Using cartweaver with dreamweaver cs3

Question

cartweaver seems like a decent out of the box ecommerce
solution, but how is it while using dreamweaver. Is it easy to
integrate the code into the existing pages? Is it a series of
include files that require a hand coders touch to modify
successfully to look seamless with existing site?

Answer 1

Hello,
I use Cartweaver but have not used eCart, though I have heard
many good
things about it.
There's a lot of good info on both websites.
Perhaps someone will describe their experience with eCart.
I can talk about CW.
First, let me say the support is excellent.
I would suggest you take a look through the CW newsgroup.
It's a great way
to see what kind of questions people are asking so you can
get a feel for
what it can and can't do. This will really help you, I think.
news://support.cartweaver.com/
Read the PHP newsgroup, specially posts by "Tom Muck"
I currently use the ASP version, but I think the PHP version
may be a better
choice.
The reason is that there appears to be more users and thus,
more scripts and
modifications available, posted in the newsgroups, to do some
very nice
things.
CW is very easy to set up. Run the extension and it loads all
needed pages
into your site in DW.
It adds a nice toolbar in DW where you can easily insert
functions on any
page.
The admin section is very thorough and intuitive.
The clients I have love it.
It's simple to add or edit products, photos, options, skus
and so on. You
can change the layout of the result pages just by selecting
how many columns
you want on the page, and there are a number of other
options.
It's easy to look at customer and order information as well.
To implement CW into your design, it's very easy to change
the CSS in the
included stylesheet.
To change functions or certain aspects of the layout, you do
need to get
into the code a bit.
For example, you can set the results pages to show x amount
of products per
page with a simple entry in the Admin section.
If there are more products than allowed to be shown on one
page, a "paging
links" menu allows navigation to next page. It is a simple
"Previous, 1, 2,
3, Next" text menu.
I wanted to make this look like buttons, so I had to go into
the script that
draws this on the page and change the code to insert
<li> instead of just
inserting text. I also had to change the script to use an
unordered list for
the menus instead of plain text links with line breaks
between them.
This wasn't very hard to do, but it depends on your
understanding of server
side language. Again though, any questions I've asked in the
newsgroup or
through a support ticket were answered very quickly and were
very specific.
"Change line 86 in something.asp to this", for example.
There are a couple of things CW doesn't do that I hope will
be in future
versions:
Ability to use PayPal's Website Payment's Pro.
Ability to link to UPS, FedEx, etc to get real time shipping
charges. I know
there can be issues with this, but some clients want it.
As far as what you can do with CW or eCart, definitely take a
look at their
customer examples:
http://www.cartweaver.com/customers/sitesusingcw.cfm
http://www.webassist.com/professional/products/productdetails.asp?PID=123
Then click "showcase".
Here is a site I just did with CW, if interested:
http://www.bestbabystuffonline.com/
Take care,
Tim
"jsteinmann" <[email protected]> wrote in
message
news:[email protected]...
> I'm trying to decide where my $300 is best spent between
cartweaver and
> ecart.
> I like very much how easy ecart appears to be to setup
gateway payment
> pages
> using both remote and local payment pages, but as a
developer, I need to
> make
> sure I can customize to the nth degree, create admins if
needed to manage
> products, promotions, images, etc., and not be boxed
into a system that
> requires the use of an extension in dreamweaver
everytime a change is
> needed.
> Cartweaver appears to do this, but to be frank, their
demo isn't that
> impressive. And without trying it, I have a feeling it's
a series of a
> dozen
> include files you need to track down to make changes,
and then hand code
> your
> way into something more robust... and if I'm going to go
to that trouble,
> osCommerce and Zen Cart are free. Does Cartweaver use
the dreamweaver
> recordsets and server behaviors throughout their
templated system of admin
> functions? Where is the money best spent if you are able
to develop an
> admin
> area yourself?
>
>