CMSCart Manual
Introduction to the CMSCart System
The CMSCart system is designed to be an extremely powerful way to design
sites through a user interface, without coding. Everything from design
to content can be done by an (administration) user through this
interface instead of code! This means users can develop sites while
retaining the ability to do almost anything developers would, which is
far beyond CMSs and carts of the past.
* Note site is used in reference to any browser presented material
including but not limited to websites and web stores.
Additionally, the CMSCart system has the ability to provide live connection with ERP for
presentation of inventory, etc. Most cart systems provide their own
separate inventory handling which often quickly becomes outdated and
usually requires double entry (which has it's own inherent issues). With
CMSCart, items and even their sales structure (categories and
sub-categories) are presented live. For instance, this means if a user
of the ERP system modifies the description or pricing of an item then
the very next time anyone accesses the site, this new information will
appear. Please read the Template Globals and ERP Communication sections
for information on using the ERP functionality.
With most/all other carts using templates, the templates are limited.
The only way to go beyond would be to have someone very knowledgeable,
most likely a developer, develop a new template, usually using a
template coding language as well as other programming code. This is why
carts of the past have always had a very limited number of templates and
hence designs. In contrast, the CMSCart system provides almost infinite
design capabilities in the hands of users, not only developers!
Individual menu graphics, tabs, groups of content, headers, footers,
etc. can all be done interactively by the user to form their own site.
After selecting an existing template or designing a new one,
various elements from simple text to more complicated elements such as a
cart category item listing can be put into a template anywhere the user
wishes.
In having more power it is obvious that there will be a steeper learning
to use the full capability of this system. However, if the user uses an
existing template then they would only need
to work with the content within that template. In turn the user would not
need much knowledge of templates in order to do a fair amount with CMSCart. For
the new user, it is suggested that they use an existing template to
start out learning and concentrate first on understanding the content
producer to present content. As the user grows familiar with the system
they can modify existing templates or create new ones.