A few pre-sales questions

[Sound Design]

Hi. I'm not actually using Actinic yet and am looking for a few answers before I buy. I have downloaded the trial version and I have sent some e-mails to sales about these but no answers yet. I figured that perhaps the best people to ask are those already using the product.

1) If I buy the Developer version to create sites for customers, is there any software that needs to be added to their computers to manage their site or is it all done online?

2) How easy is it to integrate an Actinic cart into an existing web site design? I am a Web Designer and would like to be able to create my own web site designs based on customers' preferences and adapt Actinic to fit that design NOT the other way round ie. using an Actinic template and making the rest of the site fit to that. Is it possible for me to create a site in Dreamweaver and then save it as a template for Actinic?

I am aware that there is an extension for Dreamweaver included but can someone help me out with exactly what it does? As well as playing around with the demo I have a lot of work to get on with too, so any expert advice would speed up my learning.

I appreciate any help you can give me to make an informed decision on purchasing Actinic.

[I-CC]

1. If you develop the sites for customers and your end customers are only downloading orders and do not require to update there own sites, then they would need Actinic Order Manager to be able to download the orders. If they need to upload upon your delivering the site to them, then they would need Catalog or Business (if accounts and Business features needed).

2. So long as you are HTML aware and can cut 'n' paste your html code into the correct templates, then you can develop pretty much what you want. Best thing is to get into the templates at Advanced | Template Manager to see how this breaks down. The Advanced User Guide available from the www.actinic.co.uk download area is a good source of info for customizing and adding features to Actinic sites.

[Sound Design]

Thanks for your reply.

So it's working out quite expensive overall. Yes, my customers need to be able to update the site, changing products, prices, offers etc. £1250 + VAT for me to develop sites and £799 + VAT for my customers to update them! If it's going to cost them £799 + VAT just to update their site, why bother paying me to design a site for them?? They might just as well buy a copy of Actinic Business and cut me out! Why then does Actinic's web site say that with the Developer version you can "Build and manage multiple stores with one software licence" ?? I assume that this means that only I can manage the store with it?

[I-CC]

If your customers want to update the site, then they need a licenced copy of the appropriate title, no way around that element.

Actinic Developer enables you to develop as many sites as you like and manage them as the developer of the sites, where in those situations your customer just needs the order manager, which is a lot cheaper obviously.