Everything you need to run Masterfile.
Onboarding guides, operational workflows, and reference material — written so you can get through setup quickly and focus on the store.
01Overview
02 guidesHow Masterfile comics work
A top-down map of how Masterfile pulls a comic catalog from your distributors, turns it into Shopify products, and runs the recurring work of selling weekly comics.
How Masterfile digital editions work
A top-down map of how Masterfile turns capsules into purchasable editions, syncs them to Shopify, and delivers them to customer-account libraries.
02Getting Started
07 guidesChoose a plan
Pick a Masterfile subscription tier in Shopify.
Configure sync rules
Choose which products flow from the Masterfile catalog into your Shopify store.
Set your distributor costs
Enter the wholesale discounts you receive so Masterfile fills in accurate unit costs on every synced product.
Set up your catalog page
Add a storefront catalog page where customers can search and filter your whole product catalog.
Configure your Shopify product theme
Add the Comic Details, Pre-Order Notice, and Subscription Picker blocks to your product page.
Enable Shopify customer account pages
Add the My Subscriptions, My Collection, and Digital Editions blocks to your customer account so shoppers can self-serve.
Pin the Masterfile admin blocks
Pin the COMET Product Fields and COMET Variant Fields blocks so comic metafields appear on every product and variant in your Shopify admin.
03Comics
23 guidesCatalog & Sync
Update your sync rules
Change which products flow into your store after initial setup.
Add an individual issue to your store
Pull a single issue into your Shopify store without broadening your sync rules.
Update distributor costs
Adjust the discount values Masterfile uses to calculate your margins.
Edit comic metafields
Manually correct COMET fields on a synced product or variant when the data is wrong.
Pause and resume product sync
Temporarily stop new products from syncing into your store.
Submit a distributor order
Review, buffer, export, and submit a weekly restock order for PRH or Lunar.
Receive a distributor shipment
Upload a shipment, mark inventory incoming, and reconcile each line against the box.
Storefront
Choose which comic fields display on product pages
Toggle which series, credit, and variant fields appear in the Comic Details block.
Customize catalog page filters and sort
Change which filters and sort options customers see on the storefront catalog page.
Customize pre-order and subscription labels
Change the badge text, subscribe / one-time labels, and other copy shown to shoppers.
Customer Support
Troubleshooting
A product didn't sync
Diagnose why a product from the catalog didn't appear in your Shopify store.
The Subscription Picker isn't showing on a product
Diagnose why a product that should offer subscriptions isn't showing the picker.
A theme block isn't appearing on my storefront
Diagnose why Comic Details, Subscription Picker, or Pre-Order Notice isn't rendering.
A customer says their account pages are missing
Fix My Subscriptions and My Collection not appearing in customer accounts.
Concepts
About product sync
How Masterfile turns distributor catalog data into up-to-date Shopify products.
About pre-orders
How Masterfile manages the pre-order lifecycle automatically.
About series
Series group issues into the ongoing runs customers subscribe to, and are the pivot Masterfile uses to track issues, subscribers, and billing together.
About subscriptions
How customer subscriptions to ongoing series are billed, tracked, and fed into your distributor orders.
About customer accounts
What customers see in My Subscriptions, My Collection, and Digital Editions — and what they can change.
About the catalog page
The storefront page Masterfile hosts so customers can search, filter, and sort your full active product catalog.
About distributor orders
How Masterfile turns customer preorders into the weekly restock you send to each distributor.
About distributor shipments
How Masterfile turns a distributor shipment into Shopify incoming inventory and then onto the shelf.
04Digital Editions
16 guidesEditions
Create a digital editions project
Start a new project to hold the capsules and editions for one title.
Add a scroll capsule
Build a Webtoons-like vertical scrolling experience with chapters and optional audio.
Add a layered art capsule
Compose a stacked, peelable artwork capsule from individual image layers.
Add a guided reading capsule
Build a panel-by-panel guided tour through comic pages by drawing ordered frames over each page.
Add a music capsule
Build an album capsule with tracks, performers, and credits that plays inside an edition.
Add an attachment capsule
Bundle PDFs, images, video, or audio files into a capsule that customers can open from inside an edition.
Compose and preview an edition
Bundle a project's capsules into a customer-facing edition and preview the whole reading experience.
Publish a digital editions project
Push a project to Shopify as a sellable product, ship updates, and unpublish when needed.
Resync an edition to Shopify
Check Shopify sync status for a project and retry when the storefront drifts out of date.
Customer Support
Troubleshooting
The Digital Editions section is missing from a customer's account
Diagnose why the Digital Editions customer-account block isn't rendering.
A digital edition didn't sync to Shopify
Diagnose why a published edition didn't appear as a Shopify product or variant.
A customer can't access an edition they bought
Diagnose why a purchaser isn't seeing or can't open an edition they paid for.
Concepts
About digital editions
Projects, capsules, and editions, the building blocks of Digital Editions, and how they map to Shopify products.
About capsule types
The kinds of content units you can build inside a digital edition. Scroll, guided reading, layered art, music, and downloadable attachments.
About digital edition access
How buying a digital edition gives a customer the right to read it, and how that access shows up in their Shopify account.