Update an Orbital HTML template safely

What's yours and what's ours

In an Orbital HTML template, your content lives in a few places, and the rest is template code you can replace:

products.json: your store name, currency, licence key, products, collections and home page picks,
your own photos in assets/img/,
any edits you made to pages, the CSS or the scripts,
form settings (like a Formspree address) and checkout settings you added.

Back up your whole live site folder.
Read CHANGELOG.md in the new ZIP, and the changelog on the theme page. If a release changes the products.json format, it says so there.
Unzip the new version into a new folder.
Copy your content in: your products.json, and your own photos into assets/img/.
Re-apply your edits. If you changed the header or footer through src/partials/ and npm run build, make the same change in the new src/ and build again. If you edited pages, the CSS or scripts directly, make those edits again in the new files.
Preview locally (for example python3 -m http.server 8080) and click through the shop, a product, the cart and search. If you use the optional tools, npm run test:static checks your products.json and links.
Upload the new folder to your host.

Your licence key is in products.json, so it comes across with step 4. Same domain, same key: nothing to re-activate.

If you keep your edits small and note them down (or keep the site in Git), each update takes minutes.

In an Orbital HTML template, your content lives in a few places, and the rest is template code you can replace:

products.json: your store name, currency, licence key, products, collections and home page picks,
your own photos in assets/img/,
any edits you made to pages, the CSS or the scripts,
form settings (like a Formspree address) and checkout settings you added.

Back up your whole live site folder.
Read CHANGELOG.md in the new ZIP, and the changelog on the theme page. If a release changes the products.json format, it says so there.
Unzip the new version into a new folder.
Copy your content in: your products.json, and your own photos into assets/img/.
Re-apply your edits. If you changed the header or footer through src/partials/ and npm run build, make the same change in the new src/ and build again. If you edited pages, the CSS or scripts directly, make those edits again in the new files.
Preview locally (for example python3 -m http.server 8080) and click through the shop, a product, the cart and search. If you use the optional tools, npm run test:static checks your products.json and links.
Upload the new folder to your host.

Your licence key is in products.json, so it comes across with step 4. Same domain, same key: nothing to re-activate.

If you keep your edits small and note them down (or keep the site in Git), each update takes minutes.