Hey there.

Imagine you sell products from forty different artists, and every one of them deserves their own page on your store: their photo, their bio, a link to their website, and a grid of the products they've made that updates automatically every time you add new work. Now imagine building that without copying and pasting a template forty times, without a third-party app, and without touching code. That's what we're talking about today: Metaobject Pages. I'll be honest with you, this feature has been in Shopify for a few years and I avoided it for most of that time because it looked complicated. About a year ago I finally sat down with it, and now we use it on client stores at JadePuma almost every week. It's one of the most underused features in the platform, and in this episode you'll learn when to reach for it, when not to, and how to build it.

Later in this episode, I'm going to be giving you some step-by-step instructions which may be hard to follow if you are listening to the audio version.  There's an accompanying video that will be linked to in the show notes. 

Definitions

Let's start off with some explanations of the Shopify entities we'll be discussing in this podcast. 

Metafield

A metafield is a data type in Shopify used to add individual custom fields to existing Shopify objects, such as products, pages, or blogs. It acts as a place to store a single specific value or piece of additional information about the parent object. For example, you can use a metafield to store specific product details like colors, materials, measurements, or ingredients.

A metafield is defined with a data type which provides specific structures and functionality to store different kinds of data. Examples of types are text, integer or URL.  Types can also be pointers to other Shopify entities like products, collections or images.

Assigning specific types to your custom data fields provides benefits for your store including:

• Data Integrity and Validation: Defining a specific data type ensures that the entered data matches expected formats and validation rules. For example, when you define a field type, you can set specific rules like minimum or maximum character lengths, make the field required, or restrict it to only accept image files.
• Storefront Filtering: Typed custom data can be leveraged to build dynamic product filters on your storefront, significantly improving product discovery for your customers.
• Easier Localization and Translation: Because typed fields store simple, specific values tailored to individual entities, they are easy to translate and localize for different global regions using tools like Shopify's Translate and Adapt app.

Metaobject

Shopify comes with predefined objects like pages, products and blog articles.  A metaobject is custom, structured data that enables you to define entirely new objects containing multiple related fields.  Unlike metafields—which simply attach single, individual values to existing Shopify objects—metaobjects are standalone objects that can be referenced and reused anywhere across your store.  You can use metaobjects to model complex data relationships and create rich content structures, such as detailed author bios, product size charts with multiple measurements, ingredient lists with nutritional data, or robust store location profiles.  And then you can use that content in multiple places with slightly different contexts.  For example, if you have an Artist metaobject, you can create a profile page for that artist.  And you can also put artists' names and photos on product pages.  Both of these implementations would use the same metaobject.  So metaobjects allow you to create your content once and reuse it throughout your store.

Metaobject Pages

Metaobject pages (also known as metaobject templates) are standalone, dedicated web pages automatically generated to display the custom, structured data of individual metaobject entries. These pages transform metaobjects from mere internal data containers into pages with unique URLs on your storefront.

Metaobject pages leverage Shopify's Online Store 2.0 framework and JSON templates to create repeatable, SEO-optimized landing pages. Instead of manually building individual pages for similar types of content, you design a single template in the theme editor. By connecting standard theme sections (like an "Image with Text" block) to the metaobject fields using Dynamic Sources, the template automatically swaps in the correct data for each specific entry being viewed. As a result, every new entry you add in the Shopify admin is automatically assigned its own unique URL based on the template's layout.

Metaobject Pages Index

The index page is a navigation page that list out all of the entries for your metaobject and links to each of the metaobject pages.

While Shopify automatically generates individual metaobject pages for each metaobject entry, it does not automatically create the index page to list them all together. To display a list of these entries—such as a "Meet the Team" page or a list of all store locations—you must create the page in the Shopify admin and manually build a custom page template for it.

Timeline

Let’s talk about the history and evolution of metaobject pages, because they are a fairly recent addition to the Shopify platform. The foundation for these features was laid in 2021 with the launch of Online Store 2.0, which introduced native metafields. This allowed merchants to store custom data directly within Shopify without relying on third-party apps. This architectural shift also brought us dynamic sources, enabling merchants to seamlessly connect their custom metafields directly to their theme templates inside of Theme Customization.

Building on this, metaobjects were first announced in 2023. They gave us a brand new way to define and manage custom data objects across a store, rather than just extending existing objects. Shopify also continued to expand dynamic sources, bringing dynamic source support to blogs and articles, and increasing the limit to allow up to 100 dynamic sources per template. Then, a massive improvement arrived with the introduction of  Metaobject Pages. This let users turn custom objects into standalone landing pages using the theme editor.

In October 2025, Shopify increased the limits, allowing up to 1,000,000 entries per definition.  That makes for a pretty big database.

