Empire

All of our Shopify themes come with the following features

How do I install the theme once I've purchased it?

Easy! We'll email you a zip file, which you can upload via the "Online Store" section of your Shopify admin. Simply click "Upload theme" and it will be there for you to customize, preview, and publish when you're ready.

Can I customize the theme styles? Or can I use one theme style on one page and another style on a different page?

Yes and yes! We created these theme styles to show the diversity of Empire's features, but you can pick and choose however you want. Think of the styles as jumping-off points.

Can I use our company's font?

Maybe. If your company's font is available in the Shopify font library or through Typekit, you can use it in the theme. If it's a Typekit font, you will need to edit your theme's code

Can you help me customize the theme?

We can help you get set up and familiarize yourself with Empire's features, but we can't guarantee support for extensive customizations. That said, we'll do whatever we can to help you find a viable solution.

Does this theme integrate with all Shopify apps?

Not all, but many! All Pixel Union themes integrate with Pixel Union apps. If you're using an app from another developer, please contact them to see if it plays well with Empire.

January 19th, 2021 - v5.8.0

Added

• Added a new Image with text section

Changed

• The home page Slideshow and Highlights bar sections are now dynamic sections (these can be placed anywhere on the home page)

If you have already set up a static Slideshow and Highlights banner, they will not appear on your home page after updating

Please refer to these articles for instruction on how to replace your Slideshow and Highlights banner:

Highlights banner | Slideshow

• The Page portion of the Rich text section is now a standalone, dynamic section

Using an old version of Empire?

Update using the Theme Updater App

Please note that the Theme Updater App is compatible with Empire versions 2.3.0 and up. Earlier theme versions require a manual update.

November 3rd, 2020 - v5.7.1

Changed

• Changed script file naming to improve update compatibility

Fixed

• Corrected visibility of group tag filters

October 26th, 2020 - v5.7.0

Added

• Product pickup information is now displayed for featured products, quickshop, and product page, when shop has local pickup enabled.

October 15th, 2020 - v5.6.0

Changed

• We've switched the theme's Liquid code to use render tags, instead of the deprecated include tag.
• Plyr styles now load just in time and only when required which reduces page weight for pages without product videos
• Removed code splitting to provide performance update
• Reduced performance impact of a reflow by switching away from a jQuery function in the header
• Improved performance of ripple effect by postponing its initialization

August 26th, 2020 - v5.5.2

Fixed

• Improved the table styling as well as made them mobile-responsive!
• The collection page sidebar is now aligned with the utility bar
• The products in the collection 'list-view' no longer have a long blue outline when viewed on an iOS device.
• Products with no images can change variants once again.
• The 'forgot your password' link works once again on the customer login page.

Changed

• We have removed the default social media sharing image setting and we now defer to the setting in the Shopify admin

July 22nd, 2020 - v5.5.1

Fixed

• Issue with JavaScript being in developer mode

July 15th, 2020 - v5.5.0

Added

• Theme will now display unit pricing in stores that support it
• You can now display a label below the price on taxable products
• 10 new languages have been added to the theme translations

June 22nd, 2020 - v5.4.0

Changed

• Currency selector setting info to tell merchants to visit payment settings, not currency settings
• Stylesheet no longer uses SCSS, so settings update much faster in the theme editor
• Small performance update where unnecessary render calls caused by animations applied to rimg-canvas elements were removed

June 2nd, 2020 - v5.3.0

Added

• Some subtle animations to the product cards, signpost (arrow) links, and share buttons
• Fade out animation when removing an item from the cart that will show the item will be removed
• A ripple effect which will appear when clicking on various buttons throughout the theme
• New smooth opening and closing sequences to the search bar on desktop, with background dimmer
• Load-in animations for home page sections where content animates in sequence
• Theme setting to turn off major animations

Changed

• Better accordion animations in the mobile navigation, menu list section, and footer menu blocks
• The mobile menu now has a more smooth and elegant animation effect when sliding in and out
• Compressed the layout of the header on smaller tablet sizes to give more space for the store content
• Changed the active filter buttons on the collection page to be more in line with other buttons in the theme
• Primary navigation is now given a slight delay when hovering so that the menus do not open when customers do not intend to
• Search bar on mobile now transform into an overlay when clicked with new popup transition

