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What is a draft shop?
Short answer: A working copy of your shop. A live shop is never modified directly: you open a draft, work in it for as long as you like, and put it into service when it is ready.
Why it exists
A live shop has visitors. If it could be modified directly, every change in progress would be visible straight away: a visitor would land on a half-emptied collection, a logo mid-replacement, a product with no price.
The draft isolates your work. The live shop keeps running, unchanged, while you prepare the next one.
The cycle
- Open a draft — the orange button in the action bar, with the hammer and wrench icon.
- Work in it for as long as you need — products, collections, logos, colors, text. You save as you go, and you can come back days later.
- Put it into service — the blue button with the two checkmarks icon replaces the live shop with the draft.
The action bar buttons carry no text
At the top right of the shop, every action is a round icon button, told apart by its color. The text appears only on hover, in a tooltip: “Modify the shop (create a draft)” for the orange one, “Put this draft shop into service” for the blue one, “Delete the whole draft” for the red one.
Which buttons are shown depends on the state: the green generate button only appears once the draft is saved, and some are grayed out while an error is blocking the shop.
Nothing is published before the third step. That explains several behaviors that surprise people: a product taken out of a draft is still presented on the live shop, and therefore still blocked in your selection. See I cannot remove a product from my selection.
The draft has its own address
You can open it in the browser to see the real rendering. See How do I preview my draft before putting it into service.
One live shop and one draft at a time, per shop. To present two offers in parallel, you need a second shop — see Can I have several shops.