Firstly, there is never a charge to download the latest version of our themes.  If you have purchased a valid license, you will have access to the latest version of the theme for the full lifecycle of the theme.

If you purchased your theme directly from Shopify, you can always download the latest version from the theme store by following the steps in this Shopify help article.

If you purchased your theme directly from Mile High Themes, please contact us with the order number and/or email address associated with the purchase and we can send the latest version to you.  Please note that we can only send the latest version to the email address that was originally used to purchase the theme.

As far as upgrading to the latest version, Shopify unfortunately provides no automated way to do this.  To upgrade, you need to download the latest version, setup all the theme options again, copy over any custom coding or app coding that has been added, and possibly reinstall any apps that have automatically injected custom code into the theme. 

More information about this can be found in this help desk article from Shopify.  We understand that the inability to update a theme automatically is frustrating for our customers, but as the article describes, this situation is unfortunately out of our hands.

Best practices for updating your theme

So you've decided that you would like to upgrade your theme version and have the latest version installed on your store.  The best thing to do is to open two browser windows side-by-side.  On one side, you'll have the theme customization settings open for your current live theme.  On the other, you'll have the theme settings window open for the updated theme.  You'll want to go through each section one at a time and copy and paste options, colors, text, etc. from one theme to the other.  If you're updating from a very old theme version, you'll notice that a lot of options have moved around in newer versions.  This is because Shopify updated their platform and have introduced support for sections.

Once you've copied over all your options and images, you next need to copy over any code customizations or app code you've installed.  This is where things can become tricky.  A lot of apps are installed with one click and do not touch the code.  Others are installed with one-click but do inject custom code into your templates without you realizing it.  Still others require manual installation and manual code edits.  You will need to apply these code edits to your current theme version.  Some apps may need to be uninstalled and then reinstalled after your new theme version is published so the custom coding can be automatically injected again.  You may need to check with your app developers specifically about their processes for installing the app code in your new theme.

If you've done any other manual adjustments to the code, you will have to copy those over as well.  

Suggestions to make upgrading easier down the road

Whenever you make code changes or install any new apps on your store, we always recommend creating a backup copy of the theme just in case anything goes amiss.  The same is true when upgrading your theme.

If you plan to make changes to your theme code, it is a good idea to keep detailed notes about what you're changing in which files so you can easily refer back to those notes and apply those changes in later theme versions.  This can be tedious of course, but it will make keeping your theme up to date much easier in the future.

Does Mile High Themes offer theme upgrade services?

We consider theme upgrade services on a case-by-case basis.  We haven't typically offered theme upgrade services in the past because they can vary wildly in complexity.  For example, for a store that doesn't have many apps and hasn't done a lot of custom code work on their theme, it can only take a few hours to do the upgrade.  On another store with tons of apps and custom coding, it can take 20+ hours.  The reason is because we don't know what all files have been edited and what the coding does.  It pretty much requires file-by-file scrutiny which is very time-consuming, and these jobs are also very difficult to quote accurately.

If you'd like to consider having us do an upgrade on your theme for you, we can perform an audit on your store so we can better understand the requirements for your upgrade.  During this audit, we evaluate things like your existing theme version compared to the latest version (upgrading a really old theme version to the newest version is more difficult than upgrading more current versions), the amount of third-party apps you have installed, and the amount of custom coding you have done to the store.  The cost of this audit is $125, and if you proceed with the upgrade, we'll roll that into your costs.  If you don't proceed with hiring us to upgrade your theme after receiving your final quote, the fee is non-refundable.  If you're interested in pursuing this, please contact us to get started.

Other resources you may find helpful

• Keeping your theme up-to-date (Shopify Help Center)