Shopify Theme Developer Roadmap

Michael Myers
4 min readNov 20, 2022

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Is Shopify a well-equipped platform for development? What do you need to know to create Shopify Themes? Let’s check it out!

Hello everybody! In this article, I’ll tell you my story about Shopify Development, how I started, how it goes, and my plans for it. Also, you will learn the Shopify developer roadmap based on my experience.

Before we started, be sure you follow me on Twitter or on another social media. Let’s get started!

I’m a Shopify Developer

I’ve 3 years of experience in front-end development. I had a job in a web agency where work as a Shopify developer for one year. At that time, I made a lot of Shopify stores and customizations and now I’ve enough experience with it. If you have an idea to open a Shopify store I can help you with that, just contact me.

What is Shopify?

I wrote about Shopify in my previous article:

If you don’t read it yet, I recommend doing this.

Create a partner account

To work with themes you need to create a partner account to open a development store and use Shopify for free. Also, you can use beta features and try new content.

How I met Shopify

I learned some CMS like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Magento, etc. I saw that Shopify is so popular and I wanted to check what is it. I saw a lot of videos and read some articles about Dropshipping, Liquid, the Shopify platform, and other. And my interest in a lot of CMS during those days helped me to find a full-time job.

How I started working on Shopify as a developer

One IT company made me an offer on the Shopify Developer position and I get it. I worked on a third-party themes and did a lot of code customizations. Sometimes it took a lot of time because something just broke, I mean was broken in a theme. And I fixed it.

After that, I started to read Shopify documentation to understand how to make lightweight functional themes. I saw that Shopify websites can be nice, I thought the Shopify stores can be heavy only and not so cool for users because the page loading speed is nah. So, what about Shopify development? I checked Shopify Theme Development only because I’m interested in websites first.

Shopify Developer Roadmap

Shopify Basics

In this grade, you need a minimum knowledge of Web Development. One thing you need to know is computer basics. You will edit websites in the admin panel called customizer. You can edit the theme code if you wish to. For code editing you’ll need to know:

  • HTML
  • CSS
  • Basic JavaScript
  • jQuery
  • JSON
  • Liquid
  • Shopify platform.

Shopify Theme Developer

You have to know:

  • HTML
  • CSS
  • JavaScript
  • JS Framework (React.js or Vue.js)
  • Shopify Platform
  • Shopify APIs
  • Liquid
  • GraphQL.

So it can be kind of complex to learn all of these shortly, but it will take some time as everything is when you are learning new technologies. You can read more on official Shopify development documentation.

Shopify Plus Developer

  • Shopify Platform
  • Liquid
  • Shopify Plus Apps
  • Script Editor (Ruby)
  • Shopify Headless CMS (Storefront API)
  • Framework (Hydrogen or Next JS)
  • GraphQL.

jQuery is used in old themes, if you have a fresh theme no needs to know it.

My plans for Shopify Development

I’m learning new technologies and trying to learn new things every day (of course I take a rest and my rest is making videos and doing sports). So I want to step up and create Shopify Themes by myself. At this moment I understand Liquid, it’s not so hard to learn it.

I took a JavaScript course on Udemy to improve my JS skills. Also, I started a JS course on freeCodeCamp, but it goes not so well. I prefer learning stuff through videos. Maybe sometimes I’ll be back on freeCodeCamp, I like it.

Overall

In this article, you understood what you need to know to work as a Shopify developer. And you know my plans about Shopify Development. I hope I’ll learn enough to create great themes.

If you like this article, support me. Even 1 dollar will make me smile.

If you want to get a Shopify store for your start-up or business you can hire me as a professional Shopify developer.

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Michael Myers
Michael Myers

Written by Michael Myers

A Front-end Shopify Developer. Writing about Web Development and Shopify Theme Development.

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