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Back in stock — setting it up

Three things have to be true before a shopper can ask to be notified about something. The set-up page lists them as a numbered to-do list — three rows, and each row says where it stands. Two of the three the page checks for you; the other is in your theme, where nothing here can see it, so the page lists the moves instead of claiming a verdict.

Content → Back in stock → Settings, under Set it up.

1. The form

Your store has exactly one back-in-stock form. Making it and publishing it are one step, and step one's pill walks Not started → Still a draft → Done as you do them. Until you make it the row carries one button, Create the form, which makes it; after that it carries Open the form beside the pill, which is the way back whenever you want to change the words. It is an ordinary form — it opens in the same form editor as every other form you have, and you can change the headings, the words, the colors and the images. Its first panel is called Back in stock notification, and it is what a shopper reads: the Notify control on your product page opens it as a pop-up. In the editor, Test and preview shows it three ways — to a new shopper, to a shopper your store already knows (who gets a shorter panel with one button), and after they ask.

Two things in those words are filled in by your store, so you write the sentence once and it is right on every product: {{product_name}} becomes the name of whatever the shopper is looking at, and {{variant_name}} becomes the variant's — nothing at all on a product that has only one, taking any line it was alone on with it. The thank-you panel can use both, and {{email}} for the address they typed.

A new form is a draft, and a draft is on no storefront. Publish is the button on that same row once the form exists. Publishing checks a handful of things about the form itself; if one of them is not right, the row lists what to change and links you to the form to change them. You can publish from the form's own page instead — it is the same publish either way.

While the form is still exactly as we made it — you have opened it and changed nothing — it is brought up to date whenever we improve the one new stores start from, the next time you open it, and the form tells you so: Updated to the current starting point. Change one word and the form is yours; nothing replaces it after that.

Three things on this form are not yours to remove, and your store will tell you before you publish rather than after:

The wording, the colors and the arrangement are all yours. What cannot go is the part that lets a shopper check what they are asking about — a form that says "this product" is a form nobody can check.

The image block set to the product is on both panels to start with, and it is yours to move, resize, restyle or take out. It shows the variant's own photograph where there is one, the product's where there is not, and nothing at all where there is neither. Take it off the first panel and your store draws a small one at the top anyway — never two.

2. The block in your theme

This one is yours, and the app cannot see it.

Add the block in your theme editor is the button on step two. It opens your theme editor on your product template with the block already placed in the section that holds your buy buttons — you press Save and nothing else.

Or by hand, which is the same four moves: Online Store → Themes → Customize, open a product page, Add block → Back in stock, Save. Put the block in the section that holds your buy buttons, directly after them. A store connected by an older custom app has no button on that row and takes this route.

The block has three settings of its own: the button's words and its two colors. There is nothing else to set — everything a shopper reads is on your form, and the product and the variant are filled in from the page.

On the storefront the block draws nothing at all while the selected variant can be bought, which is most of the time and is correct. In the theme editor it shows you a stand-in so you can see where it will sit, and says so.

It appears in the Add-block list on every page, not only product pages. Off a product page it draws one line saying it only appears on a product page, so you can see you have put it somewhere it will not work.

3. The extra check

Every first request is held and asked again, which is what keeps bots out of your restock requests. That needs a check in front of your form, and it is set up for your store on its own, every time you publish your form. There is nobody to ask and nothing to wait for.

Until it is ready step three reads Not ready and says:

No Notify button is drawn until it is set up. We set it up when you publish your form.

If you would rather not wait for your next publish, there is a Set it up now button in that row. Anyone who can publish your forms can press it, it is safe to press again, and the page looks again on its own a few seconds later.

A few answers are worth knowing if you see them:

No Notify control is drawn at all while the check is missing — not a broken one, not one that fails when somebody presses it. Your product page is exactly as your theme drew it.

Then check it

The set-up card ends in this, and there is an Open a sold-out product button on it whenever your store has something sold out to open.

The app cannot see your theme's own buttons. Nothing Shopify offers will tell us whether the sold-out button we are replacing was found, or whether a second one is hiding in a quick-add drawer somewhere on the page — so this is two minutes of your own time, once per theme.

Open a product page whose selected variant is sold out, and look at it.

If the Notify control appears beside the sold-out button instead of in place of it, your theme needs the side-by-side fallback and it is already using it. Everything works — a shopper can still ask, and the queue fills normally. It looks different, that is all. The app takes that route on its own when it cannot prove it is safe to hide anything, because breaking a page where somebody could have bought something is the one outcome worth avoiding at any cost.

Check each theme you publish. A theme is not approved once and for all: the block validates what it finds on the page it is on, every time, on every theme. If you change themes, look again.

Turning it off

There is no switch. Take the block out of your theme in Shopify, or pause the form from its own page. Either one stops shoppers asking.

The people already waiting stay waiting, and a restock still tells them. That is deliberate: they asked, and taking the form down is not them changing their minds. If you want the queue to end, mark the variant discontinued — that tells everybody once and closes their requests.