The same words come up again and again in Composerie. This guide gives you a short, plain definition for each one, so the rest of the help center reads easily. It is for anyone new to Composerie who wants the vocabulary down before they go deeper.
Read it top to bottom once, then come back when a term trips you up.
Products, variants, designs and templates
These four terms describe the thing you sell and the editable artwork behind it. They build on each other, so it helps to learn them in order.
A product is the item you sell. A tote bag, a poster, or a mug are all products. It is the thing a shopper buys.
A variant is a purchasable combination of product options, such as a large blue shirt. Size and color are option axes; the combination identifies the variant. Manage them on the product page. See variants and options.
A design is what you build in the Design Studio, the canvas where you place text, images, and shapes. A design holds two things: the layers that make up the artwork, and the fields a shopper is allowed to change. A variant can point to its own design, so the large poster and the small poster can each have artwork sized for them.
A template is a reusable starting point. You can create a product from a template instead of starting from a blank canvas. Templates are listed separately under Templates in the Products area, so they stay apart from your live products. Learn more in product templates.
Add-ons, providers and the customizer
These terms cover the extras you can sell, the partner who makes the order, and what your shopper actually touches.
An add-on is an extra choice on a product, such as gift wrapping or a premium finish. Choices can be free or priced. Manage them in the product page’s Add-ons section. See add-ons for setup.
A provider is a print partner you connect. Printify, Printful, and MerchOne are providers. The provider manufactures the order and ships it to your customer. You can connect one in connect a provider.
The customizer is what your shopper uses on your storefront. It shows your product, lets them personalize the parts you marked as editable, and shows a live preview before they add it to the cart. See how a shopper personalizes a product.
A customizer group is a grouping of separate products. It is different from material variants within one product. Do not assume that a multi-product group has an available launch checkout flow; use the publication’s readiness checks before selling it.
Surfaces, fields and publications
These three describe what a design is made of and how it reaches your store.
A surface is one printable area on a product, with its own real-world size in millimetres. A mug has one. A t-shirt with front and back print has two. Each surface holds its own layers and produces its own print file. See product, design, template, surface.
A personalization field is one question you ask the shopper, bound to one layer of the design. It has a type, a label, and rules such as required or a maximum length. A layer without a field is fixed artwork the shopper cannot touch. See what a personalization field is.
A publication is the connection between one Composerie product and one Shopify product. Publishing creates or updates the Shopify product, writes the settings the storefront reads, and records the storefront mode. See what publishing does.
Versions, files and orders
These are the terms that come up once you are selling rather than building.
A design version, sometimes called a revision, is a saved snapshot of a design. Publishing points your storefront at a version, and a placed order keeps the version it was bought against, so a later edit cannot change an order that already exists. See design versions.
A print file is the render production uses: the order’s revision, with the shopper’s values applied, at the size the surface and the provider ask for. It is raster rather than vector, and there is one set per surface. See from design to print file.
A proof is the visual record of what the shopper approved, kept on the order. It is the thing to open when a customer says the product is not what they ordered.
A route is how an item gets made. Self-print keeps the files with you and the milestones yours to mark. A provider route submits the order to a print partner. See what is in an order.
Storefront mode
A storefront mode is how a product appears on your store. You choose it when you publish the product.
There are three modes:
- Linked works in the background. The product page stays as your theme built it, and Composerie connects behind the scenes.
- Embedded puts the customizer right on the product page.
- Full page opens a dedicated page for the customizer.
To pick the right one for a product, read storefront modes explained.
Keep these definitions handy as you read the rest of the help center. If a word ever feels unfamiliar, come back here first. And if you get stuck, you can always contact support.
Next
New to all this? Start with what Composerie does and how the pieces fit.