Order Anywhere vs build product pages in shopsite

[Vantel Web Services]

Hi,

I have a site, http://www.pearlstogo.com that I only use shopsite manager
just for the cart. Everything is "order anywhere" and the site is built
outside of shopsite. So I need to make a new product page, etc, every time
I add a product.

I am thinking of upgrading to pro version as I believe I cannot use many of
the features available when I build with order anywhere, correct?

Is there a way to build my product details pages in html (I use Adobe
GoLive) using shopsite to look like they do now? I want to be apply to use
the features of pro, but I am concerned about using just templates for the
product pages. Can I build the templates in GoLive, then upload them so
that shopsite builds all the new pages based on my original design?

Can I also still use some of my built pages (shipping info, about the
company, etc) in conjunction with the shopsite pages. If I publish, will it
affect my non shopsite pages?

I appreciate your help and input.

Thank you,
Kevin Sullivan

[Guest]

Hi Kevin,
mmmmh .. couple of things to consider:

1. "order anywhere" buttons are really not recommended because they are based on
an internal ShopSite item number - if you make any changes to the product
database, this number will change and all of your order links will point to the
wrong product.

2. You want to use to custom templates - good move. You can do this with SC
Manager, no need to purchase Pro (which basically adds a few Inventory,
Affiliate and Search functions - some of this stuff might become available in
the long anticipated version 6.0)

3. The pages that ShopSite generates and your GL pages are fully separate - no
need to worry that they'll be affected (unless you happen to publish in the
"store" deirectory under the same filename, but you can control all this). We've
built our template in NOF and then added the template tags - should work fine in
GL too; it might be some trial and error before eerything looks OK - just start
with a few product/page that are not visible to yor customers.

4. Consider managing your products in an external database (OrderManager from
StoneEdge) or simple Spreadsheet and upload the entire file when you make
changes to your products - this will become routine after a while and can be
mostly automated. This way you don;t have to worry about your order anywhere
buttons anymore, anytime!

Hope this helps,
Joachim
webmaster@chinasprout.com
http://www.chinasprout.com


Vantel Web Services wrote:

Hi,

I have a site, http://www.pearlstogo.com that I only use shopsite manager
just for the cart. Everything is "order anywhere" and the site is built
outside of shopsite. So I need to make a new product page, etc, every time
I add a product.

I am thinking of upgrading to pro version as I believe I cannot use many of
the features available when I build with order anywhere, correct?

Is there a way to build my product details pages in html (I use Adobe
GoLive) using shopsite to look like they do now? I want to be apply to use
the features of pro, but I am concerned about using just templates for the
product pages. Can I build the templates in GoLive, then upload them so
that shopsite builds all the new pages based on my original design?

Can I also still use some of my built pages (shipping info, about the
company, etc) in conjunction with the shopsite pages. If I publish, will it
affect my non shopsite pages?

I appreciate your help and input.

Thank you,
Kevin Sullivan