April 6th, 2020 - v5.2.0

Added

• Support for native Shopify multi-currency and multi-language

Fixed

• Product cards images are now uncropped when "Enable image crop" is disabled
• Product card quick shop and add to cart buttons are now bottom aligned on mobile

Removed

• The old currency converter has been removed in favour of the new native multi-currency functionality

February 11th, 2020 - v5.1.1

Removed

• Instagram section has been removed. The API has been deprecated with no suitable replacement so from now on you'll need to switch to using an app.

January 26th, 2020 - v5.1.0

Added

• You can now split your product descriptions up by using the <!-- more --> tag

Changed

• Subtly tweaked animations across the theme.
• Images will no longer appear stretched on static pages
• Updated to use new product media component

Fixed

• Fixed issue with featured product variants leading to a 404 page after a refresh

November 20th, 2019 - v5.0.1

Fixed

• Implemented a fix on all mobile sliders which were encountering issues in the newest version of iOS (13)

Added

• We added photoswipe to product galleries on mobile

Changed

• Updated Supply and Industrial presets to match our new demos

November 7th, 2019 - v5.0.0

Added

• We added an option for a new product zoom on hover effect
• The product swipe functionality has been replaced with a new product click-to-zoom slideshow
• The product gallery now has options to place thumbnails to the left of the product image
• We have added a setting for hiding or displaying star ratings on product cards
• New options to refine search, by product type or tag
• Added toggleable search icon for mobile users
• Added in a slideshow option for the featured collection
• We have added a 'default view' setting for the product grid on Collection pages
• New settings for filter order. Goodbye alphabetical sorting!
• Added info the recently viewed setting in section to indicate it affects all locations

Changed

• Significantly improved navigation speed by prefetching pages when required

Removed

• Remove unused recently viewed section setting
• Removed unused language string revealing product stock

Fixed

• Fixed header cart count inaccurately reflecting cart quantity
• Fixed product item actions appearing on recently viewed
• Fixed unneeded spacing in Twitter component
• Fixed quotations in product titles causing issues on the cart page on update

October 23rd, 2019 - v4.7.0

Added

• Added new Meganav layout option
• Added support for swatches on product pages products cards and collection filters
• Added new custom HTML section to home page
• Added option to control "Products per row" on collection and search pages

Fixed

• Fixed issue where "Remove all" filter link didn't work correctly in certain instances

Changed

• Removed horizontal scroll on Meganav in favor of vertical scrolling
• Changed info in label attributes into info attributes in the theme editor
• Updated Shopify-structured-data

October 8th, 2019 – v4.6.2

Changed

• Removed our website link from the footer
• Adjusted styling for Dynamic checkout buttons on the cart page

Fixed

• Recently viewed products will no longer display the password page for deleted products
  in preview mode.
• Advanced Group Tags are now working correctly on the 'collections/all' page

July 16th, 2019 – v4.6.0

• Polyfills for older browsers are now only loaded for older browsers, improving speed for everybody else
• We added option resize the logo on the password page and allowed header to
  grow with it
• Instagram photos are always cropped to be square.
• Improved performance by preloading styles to avoid render blocking
• Map, Instagram, Twitter and Video sections are only initialized when they scroll into view, improving page load time.
• Use font preloading to improve performance and show more page content sooner
• Images sizes are calculated more precisely, for a crisper visual experience
• The Quick Shop is now loaded asynchronously which makes product grid pages load faster.
• We are now using Shopify's built-in sort options on the collection page!
• Solved some currency conversion rounding errors so prices show the same regardless of how you got there
• Removed Google+
• We improved the spacing on slideshow text content!
• Support link in the Theme editor now points to our new support form

