The Sideboard Theme

This is the help for the Sideboard storefront theme — the design your shoppers see, and the controls you use to build it. If you’re looking for help with the Sideboard app (catalogue, inventory, pricing, buylists), start at the guide home.

The theme is built for trading card game stores. It ships with a homepage builder, product and collection pages tuned for cards (condition and finish swatches, playset quick-add), an events system, and the usual storefront pieces — header, footer, search, cart.

Getting the theme

The Sideboard theme isn’t on the Shopify Theme Store. To get it for your store, request it through the support system in the Sideboard app, and we’ll send you the theme file. A self-serve way to add the theme is coming to the Shopify section of the app; until then, request it through support.

Once you have the file, you install and set it up yourself — the steps are below.

Installing the theme

If you have the theme as a .zip file (that’s how it’s delivered), it goes into your store through the theme library:

1. In your Shopify admin, go to Online Store.
2. Scroll down to Draft themes and click Import, then upload the Sideboard .zip. The upload takes a moment, then the theme appears in your drafts.
3. Look it over before going live: Edit theme on the draft opens it in the theme editor — nothing is public yet.
4. When you’re ready, click Publish on the draft. Your previous theme moves to Draft themes, so you can switch back anytime.

Good to know:

• Publishing swaps the design only — your products, inventory, collections, and pages are untouched.
• A freshly uploaded theme starts from the settings bundled in the zip, so plan a pass through the theme editor before publishing: logo, colors, menus, and the theme settings.
• For now, theme updates arrive the same way: a new .zip that you upload and publish. An uploaded zip is a separate copy of the theme — settings and layouts you’ve changed in the editor stay with the old copy, so plan to redo them on the new one before publishing it.

Where to start

• Working with Sections — how the theme editor works: adding, reordering, and configuring the building blocks of every page.
• Theme Settings — the store-wide controls: colors, fonts, spacing, and the TCG features (playset sizes, filters, holo effect). Set once, applied everywhere.
• Collection Filters — the filter sidebar on collection pages: choosing between Sideboard and Search & Discovery filters, configuring facets, and per-collection setups. The most important page here if you sell singles.
• Bulk Card Search — the paste-a-decklist tool: how it resolves a list against your live stock and adds the whole thing to cart in one go, and how to add the page to your store.
• Section Reference — every section in the theme, with a full list of its settings and what each one does. This reference is generated directly from the theme, so it always matches what you see in the editor.

Editing your theme

Everything here is edited in the Shopify theme editor:

1. In your Shopify admin, go to Online Store.
2. Find the Sideboard theme and click Edit theme.
3. Pick a page template from the dropdown at the top (Home page, Collection, Product, and so on).
4. Use the left sidebar to add, reorder, and edit sections.

No code required. Changes preview live and only go public when you click Save.