Updating to a new version

Shopify has no in-place update for a theme it did not distribute. That is a platform limitation and it applies to every theme sold outside the Shopify Theme Store, ours included — which is why the usual advice for a theme like this one is "upload the new version and redo your settings", and why the most common complaint about every direct-sold theme is that updating costs a day's work.

You do not have to do that here. Send us a message and we will build the new version with your store's own configuration and edits already in it, and hand it to you as a theme sitting unpublished in your library.

The honest advice first

If your current version works, you may not need to update. Read the changelog. If a release fixes something you are not hitting and adds something you will not use, skip it. A working storefront is worth more than being on the latest version.

Update when a release fixes a bug you have, adds something you want, or restores compatibility with a Shopify change.

The managed update

1. Email us and say which store, and that you want the current release.
2. We ask you for a Theme Access token. You create it yourself from Shopify's Theme Access app and it can be revoked from the same place at any time. It grants theme files and nothing else — no orders, no customers, no payouts.
3. We pull your theme, merge the new release into it, run the release's own checks over the merged result, and upload it as a new, unpublished theme.
4. You preview it, and publish it when you are happy. Or you do not, and nothing has changed.

Your live theme is never written to. There is no mechanism for us to do that, deliberately: a broken update on a running store is the failure this whole process exists to make impossible.

What survives

Two cases that need a conversation

A Liquid file you edited does not get the new version. That is the point of keeping it, but it means a fix in that file does not reach you. The report names every such file, we send it to you, and you decide file by file.

If layout/theme.liquid was edited, your copy is kept and we say so. That file is the frame every page renders inside, so it gets called out on its own rather than buried in the list of kept files. It used to stop the update outright; that turned one pasted analytics line into a permanent block on every future release, which is the opposite of the promise. If a new section needs something your layout does not have, we tell you the line to add.

Doing it yourself instead

Some people would rather not hand over a token, and that is reasonable. The manual path still works and always will:

1. Download the new version from the licence page.
2. Upload it as described in Installing your theme. It lands in your library alongside your current theme — your live store is untouched.
3. Do not publish yet.
4. Open the new theme in the editor and re-apply your settings. Keep your live theme open in a second tab to copy from.
5. Preview the new theme thoroughly. Check your best-selling product page in particular.
6. Publish when it matches.

Your old theme stays in the library. If something surfaces after publishing, republish the old one — you are back in seconds.

Copying settings across by hand

For a faster manual path, export your current settings before you start:

1. In your live theme, Actions → Edit code.
2. Open config/settings_data.json and copy the whole file.
3. In the new theme, open the same file and paste it in — but only replace the current object, not the presets.

This carries colours, fonts and global settings. It does not carry section content, because section ids differ between versions.

Only do this between versions of the same theme. Pasting one theme's settings into another produces a mess that is quicker to redo than to untangle.

Section content — your homepage sections and their text and images — lives in templates/*.json. These can also be copied between versions, but the format changes when we add or rename settings, so a copy from an older version may drop blocks silently. If the changelog says a template changed, rebuild those sections by hand rather than pasting.

After cancelling a subscription

You keep the files you last downloaded, and every customisation in them. What you lose is the licence: at the end of the period you have paid for it lapses, downloads stop, and a published Hullara theme shows a licence notice until you resubscribe. A failed card does not do that — you get fourteen days of grace first.

So if you are cancelling and want to keep selling on the theme, buy the lifetime licence before the period ends. It costs the difference, not the full price — email us — and the copy on your store carries on untouched.

Lifetime buyers can always download the latest version, and can always ask.