June 18th, 2019 – v4.5.0

• Shipping calculator now checks more shipping providers, if they're set up in the Shopify Admin
• Recently viewed product cards will only show once
• Recently viewed product cards will only show one date
• The header cart count now updates properly
• 'Sort by' settings will now persist on the collection page when you click the 'Next' and 'Previous' links.
• Fixed bug preventing cart redirection from Collection pages
• Dynamic Collection List item images will be consistently centered in their containers
• Fixed a bug with full screen product videos
• Cropped product card hover images now align the way they should be
• Added URI encoding of filter tags to account for international characters
• Fix quantity event being fired twice for each input change.
• Sale badges now work for products whose main variant isn't on sale
• Adding an image to the cart no longer gives a grey overlay to the whole cart
• Updated the image with text overlay section to fix a couple bugs
• Updated social meta to fix an issue with images on Twitter preview cards
• Addressed spacing issue in the small promo block on mobile
• Slideshow (and other Javascript) works in IE 11 again.
• Selected slides on the homepage slideshow will reliably slide into view in the theme editor!
• First image of "Original aspect ratio" slideshows is now the original aspect ratio, instead of invisible.
• Fixed custom icons in the highlights banner that were sometimes showing at a low resolution.
• We are now using Shopify's built-in sort options on the collection page!
• Solved some currency conversion rounding errors so prices show the same regardless of how you got there
• Removed Google+
• We improved the spacing on slideshow text content!
• Support link in the Theme editor now points to our new support form
• We have updated the related products section to now show recommended products instead
• We have extended the support for discounts so that they now appear on the cart and account pages
• We added option resize the logo on the product page and allowed header to
  grow with it
• Instagram photos are always cropped to be square

May 30th, 2019 – v4.4.1

• Fix for missing footer background default color bug for themes downloaded from Shopify Theme Store

March 21st, 2019 – v4.4.0

• We changed the underlying html for mosaic and grid sections so that they are more accessible
• We added in some keyboard navigation handling to our slideshow.
• We have added focus states and other accessibility features to our account pages
• Our search menu was updated to be more keyboard accessible.
• We have updated the Collections List page to be more universally accessible
• We've made several changes to the Cart page to make it more universally accessible!
• Product cards needed a little update with regards to accessibility and keyboard navigation, so we fixed that.
• We've updated the blog page and blog homepage section to be more universally accessible!
• We have added alt text and aria-labels to the Instagram feed for use with screen readers!
• We have added the option to include a caption with videos on the homepage, and added some accessibility features!
• We fixed our product pages and quick shop windows to have better support for people who navigate with a keyboard.
• We have updated all of our modals for things like the Quick Shop so that people who use keyboard navigation can use them easier.
• We have restructured headers on several pages to make sure they occur in the correct order!
• We have updated the collections page to be more accessible for people who navigate with a keyboard.
• We have removed the duplicate newsletter input ID on the homepage!
• The announcement bar is now has an outline while using keyboard navigation.
• Removed the imagesLoaded code library to use our own library, hopefully making page loads more streamlined.
• The color overlay will now display on homepage videos
• Now background images in the search section are nice and crisp
• We've fixed the "Show 36" and "Show 48" buttons on the Collection page

December 19th, 2018 – v4.3.3

• Changed dynamic checkout buttons content
• Changed dynamic checkout buttons to be enabled by default

December 6th, 2018 – v4.3.1

• You an now use rich text in the small promo and highlights banner areas
• You can now choose to show the dynamic checkout buttons on the cart page
• We've added a LinkedIn social media icon
• You can now choose to show a lock icon on the checkout buttons
• Live Search will now redirect to the search page when the user hits 'enter' or clicks the search icon unless the search field is empty
• We did some cleanup behind-the-scenes to make the giftcard work more efficiently!
• Simplified the code for the Grid/List buttons on the collection page
• Added comments to CSS to clarify how the Product Gallery works
• The 'Message Us' button for the Facebook Messenger sales channel will appear over all other page content.
• You can now add rich text to the announcement bar, small promo, and highlights banner areas
• Added comments to video snippet to clarify how it works
• We've made the instructions for creating a mega-nav a little clearer
• The homepage will now have only one H1 tag containing the store name
• Dropped IE9 support. Cold.
• Timestamps on Recently Viewed Product cards should now be accurate when they are older than 24 hours
• Recently Viewed Products will now update with changes to product details since the last browser session
• We've removed the video overlay when it's not enabled, so you can now manually play Vimeo videos
• Header now only sticks when you want it to
• Variant labels and image switching now work properly on product pages when related products are shown
• iOS sometimes automatically turns phone numbers into links, and now these links work properly in the announcement bar, small promo, and highlights banner areas
• You can now scroll through product galleries on iOS when image zoom is enabled
• Fixed issue where swiping through slideshow results in page scrolling
• Twitter video thumbnails will now appear in the dynamic twitter feed

