Add Feature to duplicate section or block to other template

[krishnaet]

I have reviewed the reference theme and noticed that the new theme has an amazing reusable block feature. However, I have a suggestion for further improvement. Could we add an option to duplicate the same group or section in another template? This would make it easier for merchants to reuse the same block multiple times without having to recreate it each time.

Could you please add support for Tailwind CSS classes? This feature would greatly enhance the flexibility and customization options for merchants.

[stephanie-shopify]

thank you for the requests

Duplication is a great idea. We do currently have the ability to duplicate sections. When you say 'in another template' do you mean a workflow like

1. on the homepage, a merchant creates section with some blocks.
2. the merchant clicks duplicate
3. the current behavior on hit duplicate makes a new section in the hompage. Instead- they should have the ability to select 'product page' and it would be added there?

with regards to Tailwind CSS, we have heard many developers and teams use it. We do not currently have plans to add support for it.

[PaulNewton]

Roughly for 1-3 big yes,
The epic want is not having to leave visual-editor being able just copy the structure of a section|group-of-blocks|block to the clipboard then paste it elsewhere in the visual-editor.
Advanced users could then edit the JSON to change structure or rename certain things without having to roundtrip through an entire code editing environment instead able to use simpler insitu tools like browser extensions for text|JSON editing instead of specialist tools that also have to know how to use the shopify api to GET/POST assets.

Currently it's a super inefficient or outright confusing workflow when trying to have the same section|blocks|settings across different template types for visual editing.
Where either the merchant/staff is having multiple tabs open to copy/replicate section settings between page types, or worse they have to navigate back and forth because of software/hardware limitations or lack of browser knowhow.
Or more savvy users are copypasting/editing JSON by hand in the code editor then navigating/tabbing to the visual editor to see if maybe they got it right.
Or they give up and pay for a pagebuilder app investing time in yet another proprietary learning curve.
And that's not even considering the time lost from the performance impact of having multiple editors open.

Section-groups work in some situations when the content needing replication can be exactly at the top or bottom of every page; if the theme even allows other sections in those groups, or the theme has to be customized to allow other sections to even appear in said section-groups.
There's also trying to statically render a section but that comes with it's own issues and confusion, and requires code customization since custom-liquid sections error when putting a {% section %} tag in them; Meta: need template level custom-liquid for any arbitrary liquid 🤔.

Text based productivity

GUI's are fine for certain work but time and again business needs that need to grow, or maintain consistency come down to text based workflows; TXT, CSV or JSON etc.
Shopify's already on a path of boosting productivity for theme setup with dynamic-source-chips just being liquid statements under the hood so they are copy-pastable for replicating information. And it's probably a safe assumption that metaobjects will get better integrations in the future to help situations needing single sources of truth.
🐛🍎 Though currently alot of merchants and partners don't seem to realize that dynamic-source-chips are in fact copy and pasteable since they are just liquid-text. For example in the case of text|rich-text settings it's not always clear to a merchant they can add other text around the dynamic-source-chip so they end up trying to put all info in the metafield data defeating the entire purpose.
Because the visual-editors paradigm currently insists only on a visual modality.

[jdunham2]

@stephanie-shopify Even from the three dots top right if there was a "Copy" option in addition to duplicate. And then a "Paste from Clipboard" when adding a block or section.

[PaulNewton]

Never ever tailwind or other fad baked in, even now style-settings system is a bit too much of a complexity gatekeeping ladder pull.
Meanwhile shopify does not have a build system, so tailwind et al would be an immediate loss in performance for the entire environment.
Token systems like tailwind are waaay too far in abstraction soup fad land, it and it's ilk are a tool that had a specific purpose for team-based component productivity mainly in systems such as react that now get's treated like a hammer for every nail.

[PaulNewton]

🥧 ☁️ Pie in the sky: Metaobjects to store entire section/blocks schemas, so a metaobject is just created like a template in the visual-editor from a selection of templates,sections,blocks or settings and is referenceable across templates,sections,blocks and settings to then inject that content in a theme or across themes.
This is also accounting for the themes assets api being made more restrictive to newer apps.

[eballeste]

I feel like metaobjects should be the solution to content that is meant to be used in multiple parts of the theme. Unfortunately, metaobjects are extremely limited and do not share any of the flexibility that these newer block updates have.

Your request would allow the best of both worlds but I find it a little awkward in the sense that you would need to update it's content via the original template?? Im finding it hard visualizing how the UI would look for this.

In an ideal world, a metaobject would be as flexible as these newer blocks and in the theme you would just need to add a single field that points to the metaobject. Editing the metaobject once would update the front-end automatically everywhere that it's referenced in the template files.

An example would be a new Video w/Captions metaobject component that allows content editors to upload a video and then attach multiple timestamps + caption text (as a grouped repeater).

I can only accomplish this through a 3rd party custom fields app by tying it to the global Store resource. I wish we could get rid of this third party app so bad, I've been waiting for years now.

[PaulNewton]

The main limiting problem of course with MOBS is the weird .value accessor, and having always loop over MOB's instead of just being able to create clean objects. unlike how a JSON type metafield can be treated in liquid as simple properties.

In this hypothetical , MOBS would be like a static section, except instead of only sections it's for sections & blocks & child blocks; and is useable between themes.
Any changes to any of the settings in a set using a metaobject would change all other instances that also use that metaobject.

Without ever leaving the visual theme editor, never even having to interact with the metaobject definition itself in the /content/metaobjects admin , unless you want to make offshoots in which case the entry is there in the content admin outside of the theme editor.
It just stores info either as straight json, or a representation so things like colors, dates etc get GUI's in the content admin for editing.

Originally when they announced metaobjects I thought this would be the killer feature of MOB's separating but connecting CMS with theme setup.
And that would have untangled entire categories of theme-management issues; like staff having to have direct access to full control of themes for even minor copy.
But alas we didn't even get something that can cleanly represent/replace native objects without syntax hoops.

[PaulNewton]

@krishnaet is duplicating solved by the new copy and paste feature?
https://changelog.shopify.com/posts/copy-and-paste-when-editing-your-website

[mxstbr]

Closing this since we introduced copy & paste as per @PaulNewton's post above! (https://changelog.shopify.com/posts/copy-and-paste-when-editing-your-website) Let us know if you have any further feedback on it.