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Integrations

Shopify Integration

Overview

Shopify's built-in blog engine lets you publish content directly alongside your store. Publish Owl connects to your Shopify store via a custom app using the Admin API, allowing you to create and update blog articles, upload featured images, and set SEO metadata automatically.

Requirements

  • A Shopify store (any plan that supports custom apps)
  • Admin access to create and install custom apps
  • At least one blog created in your Shopify store (most stores have a default "News" blog)

Step 1: Create a Custom App

Publish Owl authenticates using a Shopify custom app's Client ID and Client Secret.

  1. Log in to your Shopify admin dashboard
  2. Go to Settings → Apps and sales channels → Develop apps
  3. If prompted, click Allow custom app development
  4. Click Create an app and give it a name (e.g., "Publish Owl")
  5. Under Configuration → Admin API integration, click Configure
  6. Grant these API scopes:
    • write_content — Create and update blog articles
    • write_files — Upload featured images to Shopify's CDN
  7. Click Save, then click Install app to install it on your store

Step 2: Copy Your Credentials

After installing the app, you need the Client ID and Client Secret (not the Admin API access token).

  1. In your custom app, go to Settings → Credentials (not "API credentials")
  2. Copy the Client ID
  3. Copy the Client Secret (click "Show" to reveal it)
Important: Publish Owl uses the Client ID and Client Secret (OAuth2 client credentials), not the Admin API access token. Make sure you're copying from the correct section.

Step 3: Add Your Shopify Site

  1. In Publish Owl, go to Sites
  2. Click + Add Site
  3. Enter a name for your site
  4. Select Shopify as the CMS type
  5. Fill in the Shopify fields:
    • Shop Domain: Your .myshopify.com domain (e.g., mystore.myshopify.com)
    • Client ID: From Step 2
    • Client Secret: From Step 2
  6. Click Fetch Blogs to load your store's blogs
  7. Select the blog you want to publish to from the dropdown
  8. Click Save Site

Shop Domain Format

Use your .myshopify.com domain, not a custom domain. For example, use mystore.myshopify.com rather than www.mystore.com. You can find this in Settings → Domains in your Shopify admin.

Supported Features

When publishing to Shopify, Publish Owl supports the following:

Article Fields

  • Title — Article title
  • Content — Full HTML body
  • Slug — Custom URL handle for the article
  • Excerpt — Article summary
  • Tags — Comma-separated tags
  • Author — Author name displayed on the article
  • Status — Publish immediately or save as draft

SEO Metadata

Publish Owl automatically sets Shopify's built-in SEO fields (title tag and meta description) via metafields when your workflow generates meta descriptions. No SEO plugin is needed — Shopify handles this natively.

Featured Images

Publish Owl uploads featured images directly to Shopify's CDN using staged uploads. This ensures fast loading times and reliable image hosting. Configure image generation in your workflow settings:

  • AI Generation: Use GPT Image, Flux, Stable Diffusion, Ideogram, or other AI models
  • Stock Photos: Automatically find relevant images from Pexels, Unsplash, or Pixabay
  • Image Templates: Create custom branded images with the visual editor
Tip: If the primary CDN upload fails, Publish Owl automatically falls back to using the external image URL directly, so your article is still published with an image.

Limitations

No Scheduled Publishing: Shopify's blog engine does not support scheduled posts natively. If you set a scheduled publish date in Publish Owl, the article will be published immediately instead. For scheduled content, consider using Publish Owl's built-in job scheduling to control when articles are generated and published.
  • Single blog per site: Each Publish Owl site connects to one Shopify blog. To publish to multiple blogs, create a separate site for each blog.
  • No categories: Shopify blogs use tags instead of categories. Use the tags field in your workflow settings to organize content.

Troubleshooting

"Fetch Blogs" returns no blogs

Make sure your store has at least one blog. Go to Online Store → Blog posts in Shopify admin. If no blogs exist, create one first.

Authentication errors

Verify you're using the Client ID and Client Secret from your custom app's Settings → Credentials page, not the Admin API access token. Also confirm the app is installed on your store.

Permission errors when publishing

Check that your custom app has both write_content and write_files scopes enabled. After changing scopes, you may need to reinstall the app.

Featured image not appearing

Image uploads to Shopify's CDN can occasionally fail for very large images. Publish Owl retries automatically with fallback strategies. If the issue persists, try using a different image generation provider or reducing image dimensions.

Duplicate slug error

If an article with the same URL handle already exists, Publish Owl automatically appends a number (e.g., my-article-2) to avoid conflicts.

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