twenty-five presets are in every ZIP. In the theme editor open Theme settings and use Shopify’s own Theme styles list at the top of the panel. The preview redraws at once; save when you are happy.

A preset sets typography (heading, accent and body fonts, case, letter spacing, heading and body scale), style (corner radius, button shape and style, product card style, texture, dividers, spacing, page width), the motion pack, the five product-card settings, all eight colour schemes with the page and drawer defaults, and the free-shipping threshold. In the Vino preset it also switches the age check on. It touches nothing else: your logo, favicon, social links, sharing image, cart type, order note, pop-up, search setting and all section content stay as you left them.

Pick your preset first, then fine-tune. Switching preset replaces the settings a preset owns, including any adjustments you made to them.

The twenty-five: Maison, Riot, Lumen, Circuit, Vital, Derma, Aurum, Tempo, Haven, Savor, Pulse, Paws, Tiny, Brew, Vino, Essence, Optic, Stride, Hearth, Flora, Arcade, Kickoff, Summit, Folio and Atlas. Each pairs a heading and body family from Shopify’s font library with a button shape and style, a card style, a motion pack and a spacing density. The vertical named next to a preset in the theme editor is a suggestion; nothing in a preset is tied to a product type.

Theme settings, group by group

The section library

The theme ships seventy-three sections: forty-nine you can add to any page from Add section, seventeen that sit in fixed places (header, footer, cart drawer, quick view, predictive search, Related products on the product page, and the eleven page templates for product, collection, collections list, page, blog, article, search, cart, contact, 404 and password) and seven that only appear on customer account pages. Every addable section offers a Color scheme, top and bottom padding, a small eyebrow, a heading that accepts <em> and usually a text field, so those are not repeated below.

Figures, statements and promo copy are yours to fill in. Write only claims you can stand behind: the theme adds no stock warnings, no viewer counts and no invented social proof anywhere.

Product pages

A product page is the Product information section plus whatever you add below it. The gallery sits on one side and the buy box on the other, and you decide what is in the buy box and in what order. Edit it under the page selector → Products → Default product; give some products a different layout by creating another template and choosing it on the product in admin.

Gallery: stack, grid, single or carousel, at three widths, with the image shape set to natural, portrait, square or tall. The selected variant’s image comes first. Selecting an image opens a viewer with previous and next, a counter, arrow keys and swipe; without JavaScript it opens the full-size file. An optional slim purchase bar appears once the buy box has scrolled out of view.

Nineteen block types plus app blocks: breadcrumbs, text, vendor, title, badges, price, options and buy buttons (variant picker with swatches, quantity, accelerated checkout, subscription and one-time choices when the product has selling plans, a recipient form on gift cards, and unavailable combinations marked rather than hidden), SKU, description, collapsible tabs (rich text or the content of a page, so one shipping policy serves every product), icons with text, size guide (optionally only on products that have a given option, such as Size), share, specifications, name and number, highlight, care meters, tasting profile and Custom Liquid. Only options and buy buttons is required. Rows with no value on a product are hidden, so one block serves a mixed catalogue.

A sensible order for a considered purchase: breadcrumbs, vendor, title, badges, price, options and buy buttons, size guide, specifications, icons with text, description, collapsible tab, share. Keep the buy button above the fold and the reading matter below it.

Metafields

Nothing in POLYMATH requires metafields: every block and section that reads one hides itself when the value is missing. They are what turns a good product page into a specific one. Create the definition once under Settings → Custom data → Products → Add definition, fill it in per product, then point the block at it by writing namespace.key — in a Rows field, one row per line as Label | namespace.key.

Types: single-line text for a specification, a highlight sentence or a care note; true/false for a comparison row, which draws a tick or a dash; integer for a meter, a tasting score or a frame measurement; multi-line text for product anatomy, one detail per line as Label | Text | x | y. Start with one product and one definition, look at the result, then do the rest in bulk from the products list.

The twenty-five demos use one hundred and sixty-eight metafields between them. They are a starting point, not a requirement — name yours whatever suits your catalogue. Grouped by what reads them:

The demo values behind these are fictional. Enter your own supplier’s data, with units, and never publish a demo specification as if it described a real product.

The About page template

Every demo ships an About layout as a template called page.about. A template is not a page: create the page and assign the template, or the layout is never used. Go to Online Store → Pages, open or add your About page, choose about under Theme template and save; then open the theme editor, use the page selector to go to Pages → About, and edit the sections there. The page’s own title and body still appear — the Page section shows them — with the demo’s sections above and below.

If your About page shows only text, the template has not been assigned. That is nearly always the reason. The same method builds any layout page: a landing page, a stockists page or a size guide is a page with sections on it.

Customer accounts

POLYMATH includes templates and sections for login, register, account, addresses, order, password reset and account activation, each styled with the preset in use and each offering a colour scheme and bottom padding. They appear only on stores set to classic customer accounts under Settings → Customer accounts. Stores using new customer accounts get Shopify’s own hosted pages instead, which a theme cannot style. Accounts, gift cards and local pickup are Shopify features; the theme displays them when your store has them on.

Cart and checkout

The cart is a drawer or a page, set once in Theme settings. Both show line and order discounts, unit prices, line item properties (what a shopper typed into Name and number arrives here and on the order), subscription selling plans and the order note when it is enabled. The cart page also renders accelerated checkout buttons.

The free-shipping bar shows how much more is needed and a progress bar, and appears only when the shopper is paying in your store’s own currency — a threshold in one currency cannot be compared to a total in another. The same amount can be printed in a product page Icons with text line by typing [threshold]; that line hides itself when no threshold is set.

