Installing Manifest

Manifest installs like any Shopify theme. The important part is the order: preview and configure before you publish, so no customer sees a half-built store.

Install

1. In your Shopify admin, go to Online Store → Themes.
2. Under Theme library, choose Add theme → Upload zip file, and select the Manifest zip.
3. Wait for the upload to finish. Manifest appears in your theme library, unpublished.

Manifest is now installed but not live. Your current theme keeps serving customers.

Preview and configure

Choose Customize on the Manifest entry to open the theme editor. Everything you do here affects only the unpublished copy.

Work in this order:

1. Theme settings (the gear icon at the bottom of the editor sidebar) — colors, fonts, page width, motion. See Theme settings.
2. Header and footer — your logo, main menu, and footer menus.
3. Home page — add and arrange sections.
4. Product and collection templates — these are where most of the traffic lands, so give them more attention than the home page deserves.

To share the unpublished theme with someone else, use Actions → Preview, then Share preview. The link works without admin access and expires after a period Shopify controls.

Publish

When you are ready, choose Actions → Publish on the Manifest entry. The change is immediate.

Publish during a quiet traffic hour if you can, and keep your previous theme in the library rather than deleting it. Rolling back is then a single publish action.

Updating to a new version

Shopify themes do not update in place. A new version of Manifest arrives as a new zip, and your customizations live in the theme you already have. The safe procedure:

1. Upload the new version alongside your live theme. Do not publish it.
2. Reapply your theme settings and rebuild your page layouts in the new copy.
3. Compare the two side by side using the preview link.
4. Publish the new copy when it matches.

This is tedious, and it is also the only method that cannot silently lose work. If you have made code edits to the theme files, note them before you start — they do not carry across, and you will need to reapply them deliberately.

Keeping a written list of your theme settings and section arrangement makes updates dramatically faster. A screenshot of each configured section is enough.

Duplicating before you experiment

Before any significant change to a live theme, choose Actions → Duplicate. You get a snapshot in the library that you can publish if the experiment goes wrong. This costs nothing and takes a few seconds.

Theme library limits

Shopify limits how many themes a store can keep in its library. If you hit the limit, delete old duplicates rather than the theme you are currently running — and download a zip of anything you might want back before deleting it.