November 15th, 2018 – v4.2.5

• Labels will now animate if input is autofilled.
• We prevented zoom instructions from showing up on images that are too small to qualify for zoom, because what's the point?
• Clicking outside a menu now closes the menu just like it should.
• Fixed issue where Header menus with almost 2 levels of menu items would have a blank white space underneath on initial load
• Fixed issue where opening up the quickshop when there was two of the same product on the page would cause the quickshop to be empty
• Fixed an issue where sometimes you could filter by multiple tags in the same tag group
• Only style the last selected filter before reloading the collection page
• Improved error handling when adding to cart fails
• Fixed issue where the add to cart button in the quickshop would not work if image zoom was enabled
• Fixed issue where the homepage video section would have extra white space underneath when the quickshop was opened
• Made collection page filter modal on mobile scrollable without having to click a filter
• Fixed issue where header covers breadcrumbs on the product page if no menu is selected for the navigation
• If you click into the search box with the add to cart flyout open, you no longer have to click a second time before typing
• Display different form components depending on whether JS is enabled.

November 2nd, 2018 – v4.2.4

• The homepage blog section is now the same width as other homepage sections, because why wouldn't it be, right?
• We also prevented Google from indexing the collection page multiple times for some better SEO.

September 6th, 2018 – v4.2.3

• We fixed an issue where opening the same product in the quickshop twice in a row would cause the slider to stop working.
• The white space between the header and first section when resizing the browser has been removed.
• The Add to Cart banner closes when you click outside of it, just like it used to and is supposed to!

August 28th, 2018 – v4.2.2

• Fixed issue where quickshop would break if you tried to open it multiple times
• Fixed meganav images from appearing blurry
• Prevent slideshow from getting cropped on mobile

August 20th, 2018 – v4.2.1

• The collapsed grid and mosaic tiles now load nice crisp images, just the way they should-delightful!
• There's a brand new option to show a second product image when you hover over a product in the listings.
• We've also added a new setting that allows you to align the text on the slideshow! left, right, centre, wherever.

July 26th, 2018 – v4.2.0

• We've connected the OpenGraph, and Twitter Card header tags to a more robust piece of logic. You can also find a new setting to set a default share image!
• We've added the ability to show SKU's on the Product page, the Cart page, the Quickshop and the Featured Product section!
• The promo block header size now stays the same after expanding the block on mobile
• "'!*%()[]/<> characters, and more, now work properly in product option names

July 13th, 2018 – v4.1.0

• Empire now supports image zoom! The feature is available on the Product page, the Quickshop, and the Featured Product section.
• We've updated payment icons to use Shopify's SVGs!

July 4th, 2018 – v4.0.3

• Whoops! Fixed up an issue with instagram and twitter sections not loading posts until saving in the theme editor

July 3rd, 2018 – v4.0.2

• Fixed up a small inverted bit of logic, so that "View full details" now show in Featured products without descriptions.
• Touched up styles on the Cart page when an item product has options.
• We've made a small optimization to the product form, just to reduce some markup
• Pinterest "Save" buttons were showing even when an article, or a product, had no image to "Save" — They'll hide properly now if there is no image.

