Vol. I · No. 01● Available — two client slotsOlongapo City, Philippines · GMT+8

The Storefront Gazette

Shopify Virtual Assistant & Store Specialist · Joshua De Vera
Theme & LiquidCatalog & MetafieldsDaily OperationsCore Web VitalsSEO & AI SearchAutomation
Lead story · the offer

Founder hands over the Shopify admin, gets the week back

Two years inside Shopify's technical merchant support, now freelance and fixing the stores instead of writing about them.

By Joshua De Vera · Shopify VA & Store Specialist · August 2026

I'm a Shopify virtual assistant and store specialist for founders and small ecommerce teams. Theme work, product data, daily orders, page speed and search, all handled by one person who can read the code and answer a customer email in the same afternoon.

From April 2024 to April 2026 I worked inside Shopify as technical merchant support, front line for merchants worldwide. Themes, apps, payments, checkout, DNS, domains, gateway failures. When something broke badly enough, it reached my queue.

That job taught me where stores actually break, and it is almost never where the owner thinks it is. The app everyone blames is usually innocent. The theme edit nobody documented usually is not.

Now I do the fixing directly. Two storefronts built from an empty admin, one custom internal tool shipped, and a rolling audit programme running for a UK label on a Git-connected pipeline.

Every engagement starts the same way: a free thirty-minute consult, then a written audit ordered by what will actually move revenue. You keep the list whether or not you hire me.

Book a free 30-min consultRead the reports
Credentials · verified
2Years inside
Shopify support
2Storefronts built
from scratch
1Custom tool
shipped
Taste Culinary FoodFull build, Horizon theme. Live and trading.
Adahlia BoutiqueUK modern-luxury womenswear. Ongoing theme and audit programme.
Inventory toolCustom browser reconciliation tool, built in JavaScript.
Enquiries
jshmdevera@gmail.comReply within one working day.
+63 976 148 2996Olongapo City · GMT+8 · overlaps US, UK and AU hours.

Classifieds · services offered

Page 02 · six listings
Listing 01

Theme & store build

Full storefronts from an empty admin, or precise edits to the theme you already run. Written into the theme in Liquid, not bolted on with another app.

Liquid · Horizon · Dawn · OS 2.0
Listing 02

Catalog & product data

Bulk imports, variant clean-up and structured attributes for brand, format and origin, plus the collections and filters that sit on top of them.

Matrixify · Metafields · Metaobjects
Listing 03

Daily store operations

Orders, inventory levels, refunds and the customer inbox. The unglamorous daily work that keeps a store trustworthy.

Orders · Inventory · Customer email
Listing 04

Speed & Core Web Vitals

Find what is actually slowing the page down, then fix it in the theme. Images, render-blocking scripts, layout shift, and the apps quietly costing conversions.

LCP · INP · CLS
Listing 05

SEO & AI search visibility

On-page SEO plus the newer job: being the store that AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Perplexity actually cite. Schema, structure, copy for humans first.

JSON-LD · AEO · GEO
Listing 06

Automation & integrations

Shopify Flow for the repetitive work, payment gateways and checkout configured properly, third-party apps wired to talk to each other.

Shopify Flow · ManyChat · Checkout

Reports from the field

Page 03 · problem, approach, outcome
Report 01 · full buildStatus: live · Horizon theme

Distributor moves off the shop floor and onto Shopify

Above: Taste Culinary Food, built from an empty admin on the Horizon theme.
The problem

No way to sell online

A Philippine café-ingredient distributor carrying imported brand lines was running entirely brick-and-mortar. Overhead was high, reach was limited to walk-ins, and there was no catalog structure to build anything on.

The approach

Built the storefront from scratch

  • Full Horizon build with custom Liquid across product, collection and landing pages
  • Brand cluster pages for Catcher Gourmet, Toschi and Cafetto
  • Metafields and metaobjects structuring brand, format, origin and use case
  • Payment gateways, tax settings and checkout configured end to end
  • Shopify Flow automations for subscriber notifications and operational alerts
The outcome

A storefront the owner can run

Selling online with a catalog structured to grow, bulk updates handled through Matrixify, and alerts running without anyone watching the admin.

[ Metric slot ] Add revenue, order volume or traffic once cleared to publish
Placeholder
"Add the Taste Culinary Food quote here — beside its own report, where a testimonial does the most work."
Client name · Taste Culinary Food
Report 02 · ongoingStatus: in progress · theme & audit

Luxury label stops its design system drifting

Above: Adahlia Boutique, UK modern-luxury womenswear, on a Git-connected deploy pipeline.
The problem

Every new section risked the brand

A growing catalogue and a storefront where each addition threatened the label's typography and colour rules. Deploys went straight to live with no staging step.

The approach

One system, one pipeline, rolling audits

  • Ongoing theme development through a GitHub-connected deploy pipeline
  • A single documented design system held across every section
  • Rolling audits covering performance, structure and on-page SEO
  • Flagged the direct-to-live deploy risk and scoped a staging branch
The outcome

Changes ship without the brand slipping

New sections land inside the existing system rather than beside it, and every deploy traces back to a commit.

[ Metric slot ] Add Core Web Vitals before and after, or audit findings closed
Placeholder
"Add the Adahlia Boutique quote here."
Client name · Adahlia Boutique
Report 03 · custom buildStatus: shipped · JavaScript

Reconciliation tool built rather than bought

Above: a browser-based inventory reconciliation tool, no app subscription required.
The problem

Supplier spreadsheets never matched the store

Stock counts and prices arrived in a different shape to the Shopify catalog. Reconciling them by eye was slow and produced quiet errors that surfaced later as oversells.

The approach

A browser tool, not another app

  • Plain JavaScript and HTML, runs in the browser with nothing to install
  • Compares supplier price and SKU data against the live catalog
  • Surfaces mismatches for a human to approve rather than auto-writing
  • No monthly fee and no third party holding the data
The outcome

Reconciliation became a task, not a day

A repeatable check the owner runs themselves, with the risky write step kept under human approval by design.

[ Metric slot ] Add hours saved per cycle, or mismatches caught on the first run
Notice to readers

Recognise any of those?

Free thirty-minute consult, then a written audit ordered by what will actually move revenue. You keep the list whether or not you hire me.

Book the consultRead the classifieds

Opinion · from the desk

Page 04 · about the author
JDJoshua De Vera · Olongapo

From April 2024 to April 2026 I worked inside Shopify as technical merchant support, front line for merchants worldwide. Themes, apps, payments, checkout, DNS, domains, gateway failures. When something broke, it landed in my queue.

That job taught me where stores actually break, and it is almost never where the owner thinks it is. Now I do the fixing directly, freelance, for founders and small teams who need someone who can read Liquid and answer a customer email in the same afternoon.

Before Shopify I spent two years in high-volume data processing and a year coordinating patient care. That is where the catalog discipline and the tolerance for a busy inbox come from. I studied Information Technology at Gordon College in Olongapo City, where I still work.

I use Claude Code and AI-assisted workflows throughout, so turnaround is faster than the rate suggests. Everything I ship is documented, so you are never locked into me. That is the point.

Shopify Admin · Liquid · JavaScript · HTML · CSS · Matrixify · Shopify Flow · Metafields · Metaobjects · Search & Discovery · PageFly · ManyChat · Core Web Vitals · JSON-LD
Free thirty-minute consult · no obligation

Tell me what's stuck

Bring the store URL and the thing that has been annoying you. Worst case you leave with a straight answer and a written plan you could hand to anyone.

jshmdevera@gmail.com+63 976 148 2996