Use Cases

There are many common use cases for Metaobject Pages.  For instance, if you run a fashion store or an art gallery, you can create detailed, standalone designer or artist bio pages—featuring their photo, biography, a link to their website, and a dynamic list of the specific products they’ve designed.

Organic grocers use metaobject pages to build dedicated "Source Farm" profiles, giving each farm its own unique URL where customers can read a farm bio and see images of where their produce comes from. 

Food and home-goods brands use them to create recipe pages that include rich text instructions, ingredient lists with nutritional data, and references to recommended equipment.

They are also fabulous for building out a Brand Ambassadors experience in your store where each Ambassador gets there own profile page with bio, photos, awards and credentials and links to their socials.

Before Metaobject pages, we used to build similar functionality with blogs and articles.  But Metaobject pages are much better as we get more structured data about the object and the index page can be sorted and / or filtered in any way we want.  For example, with a recipe blog you couldn't filter by cook-time-under-30-minutes but with a recipe metaobject you can.  So if your store currently has a blog that is dedicated to a single type of content like recipes or brand ambassadors, that's an good target for migration to metaobject pages.  And don't forget to redirect from the articles to the metaobject pages when you are done to ensure SEO continuity. 

Shopify is Pushing Metaobjects

Shopify prefers that we build stores with metaobjects over complex metafields. In April 2026, Shopify reduced the size limit on metafields so stores load faster.  Big stuff should now go in Metaobjects as Metaobjects have a much higher size limit. 

That said, here are some examples of when you should not use Metaobjects:

1. When your goal is simply to add a single custom field to an existing Shopify resource, such as appending details directly onto an existing product or collection. For example, if you want to display specific "Care Instructions," an item's "Energy Efficiency Class," or the strength of a coffee blend right on the product page, you should use standard metafields instead. Metafields are built to enhance existing data models, while metaobject pages are specifically designed to create entirely new, standalone entities that live on their own unique URLs.
2. When dealing with highly dynamic or frequently changing content. Metaobjects serve as a mini content management system (CMS) that is best utilized for static, evergreen content—like size charts, ingredient lists, or author bios—that requires a consistent structure across your site and does not need to be updated frequently.
3. You should avoid using metaobjects to store large, unstructured files or documents. It is a bad practice to pack large data blobs like PDFs, embedded high-resolution images, or heavy HTML code for page builders directly into custom data fields. If your data functions more like a large raw file than a structured list of text, Shopify expects you to upload it via the Files section in the Shopify Admin and only store a lightweight reference to that file in your custom data.

Creating a Metaobject and Enabling Web Pages

Alright, let’s get into a step-by-step tutorial on how to actually build these.

Step 1: Define the Metaobject. Head over to your Shopify Admin. Go to Settings in the left menu at the bottom, then metafields and metaobjects, and then scroll down to Metaobject definitions.  Click on Add definition to create a new Metaobject. Give it a name, like "Team Member" or "Recipe".

Step 2: Add Fields. This is where you define the data you want to collect. You can add fields like Single Line Text for the Team Member's Name, Rich Text for their Bio, a File reference for their Profile Image, and even Resource References to link to a list of products they created.

Step 3: Enabling the Web Page Capability. To make this metaobject render as an actual page, you must scroll down in the definition and check the option to "Publish entries as web pages". On the backend, this activates two useful capabilities.

1. Shopify generates a unique, public URL for your metaobject entries. This gives your team the power to automatically spin up new, live pages whenever they add a new entry to the Metaobject.
2. The metaobject's SEO metadata attributes are exposed, allowing staff to easily map text fields to the page's title and meta description and includes these new pages in your store's sitemap. This ensures that all the metaobject content your staff creates can be crawled, indexed, and discovered by search engines.

Step 4: Configure SEO and URLs. When you enable web pages, Shopify will prompt you to configure your SEO. You must map specific text fields from your metaobject to serve as the Page Title and Meta Description. The URL handle will be auto-generated based on the entry, but you can customize the path it lives on.  The structure of your pages URLs will be your domain, /, the handle you define in the metaobject definition, /, the page title that you also set in the metaobject definition.  So if you had a metaobject of drummers, and a drummer named John Smith, the path would be /pages/drummers/john-smith.

Step 5: Add Content. Now that the structure is built, go to the "Content" tab in your Shopify Admin.  Metaobjects will be selected by default.  Click on the metaobject you just created.  Click the Add entry button and start filling out the form to create the entry.  Save it and repeat the process for all of your content. 

Designing the Page Template in the Theme Editor

Once your entries are saved, Shopify generates the URLs for each page, but they will be blank. You have to build a template for the layout for the pages in the Theme Editor.

To create the template, go to your Shopify Admin.  Select Sales Channels from the left menu, then Online store.  Then click the Edit theme button to open the Theme Customizer.  Click the dropdown menu at the top center of the screen that currently says Home page.  Find your new Metaobject—like "Team Member" at the bottom of the dropdown.  Select the metaobject and then click "Create Template".

