Unlock Custom Collection Titles in Shopify: A Metafield Guide for Aurora & Beyond

Hey there, fellow store owners! As a Shopify expert, I spend a lot of time diving into the community forums, and honestly, it's one of the best places to find out what real merchants are struggling with and how they're solving it. Recently, a thread caught my eye about customizing collection titles in the Aurora theme, and it sparked a really helpful discussion that I think many of you will relate to.

Our friend, swarique, was looking for a way to display simplified collection names on their storefront. Like many of us, swarique had internal collection titles like "Party Wear Bracelets" or "Daily Wear Bracelets" for organizational purposes. But on the frontend, for customers, they simply wanted "Bracelets." This is a classic dilemma: how do you keep your backend organized without making your customer-facing titles too clunky?

The Power of Shopify Metafields for Custom Collection Titles

The community quickly rallied around a fantastic solution: Shopify Metafields. This is a super powerful feature that allows you to add custom fields to almost anything in your store – products, collections, customers, and more – without touching your core data. It's perfect for situations like swarique's!

As PieLab pointed out early on, using metafields lets you "display a simpler name for your collections without changing your internal titles." This means you can keep "Party Wear Bracelets" as your actual collection title for inventory and tagging, but show "Bracelets" to your customers. It's the best of both worlds!

Now, I know the idea of "editing theme code" can sound a little intimidating, especially if you're not "well versed with coding," as swarique mentioned. But trust me, with a step-by-step guide, it's totally doable. CodeByFlora hit the nail on the head when they said, "this kind of customisation trips up a lot of store owners! The good news is what you’re trying to achieve is very doable."

Step-by-Step: Setting Up Your Custom Display Title Metafield

Let's break down how to implement this, drawing heavily from the excellent guidance provided by mastroke in the thread.

Step 1: Create the Metafield Definition

• From your Shopify Admin, navigate to Settings.
• Click on Custom Data (or "Metafields and metaobjects" in older interfaces) in the left sidebar.
• Select Collections.
• Click on the "Add definition" button.
• Give your new metafield a name. Something like "Display Title" or "Frontend Title" works great. The "Namespace and key" will auto-populate (e.g., custom.display_title). This is what you'll reference in your code.
• Choose the "Content type." For a simple display name, Single line text is perfect.
• Click Save.

Here's a visual from mastroke on where to find this (though the exact UI might look slightly different depending on your Shopify version):

Step 2: Populate Your Collection Metafields

• Go to Products > Collections in your Shopify Admin.
• Click on each collection you want to customize.
• Scroll down to the bottom of the collection details page. You'll see your new "Display Title" metafield.
• Enter the desired customer-facing title (e.g., "Bracelets").
• Click Save for each collection.

Step-by-Step: Modifying Your Theme Code

This is where we tell your theme to use the new metafield instead of the default collection title.

Before you start: Always, always, always duplicate your theme before making any code changes! Go to Online Store > Themes > Actions > Duplicate. This way, if anything goes wrong, you can easily revert.

Step 3: Access Your Theme Code

• From your Shopify Admin, go to Online Store > Themes.
• Find your current theme (or the duplicated version you're working on), click Actions > Edit Code.

Step 4: Locate the Relevant Section/Snippet

This is the trickiest part, as theme structures vary. swarique was asking about "Featured collection/Multiple Collections" in the Aurora theme. You'll need to find the file responsible for rendering these collection titles.

• In the code editor, look under the sections folder for files like featured-collection.liquid, main-collection-grid.liquid, or similar.
• Alternatively, check the snippets folder for files like collection-card.liquid or card-collection.liquid.
• Open these files and use the search function (Ctrl+F or Cmd+F) to look for {{ collection.title }} or {{ card_collection.title }}. This is the code that's currently displaying your internal collection title.

Step 5: Replace the Title Code

Once you've found the line displaying the collection title, you'll replace it with this conditional code snippet, as recommended by mastroke:

{% if collection.metafields.custom.display_title != blank %}
{{ collection.metafields.custom.display_title }}
{% else %}
{{ collection.title }}
{% endif %}

What does this code do? It first checks if your new custom.display_title metafield has a value. If it does, it uses that value. If it's empty (!= blank means "is not blank"), it falls back to displaying the original {{ collection.title }}. This is a great fallback, ensuring your collections always have a title even if you forget to fill in the metafield for some.

Step 6: Save and Test

• Click Save in the top right corner of the code editor.
• Visit your online store and check the pages where your featured collections are displayed. You should now see your custom display titles!

What about Custom Collection Images?

swarique also asked about uploading custom images for each collection. This is actually much simpler than the title customization! Shopify collections have a dedicated spot for an image.

• Go to Products > Collections in your Shopify Admin.
• Click on the collection you want to add an image to.
• On the collection details page, you'll see a section for "Collection image." Click "Add image" to upload your custom image.
• If no image is uploaded, some themes might default to showing the first product image in the collection, but directly uploading one gives you full control.

So there you have it! Custom collection titles and images – totally within your reach. It's a fantastic way to refine your storefront's look and feel, making navigation clearer and more appealing for your customers.

And hey, if diving into code still feels like a bit much, remember that there are always experts like CodeByFlora who can handle these customizations cleanly for you. Plus, for even more visual flair, PieLab suggested a great app like Deco Product Labels to add custom badges like "Party Wear" or "Daily Wear" directly onto product images. These little touches can make a big difference in how shoppers interact with your collections.

The beauty of Shopify, and its community, is that there's almost always a solution for these kinds of specific needs. Don't be afraid to experiment with metafields – they&re a game-changer for deeper customization without heavy development.