My collection pages are empty after install

Why collection links break and collection pages look empty right after you install Volume, and how to point them at your own collections.

This is almost always the demo content, not a bug.

When you install Volume, the theme arrives with the navigation and the collection references used in our demo store. Those handles — men, new-arrivals, sale and so on — do not exist in your store, so the links resolve to nothing.

1

Fix the navigation menus

1. Go to Online Store → Navigation.
2. Open Main menu (and any other menu the theme uses).
3. Replace each demo link with one of your own collections. Shopify shows a warning icon next to links that point nowhere.

2

Fix the collections referenced inside sections

Some sections pick collections in their own settings rather than from a menu. In Customize, sections such as Collection tabs and Featured collection with media hold one or more Collection blocks, each with its own Collection field (and a Sort by option). Open every section on the home page and set those fields to your own collections.

Volume does not substitute placeholder products when a collection is missing or empty — the section simply outputs nothing, in the theme editor as well as on the storefront. An unexplained blank stretch of page is usually exactly this.

3

Check the collection itself

Open a collection on your storefront. If the page loads but shows no products, the collection is empty or its conditions match nothing — check it under Products → Collections.

A 404 on a collection URL means the handle does not exist in your store. Renaming a collection in Shopify does not change its handle automatically, so a link that used to work can break after a rename — check the handle under Search engine listing at the bottom of the collection page.

If collection pages fail on a store using the Velum preset, check your theme version first. The Default collection template was missing from that preset and was restored in Volume 8.0.0 — the same release in which the Volume and Velum preset designs swapped places. Update the theme rather than rebuilding templates by hand; see the release notes.

For how the collection page itself is built, see Collection page and Product Grid & Filtering.