This creates a JSON file inside your theme's code.  Your other templates for things like products and pages are also JSON files.  So you'll be able to use this metaobject template just like you do product and page templates.  You can add sections here in theme customization.  Or if you know how to edit theme code, you can edit the code in the code editor.  Now most stores are just going to stick to Theme Customization, but if you have advanced needs, you can go to the code to make it happen or you can get your developer to do it.

Now you get to connect your dynamic sources. You can add standard sections, like an "Image with Text" block. The magic happens when you click the Dynamic Source icon—that little database icon. Click it, and you can connect the Image block dynamically to the Team Member's Photo field, the Heading to the Name field, and the Body Text to the Bio field.

You can add more than one section if needed.  Each section can display different data elements in the object, so you'll be able to display all the information you desire on the page.  A side note, you may have fields in the metaobject that you don't want to show on the page.  Just don't use those fields as dynamic fields for a section.

The power here is scalability. You only design this layout once. Every new entry you add in the backend to the Metaobject automatically generates a new page using this exact layout, automatically swapping in the dynamic data.

Creating an Index Page

While Shopify creates the individual pages for you, it does not automatically create a top level directory page to list them all out. If you want a "Meet the Team" page that links to every Team Member, you have to build that out yourself. Themes don't yet come with a template for that.

You can build the template directly in the Theme Customizer. Here is how you do it:

First, a page template cannot access metaobjects by default.  So you'll need to connect your metaobject to your index page.  Go to your Shopify Admin, click Settings, then Custom Data, and define a new Metafield forPages. Set the type to "Metaobject," choose your specific definition (like "Team Member"), and crucially, set it to accept alist of entries rather than just a single entry.

Next, create a standard Shopify Page called "Meet the Team". At the bottom of that page editor, you'll see your new metafield. Click it, select all the team members you want to display from your list of metaobjects, and save the page.

Now, open the Theme Customizer and navigate to that page. Add a section that uses blocks, like a "Multi-row" or "Grid" section. Here is the magic step: click into the very first block of that section and click the Dynamic Source icon. Connect it to the page metafield you just created. Shopify will use a feature called "repeating blocks" to automatically output a new row for every single team member you selected, dynamically pulling in their names, photos, and descriptions.  You'll know the repeating blocks is turned on if you see an icon next to the block of a circle with two arrows.

Now, for those of you that are more technical or have access to a developer there are more options.  You can create the index page using Liquid in the code editor and give yourself more functionality. For example, you may want show all metaobject entries without having to select each one in the page metafield.  Or you may want to sort the entries in a certain way.  I'll include a link in the show notes to Shopify's documentation on creating the index page in Liquid. 

Best Practices

Let's talk about getting these pages into your storefront navigation.  Of course your index page will show up in the menu link section as all of your pages do.  And you can also select individual entries too.  You'll see your metaobject in the list underneath Policies.

Also, Metaobjects support a "Draft" status. This allows you to hide unfinished pages from the storefront and from search engines until they are fully ready to go live.

Launch Checklist

Here is a checklist of things you should review after launching custom metaobject pages and their corresponding index page:

1. Check Publishing Status (Active vs. Draft).  Check that all the metaobject entries you want visible on the live site are set to "Active". Metaobjects support a "Draft" status, which hides unfinished pages from both the storefront and search engines. If an entry is left as a draft, it will not render on the site or will appear as a blank/empty section.
   
2. Check SEO field mappings:  Ensure that specific text fields from your metaobject have been explicitly mapped to serve as the Page Title and Meta Description. If you forget to do this, the SEO settings will appear "greyed out" in your Shopify admin, which will hurt the page's search engine discoverability.
3. Confirm sitemap inclusion: Once your pages are published, verify that they are successfully being included in your store's sitemap.  You can see your sitemap by adding /sitemap.xml after your domain in your browser.
4. Click-test menu links:  Click every new link in your navigation to ensure it works.
5. Review the Index Page
   1. Verify manual selections: If your index page was built using the Theme Editor instead of code, verify that staff have manually selected every single entry they want displayed from the list in the page editor. 
   2. Check for the 50-item limit: If your development team built the index page using custom code, check if all your entries are showing. By default, Shopify caps these lists at 50 items. If you have more than 50 entries, ensure pagination is working so customers can click through to page 2, page 3, etc.
6. Review localized content: If your store operates in multiple languages or regions, verify that the new text fields on your metaobject pages have been translated. 

Summary

Metaobject pages bring real Content Management System or CMS capabilities to Shopify. Once you've set them up, adding new content is faster, your data stays consistent, and your store is better positioned for whatever Shopify rolls out next. If your store has content that fits this mold, don't wait — roll up your sleeves and build it, because the setup is a one-time effort that pays you back every single time you add a new entry.

Thanks for listening.