Get the Pro version Dan, it's way more powerful, and it's already available, it gets an upgrade when the Pro version of the Cart Creator is released, but it's fully out now to use already

I have recently purchased several CC software packages, including Shopping Cart Creator and SC Designer Pro. I am enjoying playing around with them, but am a little frustrated by the lack of editing features provided with these two in particular.

One thing I have noticed, which I believe could be remedied quite easily, is the lack of theme consistency between software programs. For example - couldn't the same themes be available in programs such as HTML Editor, SC Creator, Forms, Designer Pro etc? All these programs have good themes available, but I have not seen the same themes across different programs. If there was consistency, it sure would make site creation a lot easier.

From what I have seen with the two shopping cart programs so far, neither is really useful for editing, or making 'on-the-fly' changes which are easily transferable to other site pages.
Anyhow, I'm about to embark on another 6-hour, self-training session on these wonderful CC products, so if i discover any easy editing techniques, i'll share them here.

Hiya Tony,

I'm not quite sure what you mean on either of your comments/questions.

For the themes if you look in the CC Store in the Themes section you will find some themes for the HTML Editor that are matching themes of the Shopping Cart Creator. Or you can build your own like I did and make it any way you like. There is no way to use the exact same theme from one program to the other as the code is different between them, so if that is what you meant, then that won't be happening. If it's just that you're looking for themes that match, check the theme section for HTML Editor and you'll find a package there and single ones also for matching SCC.

Not sure what you are talking about for the SC Programs not being useful for editing. Editing what? The SC Designer program is where you design the theme, the SC Creator program is where you put your products. This can be done very easily on the fly as the program does load up quite quickly, and if you need to edit a product or a bunch of them you just edit them and publish it again. It only uploads the changes so it's quite easily done. You can't do things like lickety split of course as there's a lot of code updated when you re-publish it, but it's still not bad at all.

I would suggest you take the time to get to know the programs better as you are mentioning you are planning to do. I think you'll be quite surprised at the versatility of them both.

Hi Jo Ann
Yeah - i think i need more practice, for sure. When i opened a theme in Designer Pro, i tried (and expected to be able to) to change some words - obviously with no success.

I'm not sure yet how I can build a theme myself - this is what i would like to do. I assume it is built in a different program but i cannot see how you import it into Designer Pro as it seems to only recognize certain file types (is this correct?)

I understand what Creator does a little better, as I have successfully entered categories and products. I played around with a Designer Pro theme and managed to save this correctly, as I could apply it to my shop in Creator and when I preview the shop it comes up with the Designer Pro theme that i played around with - so must have done something right?

What I cannot figure out (yet) is how to edit the header in Design Pro themes - what i mean is, add my logo and business name.

I have only had the products for 24 hours so i still have a long way to go - is there a 'user-manual' that came with my download? I haven't managed to locate one yet and this would certainly help me if one exists.

Anyhow, back to the 'drawing-board' - its fun learning new programs.

(PS JO, do you know if CC has a good graphic / image editor program? One suitable for creating and editing images (vector images, jpg, tiff etc)??

The fact that you can build your own theme from scratch is misleading. You must start with a prebuilt theme and customize it as much as the program will allow.

Hiya Tony,

Follow what Tom says for getting your theme how you like it. Just pick either an already created theme, one from the theme store, or one of the blank layouts and edit to your hearts content. This is actually a good thing since we don't have to do all the structuring, just changing so it saves a lot of time from starting from scratch

I'll assume you already figured out the answer to your problem with changing words and content in the Designer. No can do there, all content is changed in the Cart program. All words and images inside the Designer are basically place holders only so they don't matter as far as the content.

Yep you are doing it right if you were able to get things to save and transfer over to the Cart, go you! Takes a little time to get to know your way around the programs, but once you do you'll be set to go. Importing of course can only be done from themes built for the programs themselves as they are specific coding and programming so you can't really import themes from other programs. There are quite a few available though in the Theme store, and if it is of any consequence, my theme started from one of the default themes and looks nothing like it now lol. You can do quite a lot with them.

The User Manual should be there when you check the Help. Most all of CC's programs comes with a PDF help/user manual file. Hollar if that's missing, but it should be there and can be quite helpful.

CC doesn't have any actual graphics editors. Has some graphics manipulating programs for flash and animations, but I don't really use them so I can't say if they are good or not sorry. I use other programs, and I just recently found out that Windows 7 has given the Windows Paint a nice upgrade as well which gives it a lot more versatility for on the fly stuff. I use Paint Shop Pro 12 and Photo Shop Elements 2 & 7 for most things I need complex image editing for. And I use EZ Thumbs for creating awesome thumbnails and resizing mass images.

Hope that helps

The header is a tricky little devil indeed. I believe it's going to depend on what exactly you're trying to add. If it's one large image you should be able to add that to the header area in the Designer. Then manipulate as you need. The main suggestion I'd give here is size it how you want it "before" adding it to the Designer, as the Designer doesn't do well for resizing images in quality. Best to resize it to your desired size first.

Scott, I also would like to be a beta tester
When will be ready upgrades for Shopping Cart and Designer? Version 4.0? With PostGreSQL database back-end option?

I doubt this program will ever use a database as part of the core. Adding something like that would really complicate things for some people and the goal of this application is to make things easier not harder.