The cart drawer can suggest up to two products that are not already in the cart, with a heading you choose. Leave the list empty and it falls back to other products from the collection of the first item in the cart. A single-variant suggestion gets an add button; one with options opens quick view. Set the empty-cart button and its link here too.

Checkout is Shopify’s. The theme hands the cart over and takes no part in payment, taxes, shipping rates or order processing. Discounts are created in Shopify admin; the theme only displays them.

Performance and accessibility

Images are lazy-loaded except the first one on the page, written with their real width and height so nothing jumps, and offered at ten widths so a phone never downloads a desktop picture. There is no jQuery and no framework: the JavaScript is plain and split in two, and the motion file is not loaded at all when Motion is off. Stylesheets are split by page type. Heading, body and accent fonts are preloaded, and a system font loads nothing.

All two hundred colour schemes that ship with the theme — twenty-five presets × eight schemes — were checked to WCAG AA for body text, secondary text, text on surfaces, links, buttons and text on the accent colour, and contrast is checked again where text sits over a picture. There is a skip link, visible focus outlines, arrow-key navigation in search suggestions, the image viewer and the slideshow, focus trapped in dialogs and returned when they close, and a pause control on anything that moves by itself. Charts and meters are accompanied by a readable list and spoken values such as “4 out of 5”; decorative pictures carry empty alt text. Reduced motion is honoured everywhere and cannot be overridden by a setting. Without JavaScript the scrolling story shows each step with its own picture, galleries open the full-size file and forms submit normally.

We do not publish a speed score, and you should be wary of anyone who does. A score is measured on one page, with particular products, images, apps and a particular connection; a demo’s number tells you very little about your store. Most of a live store’s speed is yours: upload good files but not eight-thousand-pixel ones, remove apps you no longer use, prefer video uploaded to Shopify over an embedded player, keep three font families, and remember that a home page with fourteen sections will not score like one with eight. Measure your own store after your products and apps are in, and change one thing at a time.

Updating safely: duplicate the current theme before updating, keep a record of custom code and app integrations, and test the cart, variants and checkout after changes. Editing theme files under … → Edit code is allowed, but from that moment it is your copy and a later version will not carry your edits over.

What the download contains

One archive holding twenty-five demo ZIPs, the all-styles ZIP, a changelog, a README and an offline help file covering every section, every settings group and every demo metafield. Each theme ZIP is about 260 KB; they are the same theme code, differing only in which preset and which page layouts are switched on.

What it does not contain is the demo photography. The pictures in the previews were produced for the demos and are not licensed for resale with a theme, which is normal for marketplace themes. Where a demo shows a photograph, a fresh install shows a grey placeholder until you upload your own. The demo copy is fictional too — brand names, product names, prices, descriptions, specifications, origins and staff notes were all written for the preview, and none of it describes a real product or company. Replace every heading and paragraph, and delete the sections you cannot fill.

The gap between a fresh install and a demo is almost entirely photography. The same layout with good pictures of your own products looks like the demo.

Frequently asked questions

My store does not look like the demo. Where are the images?

They are not included; see What the download contains. If it still looks wrong after your pictures are in, check the picture’s shape against the section’s Image shape, raise the Shade strength on heroes and promos, and confirm you installed the demo ZIP rather than the all-styles one.

Can I use another demo’s home page without reinstalling?

No. Page layouts travel only in their own ZIP — upload that demo as a second theme. The style preset is different: all twenty-five are in every ZIP, so you can restyle without reinstalling.

I switched preset and lost my font and colour changes.

That is what a preset does. Pick your preset first, then adjust. Section content is never affected; switching back restores that preset’s values, but not your edits on top of them.

Text over my hero image is hard to read.

Raise the hero’s Shade strength — the default suits a mid-tone photograph, and light text on a busy picture wants at least 30%. You can also change Shade from bottom to flat, or move the text with Position. Promo panels have a shade setting of their own, per panel.

A specifications table, a tasting profile or a care meter is empty.

Check, in order: the definition exists under Settings → Custom data → Products; this product has a value; and the Rows setting spells namespace.key exactly, with a pipe between the label and the key. Empty rows are hidden on purpose.

My collection page has no filters.

Filters come from Shopify’s free Search & Discovery app. Install it, configure filters there, and check that Enable filtering is on in the Product grid section.

Which apps work with POLYMATH?

We cannot promise any particular app works, because we cannot test the App Store. The theme supports app blocks, so any app offering one can be placed in the buy box or in the Apps section, and there is a Custom Liquid section and block for apps that hand you a snippet. Install an app on an unpublished copy first. Two Shopify apps are read directly: Search & Discovery for filters and complementary recommendations, and Translate & Adapt for languages.

Can I translate the theme?

Yes. Every word the theme writes comes from its language file; English is included. Change wording under … → Edit default theme content, or add a language with Translate & Adapt. Text you type into a section is content, translated the same way. The footer’s country and language selectors appear on their own once you have more than one market or language.

How do I turn off animations?

Theme settings → Motion → Off. No motion code is loaded at all. A visitor whose device asks for reduced motion already sees none, whichever pack you pick.

Need a hand?

Send “POLYMATH” and the theme version, which ZIP you installed, which style preset you are on, your store URL, the page and section involved, the steps that led to the problem and what you expected instead. For a specifications table, a tasting profile, care meters, product anatomy or frame fit, name the product and the metafields you have filled in — an empty row is almost always a missing value or a mistyped namespace.key. Attach a redacted screenshot. Never send passwords, access tokens or customer records.

We reply within two business days, fix reported defects in good time and treat a critical bug — anything breaking browsing, the cart or checkout — as the first priority. Support covers the theme, its settings and its sections; it does not cover custom code written for you, third-party apps or general Shopify administration. Read the full support policy for what support covers.

Open the support form ↗ or email support@smartechor.com.