June 14th, 2018 – v4.0.1

• Reverted unintended change to the color of placeholder text in forms
• Fixed the button styling of the Grid/List buttons on the collection page, so that they work better with dark backgrounds

June 7th, 2018 – v4.0.0

• We've added links to the product's vendor! They'll link in the following areas:
  • Quick shop
  • Featured product
  • Product pages
• A new setting has been added allowing customers to be brought to the cart page after a product has been added to it.
• We renamed the "Quick look" to "Quick shop". You can change it back in the Languages area if you want to
• We've moved some settings around in "Theme settings -> Products". Settings which only relate to the "Quick shop" are now under their own heading, which should make finding things easier
• There were a few small bugs in the Rich Text section which didn't cause any problems, but we wanted to get rid of those all the same
• Updated newsletter forms to support rich-text so you can link to a privacy policy
• Fixed the header shadow showing up a bit incorrectly on wider screens
• We noticed that the Product gallery wouldn't actually show an image when javascript is not available, and the image is cropped. Fixed that!
• When viewing a collection, the active 'Show by' selection should once again be styled differently than other values, letting Customers know what kind of pagination they're seeing.
• Multiple Map sections should no longer cause errors
• We've updated our responsive library code, which should give a few improvements

May 31st, 2018- v3.0.0

• Added support for the new font picker setting. Soo many fonts! Just remember, with great power comes great responsibility.
• Its always nice when the Theme Editor names a section, or a block after the heading in that section! So we've fixed up the Slideshow's Slides, the Video section, and the Search section so they all do this!

May 15th, 2018 – v2.4.5

• Fixed issue with images not loading in the quickview.

April 26th, 2018 – v2.4.4

• Fixed an issue where portrait images in the live search were displaying larger than their allotted area.
• Fixed an issue where disabling the Dynamic Checkout buttons setting was causing errors in the quick look.
• A giant grey box was appearing in the order pages just for fun. We don't like fun. Goodbye, grey box.

April 19th, 2018 – v2.3.2

• We fixed a scenario where product galleries would have no height unless the window was resized.
• If a product video isn't the first video in the gallery, but is the selected
  video for product variant and autoplay is enabled, the video will now play.
• Fixed an issue with flickering promo blocks on mobile.

April 5th, 2018 – v2.3.1

• YouTube links using 'youtu.be' should now work in the home page video and videos in the product gallery.
• Home page videos work now if they don't have a cover image.
• We fixed up how we call up YouTube videos.
• The product gallery videos no longer load up additional images and we adjusted the styling to match the theme better.
• Fixed a JS error popping up if recently viewed products are disabled and there are more tags available than shown in the collection sidebar.
• Slideshows on mobile should no longer be getting in the way of scrolling for Android users
• It turns out that the logic being used to build Filter "Groups" was actually
  changing the "Group" name, and turning double spaces into  no spaces. The
  logic has been cleaned up, and won't be changing any text.

April 3rd, 2018 – v2.3.0

• Implemented support for Shopify's new dynamic checkout buttons. Now on the product page and quickshop, customers can checkout directly via Amazon Pay, Apple Pay, Paypal, and Shopify Payments if you have those gateways set up on your store.
• Fixed the infamous broken Twitter feed.
• Fixed broken Instagram feed.
• Updated images to comply with Shopify's responsive images updates.

March 23rd, 2018 – v2.1.3

•  Fixed some errors from the shipping calculator that weren't being handled correctly.

February 26th, 2018 – v2.1.2

• Added even more new sections, including an Image with text overlay section, a Featured product section and a Map section, as well as an Announcement bar.
• Fixed up some images in the mega nav that were taking up too much space.
• The add to cart banner wasn't quite working right when the header was set to be not sticky but now it's working wonderfully.
• The Rich text section on the home page now supports video imbeds and tabs. Woop woop.
• Users who disable javascript now are able to see the Gallery section on the home page.
• Newsletter sign up forms now support multiple tags instead of one very very large tag. A customer used to get one tag, such as "prospect newsletter", but will now get two tags: "prospect" and "newsletter".
• Tweaked some things with the small promotional area in the header: the icon doesn't shrink unnecessarily on mobile, and the text updates as you type in the theme editor.
• Made some minor fixes to the search overlays and announcement bar. Things should be smooth as peanut buttah.
• A small bug was found in our product structured data if the store's money formats contained a delimiter other than a decimal, so Google was complaining a bit. Its been fixed up now!
• Third level dropdowns in the main navigation are now self aware if they will exceed the window boundaries. The rise of the menus has begun.

