Online Store 2.0

Online Store 2.0 is Shopify's theme architecture that enables sections on every page, app blocks and flexible metafield output without code.

With Online Store 2.0 (OS 2.0), Shopify fundamentally modernized its theme architecture in 2021. At its core are JSON templates: sections and blocks can be arranged freely on any page, no longer just the homepage. Content is maintained in the theme editor via drag and drop, without a developer.

Added to that are app blocks, which let apps integrate their functionality cleanly into themes instead of injecting code, and dynamic sources, which output metafields directly into sections. That makes themes more maintainable and product pages far more flexible, for product-type-specific layouts, for instance.

For merchants on older themes, moving to an OS 2.0 base is almost always worthwhile: better maintainability, a better performance foundation and access to current Shopify features. In any redesign or migration, OS 2.0 should be the default.

Shopify development

Related terms

Theme
A theme is the design and frontend framework of a Shopify store: it defines the layout, sections and user experience of the storefront.
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Liquid
Liquid is Shopify's template language. It connects store data such as products, collections and the cart with the theme's HTML.
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Metafields
Metafields are custom data fields in Shopify that extend products, variants, collections and other objects with structured additional information.
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