"i only speak liquid" #85: Building Sustainable Themes: A Developer's Journey

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Hey everyone,

Exciting day today! This is Rishi’s first edit of “i_only_speak_liquid”! 🙏🙌💯

He’ll be grabbing the mic’ for the next 4 editions of the newsletter.

Let him cook 👨‍🍳

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About Rishi: Rishi is a UK based frontend developer with over 10 years of specialised experience in Shopify development. His expertise includes custom theme development, marketing and conversion rate optimisation (CRO), design-led development, and e-commerce strategy.

Ofc: He’s an expert on Storetasker 😉 apply here.

Let’s dive in 🤿

What I’ve been thinking about:

Recently, I’ve been reflecting on the importance of building sustainable themes for the long term. Throughout my journey as a developer, I’ve worked with countless agencies and encountered numerous Shopify themes. One thing that stands out is the variety of approaches: one theme may use Tailwind, another Vue.js, and some employ  the strangest techniques to render a product template. I once saw a 20+ case loop to render the correct content.

While I have my preferences in theme development, I’ve come to realize the unsettling truth: the people I work with today may not always be my clients tomorrow. This thought has motivated me to rethink my approach, focusing on creating themes that are not only functional but also maintainable for future developers.

I’ve started to prioritise a few practices in my development process. A lot of these sound straightforward and a no brainer but I know often get missed:

Documentation: This has become a key focus for me. I now use comments throughout my code and the new {% doc %} tag to clarify the purpose of each file, its functionality, and the parameters it utilizes. This simple step can significantly benefit anyone who might inherit my work down the line. From my experience, themes with clear documentation are much easier to understand.

I recently worked with a client who had an excellent offboarding document detailing the theme’s structure. It explained why certain frameworks were chosen and how they functioned, offering valuable insights for future updates. It also covered technical areas that the client wouldn’t understand but a developer like myself could. This made the handover process much smoother.

Prioritizing Existing Technologies: For example, I encountered a theme that used both Swiper and Flickity for sliders. There’s no need to introduce multiple solutions when one solid option will suffice. With tools like Cursor or Claude, you can prompt, “Does this theme currently have a solution for accordion?” and find out how it works to implement any new feature you’re trying to build. This approach simplifies the workflow, as most themes will have existing technologies you can leverage, reducing theme bloat and the need to load multiple libraries or write extra code.

With the rapid advancement of technology, I aim to create themes that are enjoyable to work with for any developer.

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3 links you can’t miss:

• My Mind - A great way to save anything on the internet, with no adverts and a really nice user experience.

• Ilias' Channel - Offers excellent tutorials on utilising Shopify APIs.

• Shopify Developer Forum - The new dev forum is super handy for asking questions and helping other developers. Responses are super quick and a lot of Shopifolk are on there too. 

1 app I like:

Ablestar Bulk Editor – When a client has hundreds or thousands of product lines, managing them can be tedious. Shopify’s bulk editor isn’t always sufficient. Ablestar is great for bulk editing product details and provides handy export formats based on your needs. It’s super easy to use, and the support is excellent.

One learning as a freelancer:

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned as a freelancer is the importance of knowing the work I want to do and what I believe that work is worth. If I don’t set clear boundaries, I can end up resenting clients or rushing through projects just because something better comes along. Just last week, I had two very different client experiences: one client tried to haggle me down on my price, while another said, “Whatever you think it’s going to cost, I’ll pay.” It really hit me how much our rates can shape our experiences.

As freelancers, we often have low overhead, which gives us flexibility. However, whenever I take on a job for less than I feel I deserve, it usually backfires. I start to feel frustrated and question why I accepted it in the first place. Taking lower-paying gigs not only affects my mood but also blocks me from pursuing projects I’d genuinely enjoy.

So, lesson learned: define what you want, know your value, and don’t settle for less. It makes all the difference in enjoying the freelance journey.

-Rishi