Upgrade from Catalogue to Developer

[JimboS]

I have designed several site with Catalogue and wonder if there are many actual design benefits to changing to Developer.

Plus is it an easy upgrade to make or will it play havok with the sites I already have?

James

[Nadeem]

Hi there

The upgrade will be another licence key, which you will place in "Housekeeping | Upgrade"

This will change the Catalog software to Developer, but will not change any templates. It will simply just add new functions

The main advantages of Developer are:

1. Licence Multiple sites
2. All Business Function (Cust a/c, Price Schedule, Command lines, External link)
2. Dreamweaver extenstions

Hope this helps you

Kind Regards

[JimboS]

Thnaks

So the additional functions would be things like:

Repeat customers being able to log in and be automatically known, is this done automatically online as people first place an order or is this something that has to updated manually.

Does developer allow for product to have discount for multiple items - i.e. one costs £10 but order 5 and you get 10% discount?

And what do you mean by command lines and external links?

If I were to retain full control of the sites my customers would only need to purchase order manager to receive and process orders - is that correct?

When you say it will licence multiple sites then all I have to do will be create new site and this will automatically be done without the need for another key?

Sorry to be a pain but I want to make sure it is worth it before upgrading.

James

[Nadeem]

Hi James

Repeat customers being able to log in and be automatically known, is this done automatically online as people first place an order or is this something that has to updated manually.

This is done offline and you will need to create the customer accounts manually, and then update the website

Does developer allow for product to have discount for multiple items - i.e. one costs £10 but order 5 and you get 10% discount?

Within Business/Developer you have got the option for quanity based discounting, which will achieve on what you want here. Although you will put a price, rather than a percentage.

At present the only discount, is based on Cart Value

And what do you mean by command lines and external links?

Actinic Business and Developer have the ability to link to a worksheet or an access database.

The following is taken from our help file for command lines

Ecommerce is usually started from the default desktop icon or from the Windows Start menu. The result is Ecommerce starts and waits to be used. This behaviour can be changed by supplying one or more command line parameters so that it automatically performs certain actions.

These actions will be: Uploading, downloading, exporting. Therefore you can run to set actinic to upload and download at the same time

An example of command line is: (We are assuming you are in the run box for windows)

"C:\Program Files\Actinic Ecommerce v6\Catalog.exe" /d /u

This will launch actinic, if it is not open, and then do a download and an upload straight after. This function is only for Business and Developer.

If I were to retain full control of the sites my customers would only need to purchase order manager to receive and process orders - is that correct?

Correct

When you say it will licence multiple sites then all I have to do will be create new site and this will automatically be done without the need for another key?

Again correct, thats the advantage of Developer, its multisite for, but when you send it to the client, they will need a licence key, be it for order manager, catalog or business

Sorry to be a pain but I want to make sure it is worth it before upgrading.

Don't worry, i quite agree, you need to know if it will be worth it, otherwise you will wasting your money.
I would suggest as well, if you have another pc, please try out the trial software for developer. That why you can see if it is better suited to your needs for the additional function

Kind Regards

[JimboS]

Mnay thnaks - I will give it some tought and load developer onto another PC