Making Product Images Clickable in the Publisher Theme: A Journey Through Shopify Land

Ever had one of those déjà vu moments where you’re knee-deep in code, fingers ready to conjure up some magic, and then—nothing? That's how it felt, standing there in our digital shop, looking at the gorgeous images of our sequin dresses on Shopify, just waiting… but utterly unclickable. It was like an art gallery filled with masterpieces that people could admire but not interact with. We needed to fix that—fast.

We were using the Publisher theme on Shopify, a sleek and elegant choice, but it seemed our customers couldn’t click on the product images in the collection. Imagine the frustration of window shopping in a digital world, where even double-tapping or pinching wouldn’t get you closer to that dazzling sequined number. So, the adventure began. Let’s navigate this conundrum together, hand-in-hand, like a squad solving mysteries—cue the Monty Python theme song.

The First Step: Dive Into the Liquid

The first part of our mystical Shopify quest led us to roll up our sleeves and dig into the Shopify theme's Liquid code. Liquid, for those of you not yet acquainted, is Shopify’s tantalizingly named templating language. Shopify Liquid, much like its name, flows through the theme files, binding everything together in a river of code magic.

Imagine Ashley and me, sitting in our study-coding nook, filled to the brim with twinkling fairy lights and an amber brew in our mugs. We embarked on our quest right there, fueled by a spark of determination. So, the task was to make those images clickable. Here's what we did:

Access the Theme Editor: First, navigate to the Shopify admin and click on ‘Online Store’, then ‘Themes’. Select ‘Customize’ to open the Theme Editor.
Find the Code: Once in the editor, click ‘Actions’ and choose ‘Edit code’. A labyrinth of files will appear—don’t fret!
Locate Collection Template: Search for the template file for collections—it might be named something like collection.liquid or collections-template.liquid.
Modify Code: In the code, look for the section rendering each product image. You’re searching for img tags associated with $product. Wrap this image tag in an anchor (a) tag linking to the product page, like the example below:
```
<a href="{{ product.url }}">
    <img src="{{ product.featured_image | img_url: 'large' }}" alt="{{ product.title }}">
</a>
```
Save Your Changes: Hit that save button! And now, for the moment of truth—let’s test it out.

Testing… A Moment of Anticipation

We nervously watched as we reloaded the collection page—a hush fell over the room. Lo and behold, the images of our sequin dresses now glimmered with a newfound interactivity. It was akin to watching a butterfly emerge from a cocoon. Well, maybe not that dramatic, but you get the sentiment.

Time to Polish

With the images clickable, we started fiddling with CSS to ensure the aesthetic remained untarnished like an impeccable Michelin-starred dinner - without a hair, quite literally out of place. We tweaked hover effects to make sure they provided a visual cue, indicating purposeful interactivity. Like rolling out the red carpet for dignitaries—or in this case, our valued customers.

Our snippet of code for the styling looked like this:

a:hover img {
    opacity: 0.8;
    transition: opacity 0.3s ease-in-out;
}

The Gift of a Click

There it was. We stood back, our virtual shop now a dazzling bazaar where shoppers could peruse through images and click to their hearts’ content. It’s moments like these that remind us sometimes, we need to roll up our sleeves and dive into a little bit of code to enhance the user experience.

Ashley and I regathered our wits, almost tearful with glee, knowing that our shop was now a fully interactive stage for our sequin-lined heroes. Those images wouldn't just be admired—they would guide our customers where they truly wanted to go.

And dear reader, as you set out to tackle your own Shopify mysteries, know we are right there with you, sipping our coffee, our world a bit brighter because we made a picture clickable. Go forth and click!