Just thought it was time that I posted my honest opinion of V8.... Hopefully i'm not speaking too soon....
After using the trial version of V8 and going on both the user and designer training I can honestly say that V8 is a massive improvement. I imagine it takes some getting used to if you are a designer who has been tinkering with actinic templates for years.... but on the whole the entire design process is very slick.
We were using another e-commerce package which actinic has certainly had its run ins with in the past (mentioning no names - it's a censored word on this forum anyway!). For this we used a designer to build the store since I had around 10,000 products to compile into a database from paper based catalogues. These were eventually imported but it took 3 months to get the site we wanted online. No disrespect to our designer, he done a grand job, but the software we used and he used to design in is absolutly useless. It chugs along with 7000 products (max is 10000). It very slow for the customer as it is so heavy in javascript. It crashes all the time and is so poorly built from a programming perspective I'm surprised they haven't been sued....(To the point where an update led to you being able to transfer your shopping cart from one site built on this software to a completely unique site on another server built from the same software- in effect buying anyones products from any online store made with this software!!)
Moving to V8 has been a pleasure, we already have another v7 store on a separate server dedicated to just our bestselling products and tailored SEO wise to this. Our flagship store I am now rebuilding in V8, moving away from the useless software, and I have made more progress designing this part-time over 2 weeks in v8, than we made with our designer in 1 month! Bare in mind I had virtually no V8 design experience just a fair amount of knowledge of CSS and HTML.
This is why I would like to pat actinic on the back for building a great upgrade to an already excellent piece of software. This is why we have just brought Business Multi-Site. Well done Actinic.
My only gripe.... Gotta have one... You need to include more about building a custom design in V8 in your training courses. Most customers want a site which looks like their own and on a budget, cutting out the cost of a designer if possible and not just a colour variations of a built in template. The traning touched on integrating a dreamweaver design at the very end of the course for around 5-10 minutes. Most of what I have learned I'm afraid to say has been self taught. Please please re-think the content of the V8 design course, just explaining how to add the innerlayout and a few other variables is not enough. People need to know more about wrapping variables in custom css. Include building a custom product template from the ground up, custom section layouts from the ground up and a little on designing an outerlayout in dreamweaver. That should do the trick....
After using the trial version of V8 and going on both the user and designer training I can honestly say that V8 is a massive improvement. I imagine it takes some getting used to if you are a designer who has been tinkering with actinic templates for years.... but on the whole the entire design process is very slick.
We were using another e-commerce package which actinic has certainly had its run ins with in the past (mentioning no names - it's a censored word on this forum anyway!). For this we used a designer to build the store since I had around 10,000 products to compile into a database from paper based catalogues. These were eventually imported but it took 3 months to get the site we wanted online. No disrespect to our designer, he done a grand job, but the software we used and he used to design in is absolutly useless. It chugs along with 7000 products (max is 10000). It very slow for the customer as it is so heavy in javascript. It crashes all the time and is so poorly built from a programming perspective I'm surprised they haven't been sued....(To the point where an update led to you being able to transfer your shopping cart from one site built on this software to a completely unique site on another server built from the same software- in effect buying anyones products from any online store made with this software!!)
Moving to V8 has been a pleasure, we already have another v7 store on a separate server dedicated to just our bestselling products and tailored SEO wise to this. Our flagship store I am now rebuilding in V8, moving away from the useless software, and I have made more progress designing this part-time over 2 weeks in v8, than we made with our designer in 1 month! Bare in mind I had virtually no V8 design experience just a fair amount of knowledge of CSS and HTML.
This is why I would like to pat actinic on the back for building a great upgrade to an already excellent piece of software. This is why we have just brought Business Multi-Site. Well done Actinic.
My only gripe.... Gotta have one... You need to include more about building a custom design in V8 in your training courses. Most customers want a site which looks like their own and on a budget, cutting out the cost of a designer if possible and not just a colour variations of a built in template. The traning touched on integrating a dreamweaver design at the very end of the course for around 5-10 minutes. Most of what I have learned I'm afraid to say has been self taught. Please please re-think the content of the V8 design course, just explaining how to add the innerlayout and a few other variables is not enough. People need to know more about wrapping variables in custom css. Include building a custom product template from the ground up, custom section layouts from the ground up and a little on designing an outerlayout in dreamweaver. That should do the trick....
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