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Cube Cart e-Commerce

by Kate Northey

October 10th, 2006

Finally, she comes on board! Yes, dear readers, after much searching, downloading, trialing, testing, deleting, downloading, again, and generally playing around, I’ve decided Cube Cart will be my one number e-commerce software choice. Back end usability is second to none, as too core functionality and simplicity of theme design by non-web savvy designers is Cube Cart’s greatest pulling power. They are, dear readers, three most essential criterion any business owner should adopt.

But, in keeping with this article, I also checked out Zen Cart and boy, oh boy, has their website undergone a radical change! I was only there last week, and now their website is simply gorgeous! But gorgeous or not, for all their projected bells and whistles I found their system overwhelming, daunting and a nightmare to navigate for template creation and modification.

Their default theme - not Classic, which is now their standard skin - has 15 folders, and inside said 15 folders stand 253 sub-folders, graphics, images, files, templates, text files… The list goes on. It’s enough to scare you under the table. I know I found searching for what I want to be an even greater nightmare, and I’m an advanced coder/designer!

Oscommerce I simply couldn’t install. Every download I attempted threw my website into database disarray in the post-installation stage on my server. All I got for my trouble was my own 404 error page. So, in the end I went with ease and simplicity over hype and confusion.

The Bare Facts

customizing your cube cart store

I’ve been working steadily with Cube Cart for about a month or more, and I’ve encountered one or two niggling annoyances that hopefully the creator will turn around in newer versions to come. Cube Cart is not Open Source software, and it doesn’t fall under GPL, but it is available for download free of charge providing users adhere to the creator’s Copyright & Limitations treaty that is written explicitly within every aspect of the templates and coding.

You can purchase a single license to remove the copyright notification in the footer @ £69.95, which on today’s exchange rate equates to: $80.75(AUD), but you’d expect a great deal more for your dollar. Zen Cart is free, across the board and its bells and whistles makes one’s eye agog. With Cube Cart that is not the case.

quibbles

My quibbles are small, given that my business is still in its infancy stage. But I should imagine that as my business grows, so too will my quibbles. As a first generation CC user, I found the overall functionality of Cube Cart to be pretty much equal to any other e-commerce on the Open Source market but there are some obvious limitations which really irritate me.

Cube Cart Tutorials

customising your cube cart store

In the next couple of weeks I will be offering tutorials that explain the bare bones of Cube Cart, how to admin your Adminstration panel, what each section does, how to apply certain elements to your templates, as well as in-depth step-by-step design guides so you can customise your Cube Cart store.

Preparation

what to expect

Designing your own Cube Cart theme is easy, once you understand the basic syntax structure that Cube Cart uses to generate data. But it becomes even easier when you know which file outputs what information and where. Understanding this will help you craft wonderful themes and skins, which if you’re clever enough with the design aspect, you can sell through your store.

I have had a lot of queries recently asking me to design and release themes and skins for CubeCart. I am flattered so many of you are interested and enjoy my tutorials, but I am too busy with my business and work to stop and play for too long. But that doesn’t mean you can’t design your own themes and skins for resale. In fact, I’m going to help you and I encourage you to take that design leap of faith. Your customers can only benefit from your expertise and creativity.

The Nitty Gritty

requirements

It helps if you have rudimentary knowledge of HTML, a plain Text Editor like Note Pad 2 (its Free) and access to your server via FTP. If you have these three things, then that’s all you’ll need to craft and design your own Cube Cart Template. It goes without saying that you’ve already installed Cube Cart onto your server - or desktop using XAMPP.

See you next week!