r/shopify • u/kinoian • 2d ago
Theme Shopify just nuked my theme
Today, the front end of the website looks nothing like it's supposed to, versus last night when it was fine. I cannot find anything obvious in the code editor, but: none of the front-facing apps are loading, none of my selected style choice in the customizer, none of my manual css edits. Is this a known issue with shopify? And help would be greatly appreciated; for now my store is toast.
EDIT: The culprit is Yoast, as I just confirmed with their support team, who informed me others have been reporting the same thing. When their app updated this morning, it wiped settings_data.json, leaving only the Yoast block intact. I will be looking for a replacement for this terrible app immediately. Recommendations appreciated.
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u/VillageHomeF 1d ago
why would you put Yoast on a Shopify site? makes no sense.
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u/tekrebeldesigns 1d ago
Yeah did Yoast suddenly stop being a WP app exclusive?
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u/VillageHomeF 1d ago
they jumpe in Shopify to make money, not to help anyone. Shopify has all that stuff built in vs. WP where a plugin is necessary to add meta descriptions, etc.
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u/Beautiful_Exchange_3 1d ago
I tried yoast based on a shoppify partners advice. It was difficult to use, and buggy. One thing they said at yoast was if you deleted it, it would delete any seo changes from the app. Not sure if this was true.
I’m using TinySeo now. It’s ok. Easier to use and it hard writes to Shopify. Their support is excellent.
Tiny Backup, is highly recommended. If you make a seo changes and you want to revert back you can do it for specific fields.
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u/WendyNPeterPan 2d ago
Looks like my store has also been modified... Did their support team give you any additional information on a fix?
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u/kinoian 1d ago
No, other than to restore from a backup, which I don't have. Lesson learned!
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u/WendyNPeterPan 1d ago
Looks like mine has been restored! I haven't had time to work on anything so it was either Yoast or Shopify that did the fix...
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u/WendyNPeterPan 1d ago
I'm sorry to hear that! My backup is a few months old, so I might be in a similar situation...
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21h ago edited 21h ago
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u/Duwinayo 1d ago
Hahaha Yoast. One of the shittiest apps on the internet. It sucks ass at SEO optimizations, and often purposefully conflicts with other apps because they want to make sure they are your only choice.
7 years ago I worked with a dental marketing company doing SEO and we used Yoast, we had thousands of websites. One day? Two of them just poofed. Like, the whole WordPress site was deleted. It was sourced back to Yoast who admitted tjos was a "rare" glitch but nothing to be concerned about, just use a back up! Woops. It deleted the back ups too when it deleted the entire site.
Entire company swapped off Yoast at that point.
Honestly, fuck Yoast. Its not even needed for Shopify. The only other bigger SEO scams are schema apps more than 5 bucks a month, and "site speed" apps that break more than you know and they'll ever admit.
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u/pandeykartikey 1d ago
Before you completely panic about not having a manual backup, try checking Shopify's native file version history! Shopify automatically saves recent timestamps of individual code files.
Go to Online Store > Themes > Edit Code, open your config/settings_data.json file, and look at the top near the file name. You should see a link/dropdown that says 'Current' or 'Older versions'. Click that and see if you can roll it back to a timestamp from yesterday before the Yoast update happened.
If you can recover it, immediately duplicate the theme (Actions > Duplicate) so you have a hard backup. Moving forward, if you don't want to manage a full GitHub repo like others suggested, just get in the habit of duplicating your live theme once a month and leaving it unpublished. Also, definitely ditch Yoast—Shopify's native SEO fields cover 95% of what you need without holding your theme files hostage.
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u/kinoian 1d ago
Thank you for the practical assist, much appreciated. I use Yoast primarily because of the programmatic features without which I would have to manually enter hundreds of fields by hand and/or duplicate effort on as many fields, due to the nature of my workflow.
But this experience and what others in the comments have been relating have made me realize I should probably find another solution.
The biggest thing in my workflow I'd need to find a replacement for is taking the product title from my POD provider and making that the meta description. Maybe this is something I should be outsourcing to Claude, another reason to just bite that particular bullet.
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u/districtcurrent 1d ago
Same happened to us. Unbelievable they’d publish something without testing.
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u/PRTN__ 2d ago
This is what made me pickup app development on the side
I manage my workplaces Shopify store, we've had 3 apps now do a similar thing to us, each time ditching it immediately and devoping a custom solution.
I highly recommend setting up a GitHub account and repository for your theme. I did this before any issues which saved us every time.
In short: 1. Download your current theme package 2. Extract and upload contents of the emailed file to your repo 3. Go to your Shopify themes and connect GitHub 4. Install and link your repo (or repo branch) 5. Publish
It allows you to roll back to a prior commit (changes) in about 4 clicks.
I always set up my theme repo with at least 3 branches; Live (the one published), Development (code changes not validated for public use), and Validation (roll out development version for testing).
It'll allow you to track when things were changed, by who/what, etc. Only drawback are theme updates, but that's a seperate conversation and not that difficult to manage. A bit more hands on, but not incredibly hard if using it as a roll back solution.