---
title: "Online Store 2.0: JSON templates and improvements to Liquid - Shopify developer changelog"
description: Shopify’s developer changelog documents all changes to Shopify’s platform. Find the latest news and learn about new platform opportunities.
source_url:
  html: https://shopify.dev/changelog/online-store-2-0-json-templates-and-improvements-to-liquid
  md: https://shopify.dev/changelog/online-store-2-0-json-templates-and-improvements-to-liquid.md
---

[Back to Developer changelog](https://shopify.dev/changelog)

June 29, 2021

Tags:

* Action Required
* Themes

# Online Store 2.0: JSON templates and improvements to Liquid

Themes can now use JSON templates in place of Liquid templates for all template types except for `gift_card` and `robots.txt`.

Using the new JSON template files, you can define which sections should appear by default when your theme is first installed, and which order they appear in. Merchants can add, remove or reorder sections of JSON templates using the theme editor.

You can also connect theme settings to [dynamic sources](https://shopify.dev/themes/architecture/settings#dynamic-sources) to pull dynamic information from the store. Dynamic sources can be [metafield values](https://shopify.dev/api/liquid/objects/metafield) or resource attributes.

[Learn more about JSON templates](http://shopify.dev/themes/architecture/templates/json-templates) and [how to update your themes to use this new architecture](https://shopify.dev/themes/migration).

To see a model of how you can implement JSON templates, take a look at the /`templates` directory of the [Dawn GitHub repo](https://github.com/Shopify/dawn).

We’ve also made other notable improvements to Liquid:

* Moved [theme translations](https://shopify.dev/themes/architecture/locales/schema-locale-files) currently defined in the schema into `locales/` files.
* Added [Bundled Section Rendering](https://shopify.dev/api/ajax/reference/cart#bundled-section-rendering) in JavaScript endpoints to offload client-side rendering from themes.
* Updated [specialized theme setting types](https://shopify.dev/themes/architecture/settings/input-settings#specialized-input-settings) to return Liquid objects instead of resource handles.
* Updated filters and attributes for functionality such as preloading critical CSS, adding html attributes to links, and removing items from carts.