# Publishing products

It’s important that all new products are first created within ERP and then marked as web active. Once that step has been completed DotApparel can detect these and then sync into Shopify with the correct linking between platforms. When this process is not followed, important information like pricing, inventory and order syncing will not function as DotApparel will not be aware of any products created directly within Shopify.\
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When a product is created in Shopify, DotApparel will leave it *unpublished*. This means that you can see the product in the Shopify admin area and update its attributes where necessary, but it will not yet be available for purchase by customers.

When you have added any missing attributes to the product and are happy that you wish to make it public, you will need to [publish it](https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/products/add-update-products#make-products-available-on-your-sales-channels) using the button in Shopify.

Inversely, when wishing to make a product unavailable to customers (it is retired), you will need to *unpublish* the product from Shopify using the button in the Shopify admin.

This process means that you can precisely manage when products are available and unavailable on the website whilst managing your product content at your own pace.

## Splitting colours <a href="#splitting-colours" id="splitting-colours"></a>

When creating products in Shopify, DotApparel will create a separate product per colour. This is not configurable, and is done for a number of reasons.

1. It is easier to manage images at a product level in Shopify (one set of images per colour)
2. Each colour will automatically appear independently on collection pages (a big plus for merchandising)
3. One one variant option needs to be used in Shopify (size)

To allow colours to be “linked together” in Shopify using swatches, a metafield is written to every product in the key `dotapparel21.siblings`, which lists all of the sibling colours, their URLs and swatch images if DotApparel is linked to Cloudinary.

This metafield can be used to output a series of swatch links on each product page, which allows customers to horizontally navigate between the colours, while still maintaining the benefits which a separate product approach brings to Shopify.

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