Atlas lets you publish a page into any theme on your store, not only the live one. Publishing into a non-live theme puts the page on a real storefront you can preview, without any customer seeing it. It is the safest way to review before going live, and it is also the most common reason someone thinks a page has failed to publish.
Atlas warns when you choose one: This theme isn't live — the page won't show on your store until this theme is published.
In this article:
What happens when you do it
The page is written into that theme exactly as it would be into your live one. In Atlas it shows the Published badge, because it is published to a theme.
It is not reachable by customers. Only the published theme serves your storefront, so the page sits in the other theme until that theme is published.
Why you would
To review before committing. Publishing to a duplicate lets you see the real page on a real storefront, on your own phone, before anyone else does.
To protect a working page. Publishing to a duplicate never touches the version your customers are using.
To stage a launch. Build everything into a duplicate over several days, then publish the theme once.
To keep a full store build safe. A full store publish replaces the home page on the theme you choose. Doing that to a duplicate first is considerably less alarming than doing it to your live store.
💡 Duplicate your live theme in Shopify, publish into the copy, review it, then publish the copy. This is the safest workflow available and it costs nothing but a few minutes.
Previewing the theme
In your Shopify admin, go to Online Store, then Themes.
Find the theme under Theme library.
Select the three-dot menu, then Preview.
The preview link can be shared with someone else, which is useful for review.
⚠️ The Atlas extensions must be enabled on that theme too. They are configured per theme, and a duplicate does not always carry them. If your page looks broken in preview, check the app embeds on that theme before assuming the page is wrong.
Making it live
When you are happy, publish the theme in Shopify: Online Store, then Themes, then Publish on that theme.
Everything in it goes live at once, including any other changes it contains. That is the point of the workflow, and also the thing to be careful about: a duplicate made three weeks ago will not include changes you have made to your live theme since.
ℹ️ If your live theme has changed since you duplicated it, make a fresh duplicate and republish your Atlas pages into that, rather than publishing a stale copy.
What to watch for
"My page published but I cannot see it." It is on a theme that is not live. This is the single most common support question about publishing, and the fix is either to republish to the live theme or to publish that theme.
"It worked yesterday and now it does not." Someone published a different theme. Everything Atlas put in the previous theme stayed there.
"Only some of my pages are missing." Pages were published to different themes over time. Check each page's row and republish the stragglers to the live theme.
To move a page to your live theme, use Publish again on its row and select the live theme. See Why doesn't my published page appear on my store?
Billing
A page counts towards your published pages allowance when you publish it, regardless of which theme you publish it into. Publishing to a draft theme is not free.
Republishing the same page to a different theme does not count again. A page counts once, however many times and wherever you republish it.