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Cartly v1.3: Full Liquid Theme System
Cartly Team

Cartly v1.3: Full Liquid Theme System

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Cartly v1.3 introduces a complete Liquid theme system that gives merchants full creative control over their storefronts — with zero vendor lock-in. Whether you're a merchant customizing colors and fonts or a developer building themes from scratch, this release has everything you need.

Why Liquid Themes?

Liquid is the industry-standard template language pioneered by Shopify and used by millions of stores worldwide. By adopting Liquid as our rendering engine, Cartly gives merchants access to a massive ecosystem of existing knowledge, tutorials, and developer talent. Themes are stored as structured JSONB in theme_files, enabling instant switching, version control, and marketplace distribution — all without proprietary lock-in.

5 New Marketplace Themes

Every Cartly store can now choose from five professionally designed themes, each tailored to a specific niche:

  • Minimal — A clean editorial layout built for fashion and lifestyle brands. Generous whitespace, elegant typography, and lookbook-style imagery.
  • Canvas — Rich visual storytelling for luxury goods and artisan products. Full-bleed hero sections and immersive product galleries.
  • Mono — A sleek monochrome design for tech products and gadget stores. Spec-driven layouts with dark mode support.
  • Flow — Soft, organic aesthetics for wellness and beauty brands. Rounded corners, pastel palettes, and calming visual rhythm.
  • Bold — High-energy urban design for streetwear and sneaker drops. Strong contrasts, countdown timers, and hype-driven layouts.

Each theme ships with unique sections, responsive CSS, and a complete set of Liquid templates for every page type.

Monaco Code Editor

Developers now have a full in-browser IDE at /admin/themes. The Monaco-powered code editor (the same engine behind VS Code) provides Liquid syntax highlighting, auto-completion, and real-time error detection. Edit layouts, sections, snippets, templates, assets, and theme configuration — all without leaving the admin panel.

For Developers

Building custom themes on Cartly follows a familiar architecture:

  • Layouts — Base HTML wrappers (theme.liquid) with header/footer includes
  • Templates — Page-type renderers (product.liquid, collection.liquid, etc.)
  • Sections — Reusable content blocks with JSON schemas for merchant-facing settings
  • Snippets — Shared partials for product cards, pagination, and common patterns
  • Assets — CSS and JavaScript served via the asset_url filter from /shops/:id/theme/assets/:filename

Visit our Developer Portal for full documentation, boilerplate themes, and API references.

AJAX Cart & Predictive Search

Every theme includes a slide-out drawer cart that updates in real time — add items, change quantities, and apply discount codes without a single page reload. The variant selector dynamically updates pricing, images, and stock availability as customers browse options. Predictive search delivers live suggestions across products, collections, and blog articles, helping shoppers find what they need in milliseconds.

Custom Domain Routing

Merchants can now bind their own domains (e.g., myshop.com) directly to their Cartly storefront. Point your DNS, and Cartly handles the rest — including automatic SSL certificate provisioning via certbot. No manual configuration, no downtime, no extra cost.

Get Started

Explore the new theme system in your Theme Editor, browse marketplace themes, or dive into the Developer Portal to build your own. As always, Cartly is free to try for 14 days — sign up today.