January 29th, 2018 – v2.0.0

January 26th, 2018 – v1.4.3

• Fixed a couple issues with the currency converter. We added a few more supported currencies, and we made sure that the currency that a customer changes it to shows up in the quick buy modal as well.
• Fixed a verrrrrry picky dropdown arrow so that it's more easily clickable.

January 16th, 2018 – v1.4.2

• Fixed the broken Instagram and Twitter feeds.

January 11th, 2018 – v1.4.1

• Added support for additional money formats.
• Improved how product pricing behaves when the "compare at price" is the same as the regular price.

January 8th, 2018 – v1.4.0

• Updated the menu system to be integrated with Shopify's nested navigation update. See this link to get more information on how to set up nested navigation.

November 30th, 2017 – v1.3.0

• Made some updates to the currency converter (improved app compatibility, streamlined some dependency files, fixed up an issue where products were sometimes being shown as 0$ woopsie!)
• Made some minor changes to the cart page to comply with some policy changes from Shopify.
• Overhauled our mobile sections that you can swipe and slide so you can do the same on narrow desktop browsers as well.

November 17th, 2017 – v1.2.10

• Fixed issue with prices showing original price as 0$ on the collection page when "emphasize price" was disabled.
• Fixed issue with a product listing all variants on sale even if only one variant was on sale.
• Fixed JS errors and quick shops not loading.

October 26th, 2017 – v1.2.7

• Implemented a small fix to the account orders to allow them to pick up on i18n
• Quickshop is working again!
• Product galleries now only start once all the images have loaded, fixing issues where it would try to start… and not really work.

October 12h, 2017 – v1.2.6

• Square images in your Instagram feed have made a comeback. #tbt

October 5th, 2017 – v1.2.5

• Empire's documentation now links to the right place. doh.
• Did a little tweaking to the header so it aligns nicely.

September 7th, 2017 – v1.2.2

• There were some tricky cases where variants could cause the "amount saved" to be incorrect. We simplified the logic for these, making it more predictable.
• We moved the "Continue Shopping" cart setting out into a global setting so it can be used on the 404 page.
• Modal popups had some janky scroll behavior. We un-jankyied it. Smooth as peanut buttah.
• Some of you reported the spacing between the header and page contents sometimes being inconsistent. (Math is hard).
• The mobile nav menu now blocks page scrolling, which should reduce stress levels for mobile visitors by a solid 13%.
• Haiku: A Springtime in the H1 Garden:
  • Stroll through product page
  •  H1s blooming everywhere
  • Please cut H1s back
• When filtered by a tag group, collection page titles were showing un-needed underscores. They_are_all_gone_now.

August 31st, 2017 – v1.2.1

• Having the account and currency switcher disabled will no longer cause critical failures. There was a screw bouncing around in the guts of the JS controlling the header, making basically everything break.
• Image formats have been liberated! PNG images with transparencies can now be used in Promo blocks and Articles.
• The Twitter feed was reminded that sometimes, you just need to use a really long word. Instead of cutting that word off, it now wrap them.
• Instagram photos returned to square and all is right with the world.

August 3rd, 2017 – v1.1.2

• Fixed issue with second level navigation menus being unscrollable when exceeding the viewport
• Fixed issue with third level navigation menus opening past viewport

July 27th, 2017 – v1.1.1

• Fixed minor bugs with Quick Shop.

July 24th, 2017 – v1.1.0

• Changed all range settings from dropdowns to sliders in theme editor.

July 20th, 2017 – v1.0.2

• Fixed issue with prices in live search not matching store currency if currency switcher is disabled.
• Fixed issue with mega navigation intermittently appearing blank in Safari.

July 14th, 2017 – v1.0.1

• Implemented live search enhancements.
• Fixed issue with mega navigation going blank sometimes in Safari.
• Fixed issue with on sale products showing the wrong price in live search.
• Minor bug fixes.