Well, I guess I should have downloaded the trial version & tried it before I bought both the designer & creator pro software. I fiddled around for several days and could not get the result I wanted. I went to the forums & looked it up but I have not got a definitive answer to my problem. I believed the pro version allowed full customization of my shop but it seems that there is a protocol that must be followed. All I wanted to do was create several tabs across the top below my banner. Each tab would represent the category except the home page & cart summary tab. I would introduce my shop and have required links to contact me etc in the homepage and I have 3 categories. Each tab or page would show all my products that belong to that category. I do not like the drop down sub menu that is offered to place the categories into. I have actually designed my shop just the way I want it but don't have the knowledge to create a Paypal shopping cart to work with it. I was hoping that this software was my answer. OH well, perhaps I am wrong and what I want can be done but not by a novice like me maybe or maybe what I want is not practical or workable, I don't know or even for that matter desireable from a users point of view when shopping. Oh well I have the software and it is free updates for life, maybe one day in future upgrades I will find it will suit my needs.

How about adding a picture of your website design or a link to it

You may be surprised given a little more detail may get an answer to this problem

Or at least a workable compromise, this forum and its users built up my confidence, when i started out, like you i could not see the wood for the trees

The answer is in here somewhere, honest

Viv

You are only able to modify themes to a certain extent. You do not get a blank canvas, so building a theme from scratch is not possible. People have to accept this program as a coloring book. You can choose the colors but you can't change the outline.

An alternative to making a long horizontal menu under your banner for your categories would be to create a small menu block on the home page that has the categorie links (with or without graphical buttons) which would do exactly the same thing as a horizontal menu button would. Just takes a little adding of HTML to do this if you have the knowledge to create a vertical menu. Then add that to the page on the left or right side and that should work great for your needs.

The only other way to accomplish this would be to create extra pages, which you can create up to 5 of them in the SCC programs. You can add anything you want to on those pages, including your category links etc. Granted, if you have a whole lot of products this will be tedious work to recreate all the image placemarks for each of your items in a separate category page, but it can be done none the less, just not automatically is all.

I too wish it had more features like this, but hopefully given time we'll see additions like this in the future. Best thing you can do for now on this thread is to post something in the Suggestions thread(s) to ask for this feature. Always remember, asking for anything in life is the hardest part, and the worst that can happen is they will say no right?

Mike, If you go to PayPal they have reasonably good directions for setting up the cart. It seems like, tho, that some of the set-up is done automatically in SCC pro. I tried to set mine up a couple days and don't know yet if it works.

I too, wish it were more of a blank canvas and a little more flexible design wise. (I'm seem to be more into the design than selling my products!) I'm going to work around it tho.

I like your design idea, Mike. I only have 4-5 categories myself, and don't really need the 'category ' button. My nav is on the side, as I agree the drop down box for categories is a little too obscure.