Shopify App Development 101: A guide to start your Shopify Journey

With the increasing need of online sales, it has become important more than ever before to open an online store. And platforms like Shopify are facilitating thousands of customers worldwide to increase one’s sales online. Shopify is one of the major players in the e-commerce market, providing state of the art technologies and tools to build an e-commerce portal online. With increasing Shopify customers, there has been a huge demand in Shopify App Development, for a customised experience in one’s store.

In this article, we will take a dive into how to become a Shopify developer and some resources that one might look into for becoming Shopify App Developer.

Who is a Shopify Developer?

Shopify developer is a tech specialist responsible for e-commerce websites/apps development using the Shopify platform. They are trained in frontend as well as backend technologies to integrate websites and themes on the platform. Also, they should be knowledgeable of all the Shopify integrations. These integrations are essential for inventory management, payments, and setup required for marketing.

Why become a Shopify Developer?

According to, a study done in 2020 the online stores are about to reach a figure of 20-24 million, and with all these online stores in place, there is an increasing need for developers who can manage/create themes, apps for e-commerce platforms. Out of these numbers, Shopify hosts more than 650,000 stores online in more than 170 countries. This gives a huge market for developers.

How to become a Shopify Developer?

Prerequisites

Shopify uses its own markup language (Liquid) for its themes, which one should be aware of. Apart from that one must know:

-              HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript

-              How to work with Command Line

-              jQuery (Many Shopify libraries use jQuery )

-              knowledge of Ruby on Rails, PHP is optional

What is a Shopify App?

A Shopify App is just a web app that connects to a Shopify store. Any web app which fulfils all the following requirements is a Shopify web app

1. Shopify apps must be authorised by a store
2. Shopify apps must be hosted somewhere, and
3. Shopify apps must utilise a Shopify API

App types

There are three different levels of accessibility your app can have:

• Public apps: Apps that are available to many merchants and can be listed in the Shopify App Store (see below). They are created in your Partner Dashboard.

• Custom apps: Apps that are custom made for a specific merchant and cannot be listed in the Shopify App Store. They are created in your Partner Dashboard.

• Private apps: Apps meant for developers building for merchants with specific requirements not met by custom apps. They are not listed in the Shopify App Store and are created in the Merchant Admin. Since private apps don’t give you access to features like extensions and being embedded in the Shopify Admin, we recommend using the custom apps approach whenever possible.

Getting Started

This Shopify article covers the theory and prerequisites for your Shopify App Development journey.

Resources to learn Shopify Theme Development

• Shopify Partner Blog: Articles and guides about design inspiration, Shopify development tips
• Shopify Partner Academy: Free courses from the Shopify team to learn how to work with Shopify tools
• Liquid Cheat sheet: Cheat sheet to get all Shopify liquid variables, filters, and helpers
• Liquid Code Examples: Collection of code snippets to speed up your development process and understand how to write liquid code
• Shopify YB Playlist: YouTube course to learn Shopify theme development
• Shopify Theme Kit: a command-line tool to upload your Shopify theme to a Shopify store automatically when changes are made locally
• Shopify Theme Docs: Shopify docs to create your Shopify theme
• Shopify Dev YouTube Channel: Official Shopify YouTube channel for developers
• Shopify Dev Twitch Channel: Official Shopify Twitch channel for developers
• Shopify Build Tool: Great tool to build your Shopify theme from well established Shopify Agency

Resources to learn Shopify App Development

• Shopify Partner Blog: Articles and guides about design inspiration, Shopify development tips
• Shopify Partner Academy: Free courses from the Shopify team to learn how to work with Shopify tools
• Shopify React Node App: Tutorial by Shopify team to create your first React and Node JS Shopify app using Polaris (Shopify React design system) and KOA Js to handle server-side rendering
• Shopify App CLI: Create your Shopify app like (Create React App), serve your Shopify app in Ngrokserver (Free) and update your Ngrok server link automatically in your Shopify App dashboard
• Shopify Dev YouTube Channel: Official Shopify YouTube channel for developers
• Shopify Dev Twitch Channel: Official Shopify Twitch channel for developers

What’s the biggest thing you’re struggling with right now that we as a technology consulting company can help you with? Feel free to reach out to us at jalantechnologies.com. We hope our assistance will help!

Tags

• Engineering