Products & variants
Everything you sell is an item — a product with a name, a price, and a status that controls whether customers can see it. An item can carry variants (sizes, colors, editions) that each have their own SKU and price. You manage all of it under Catalog → Items in the admin.
Add a product
From Catalog → Items, choose New Item and fill in the essentials:
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Name | The product's display name, everywhere. |
| Slug | The product's URL. It's generated from the name — you can edit it, but changing it later changes public links. |
| Type | What kind of thing this is: Sale (a product you sell), Rental, or Service. |
| Status | Draft keeps it hidden while you work; Active publishes it to your storefront. |
| Price | What customers pay. Entered in dollars. |
| Compare-at price | Optional "was" price shown struck-through. It must be higher than the price — for a scheduled promotion, use a sale window instead. |
You can also set Brand, Vendor, Product Family, and Tags — optional organization fields your storefront and search can use.
Saving takes you to the product's page, where variants and images live.
Write the descriptions
There are two description fields, used in different places:
- Short Description — the one-liner on product cards and listings.
- Description — the full body copy on the product page itself.
A variant can carry its own description that replaces the main one when a customer selects it — useful when a colorway or edition genuinely reads differently. Set it in the variant's editor; if a variant doesn't have one, the product description shows.
Variants
Add a variant from the product page with New variant:
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Name | e.g. "Granite" or "Large". |
| SKU | Your stock code. Must be unique among the variants of this product — a duplicate is rejected with an error. |
| Price | Each variant has its own price (and optional compare-at). |
| Options | Label/value pairs like Color: Granite or Size: 38L, shown with the variant. |
| Featured image | Pick which product image shows when this variant is selected. If you don't pick one, the product's primary image is used. |
Variants can be archived and restored independently of the product, and reordered with the up/down arrows — the order here is the order customers see. (Reordering works on the non-archived list; switch off Show archived to move things.)
Extra details with metafields
Metafields are free-form label/value pairs for anything the standard
fields don't cover — warranty length, ingredients, edition numbers. They're
available on both products and variants, and your storefront can display
them. When a value reads as a whole number, decimal, true/false, or JSON, the
editor tags it with a small type badge — plain text gets no badge. Keys
starting with __ are system-managed; leave those alone.
Publish, archive, restore
- Your storefront only ever shows Active items. Draft is your workspace.
- Archive removes an item from the storefront without deleting anything — sales history and content stay intact.
- Restore puts the item back at the status it had when you archived it — an Active product returns straight to your storefront. (If that prior status isn't recorded, it comes back as a Draft to re-publish.)
Reordering products
The up/down arrows on Catalog → Items set the order your storefront lists products. Reordering needs the complete list on screen, so the arrows are hidden whenever the view is a partial set — clear any search, the status filter, and the include-archived toggle first. They also stay hidden for very large catalogs (above 200 products), where the list is paginated and no single screen holds the whole set.
Who can do this
Owners and Admins can create and edit products. Staff can be granted the same with the Catalog permission group — once granted, the New Item button and the product editor unlock for them. Staff without the group see these screens read-only. See Team & permissions.
Related
- Collections & pages — group products and add content pages
- Media & images — product photos, alt text, and image order
- Stock levels & adjustments — track inventory per variant