Notes from the Altera team
Practical notes on moving Shopify data without breaking things.
Shopify collection sources: how the new collections model works
Shopify replaced smart and manual collections with collection sources. See what changed, what subcollections and variant targeting make possible, and what stays the same.
How to Migrate WooCommerce Products to Shopify
Move a WooCommerce catalogue to Shopify with the data intact. How variable products become variants, what transfers cleanly, and what you fix in the spreadsheet before import (including the shortcodes WooCommerce leaves in your descriptions).
WooCommerce vs Shopify: Which Should You Use (and How to Switch)
An even-handed comparison of WooCommerce and Shopify on hosting, cost of ownership, checkout, B2B, and extensibility, plus what to do about the data if you decide to switch.
How to Build a WooCommerce to Shopify Redirect Map (and Import It)
WooCommerce and Shopify use different URL structures, so every product and category URL changes when you migrate. How to build the 301 redirect map that protects your search rankings, including the part Altera generates for you.
Importing WooCommerce Orders into Shopify
How to bring WooCommerce order history into Shopify: what the connector pulls, the order things have to import in, and the side effects (staff emails, 3PL, Klaviyo) you turn off first so a year of old orders does not trigger live workflows.
Ask Your Store Anything: A Read-Only Audit with Claude
Stores collect quiet problems you never see: SEO titles Google rewrites, images with no alt text, sale prices left broken after a reprice. Here's how to ask Claude about all of them in plain language, with Altera answering from read-only data so nothing in your store changes.
Turn a Messy Supplier Spreadsheet into a Clean Shopify Import with Claude
Supplier files never match Shopify's format. Here's how to let Claude reshape a messy spreadsheet through the Altera MCP, flag the rows it can't safely decide, and hand a clean file to Altera to import.
How to Write Shopify SEO Titles and Meta Descriptions with AI: A Claude + Altera Guide
Shopify stores your SEO title and meta description as the global.title_tag and global.description_tag metafields, and most stores leave them on autopilot. Here's how to hand the whole job to Claude through the Altera MCP: it reads your product descriptions, writes a title tag and meta description for each, and imports them back without you touching a spreadsheet.
How to Import and Export Shopify Products With Linked Variant Options
Linked variant options connect your Color and Material options to metaobjects. Native Shopify CSV supports the Option1 Linked To column but little else; Matrixify is flexible but doesn't support it at all. Here's how to import and export linked options in bulk with Altera.
Altera/Matrixify Metafields: Generate a Ready-to-Use Import Template from Your Store
The hard part of an Altera/Matrixify metafields import isn't the import, it's the column headers and value formats. Altera now generates a pre-filled template from your store's actual metafield definitions.
How Fast Is Altera? Benchmarks for Large Imports, Updates, and Exports
Real numbers for product and order imports, exports, and bulk updates. What jobs actually take, and what shapes performance on your store.
Altera MCP vs CLI: Which to Give Your AI Agent
Two ways to connect ChatGPT, Claude, or any other AI tool to Altera. The MCP is fastest to set up and works straight out of ChatGPT. The CLI handles multiple stores, scoped permissions, and the files command. Here's when to pick which.
How to Import Orders to Shopify: A Complete CSV Guide
How to move order history between Shopify stores with a CSV. What the file needs, which side effects to turn off, and the order to import things in so nothing breaks.
Shopify Variant Inventory Policy: Continue vs Deny Explained
What Shopify's variant inventory policy actually does, when to switch from Deny to Continue, and how to flip it across thousands of variants in one pass.