Guide · Shopify sections
Sections are the native Shopify unit for merchant-editable page content. Understanding what a section actually is — and how it differs from a block or a snippet — makes the rest of theme development straightforward.
The three building blocks
A section is a modular chunk of a page — a hero, a product carousel,
a testimonial grid. It lives in sections/, has its own
Liquid markup, its own scoped CSS, and a {% schema %} block
that defines what the merchant can edit from the Theme Editor.
Sections can be added, removed, and reordered without touching code.
A block is a repeatable unit inside a section. A testimonial section
might have a block type called "Review" — the merchant adds as many
as they need, each with its own quote, author, and rating.
Blocks are defined in the section's schema and rendered with a
for block in section.blocks loop.
A snippet is a reusable Liquid partial — not editable from the admin,
not directly tied to a schema. A product card, a star rating component,
a formatted price — things used in multiple sections that shouldn't
be copy-pasted. Included via {% render 'snippet-name' %}
with explicit variable passing.
When custom beats stock
A split-screen hero with a video on one side and a product form on the other. A sticky editorial sidebar that scrolls with the page. A before/after image slider tied to a specific collection. If no theme ships it and a page builder's output is a mess of inline styles and nested divs — build a section.
A custom section's schema exposes exactly what the merchant should be able to change — the headline, the background color, the number of columns — and nothing else. A page builder exposes everything and makes it easy to accidentally break the layout.
Page builders generate DOM via JavaScript — the section HTML is built client-side after the page loads. A native Liquid section is server-rendered HTML from the first byte. For LCP and content-heavy sections, that's a measurable difference.
GemPages starts at $29/month. Shogun starts at $39/month. For sections that don't need real-time previewing or advanced drag-and-drop — which most storefronts don't — a set of custom Liquid sections with a solid schema does the same job for free.
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