Athens 6.0: Total Color Control, B2B Tools, and So Much More

This massive update introduces native color schemes, giving you total, section-by-section control over your store’s visual identity. We’ve also added powerful features like B2B bulk ordering, built-in product comparison, and countdown timers to help you sell more effectively.

Athens 6.0 is here, and it might just be our most transformative update yet. This release hands you the keys to your store’s entire visual identity with a revolutionary approach to color management. We’re also introducing powerful B2B features, built-in product comparison, advanced conditional visibility, and a host of new sections and blocks to make your store more dynamic and intelligent than ever before.

The Game-Changer: Native Color Schemes

The centerpiece of Athens 6.0 is the migration to Shopify’s native color schemes. This is a fundamental change that gives you complete and granular control over your store’s palette. Instead of a limited set of theme-wide color options, you can now create multiple, distinct color schemes and apply them to any section across your store. This allows for richer, more varied brand expression and easier management of your site’s appearance.

Important: This is a major structural change. To take full advantage of the new system, please review our detailed guide on upgrading to Athens v6.0 and later.

Major New Features

• B2B “Bulk Order” Section: A dedicated section on the product page designed for wholesale customers. It allows for quick and easy ordering of multiple variants at once, streamlining the B2B purchasing process.
• Product Comparison: Customers can now select products to compare side-by-side directly from collection pages, helping them make faster, more informed purchasing decisions. A dedicated “Product comparison” section is also available.
• Conditional Section Visibility: Build more dynamic and intelligent layouts with the new “Hide section if empty” option. Available in most sections, this setting automatically hides a section if its associated blocks or fields are linked to a metafield that has no value. This ensures you never have empty, awkward spaces on your pages
• New Product Page Blocks: Enhance your product pages with new, purpose-built blocks:
  • Countdown Timer: Drive urgency for sales or limited editions.
  • Range Indicator: Visually display stock levels or other metrics.
  • Personalization Text: Add custom text fields for product personalization.

Advanced Customization & Layout

• Expanded Product Block Options: Product blocks now support variant metafields, allowing you to display highly specific product data (e.g., variant.custom.width). You can also now set a custom mobile width for product images.
• New Animation & Styling Controls: We’ve added slide animations to Slideshows, color scheme settings to buttons and content in numerous sections, and a new highlight color for the row product layout.
• Flexible Navigation & Headers: The header now features a collapsible navigation option when sticky, saving screen space while keeping essential links accessible.
• Enhanced Section Settings: From heading tag selections for SEO in the Newsletter section to new title settings in the Brands section, you have more control over the fine details of your store’s layout.

Design & SEO Enhancements

• Expanded Social Icons: Connect with your audience on more platforms with new icons for Bandcamp, Discord, and Spotify. We’ve also fully replaced the Twitter icon with X.
• Smarter SEO: We’ve split advanced settings into “SEO” and “Visibility” for clarity. Many sections now include heading tag selections to improve your site structure.
• Performance & UX: Images now benefit from streamlined sizing, and self-hosted videos are lazy-loaded for faster page speeds. We’ve also updated all theme icons to a sharper, more modern style.

Fixes and Refinements

• Improved the behavior of the mini cart drawer, sticky header, and live notifications.
• Corrected various styling and alignment issues in the countdown banner, dividers, and mobile text.
• The spacing settings for header and announcement bar sections can now be reduced to 0 for pixel-perfect designs.
• Removed default titles from several promotional sections for a cleaner starting point.
• Enhanced the user experience in the theme editor, such as staying in the settings panel when clicking on an image hotspot.

Removed

• Theme settings color options: These have been entirely replaced by the superior native color scheme system.
• Redundant color settings in the “Media with text banner” and “Scrolling elements” sections have been removed to align with the new centralized color scheme approach.

Upgrade to Athens 6.0 Today

Athens 6.0 marks a bold leap forward in customization and strategic selling. The introduction of native color schemes gives you unparalleled creative freedom, while new features like bulk ordering and product comparison provide tangible tools to boost sales.

Try Athens for free and discover how these powerful new features can elevate your storefront. We can’t wait to see what you build!