Did you know...

You can now download a 7-day free trial of the Blueprint skin. No payment is required and you can start using the skin immediately. We are currently the only CubeCart skin developers that offer free trials. Furthermore, we're so sure that you'll love our CubeCart skins that we offer a comprehensive 14-day money-back satisfaction guarantee. If you are not completely delighted with the skin, we'll refund 100% of your money - no questions asked!

Blueprint is different.

Blueprint has been purpose built to take full advantage of the new architecture and additional features incorporated into CubeCart V5. It is not a port of an older skin developed for CubeCart V4 or a modified version of the stock skins already included. Every single file has been carefully written from scratch to ensure a consistent quality that is unmatched by anything currently available.

Built on top of a powerful framework.

Blueprint is built right on top of our Fusion framework, enabling what was once impossible. Fusion gives you a Theme Configuration Panel which allows you to configure a wide array of settings at the click of a button - no developer required. You can change the number of products displayed per row, select a different layout for the homepage or other sections of the store, rearrange widgets, add a content slider, toggle a myriad of different features and so much more!

One theme supporting multiple devices.

With mobile browsing accounting for an ever increasing share of the market, you'll want to accomodate a range of different devices across a bunch of platforms and browsers. Blueprint uses responsive layouts to adapt to the screen sizes your visitors' devices. You won't need to maintain multiple themes and your customers will appreciate the consistent design.

Microformats - you're missing out!

Search engines are embracing microformats and you should too. Google uses microformats to display star ratings and other useful metadata along with the search listing. Importantly for you, they set your listing apart from all the other thus driving more visitors to your site. Blueprint is the only CubeCart theme that uses microformats in its template markup.

Progressive checkout.

Instead of overwhelming visitors with a confusing mess of fields to complete, Blueprint guides your customers step-by-step through the checkout page. Timesaving client-side field validation is performed at each step.

Stable or unstable?

I wouldn't say that the initial "stable" release of CubeCart V5 is, as it claims to be, stable. Having said this, it's certainly in far better shape than than the initial release of V4. For me, there is only a single critical issue that remains. This being the mystery of the lost settings, though this only appears to manifest itself after upgrading a V4 store. Nevertheless, recent comments from Devellion employees questioning the wisdom of their customers does little for consumer perception of the company as a whole!

Ready for production?

After the first maintenance release (V5.0.1), which promises to fix the aforementioned issue, I doubt that I will have many qualms recommending CubeCart V5. This is assuming that no additional bugs are introduced. If you are upgrading from CubeCart V4, please do perform the update locally (or on a staging server) prior to migrating over to your production server. This will provide you with the opportunity to thoroughly test your installation. Always remember to take a full backup prior to migration!

Code Quality

In short, it's generally very good. There has been a galactic shift in the standard of the code since Devellion took on Technocrat (who now appears to be the lead developer). Class methods were suddenly reasonably documented and the architecture was vastly improved. This means a faster, more maintainable, piece of software.

Mods are Evil, Plugins are Good!

I will never cease to emphasize the importance of the code hooks. Anyone that has ever had to update a heavily modified CubeCart store will surely appreciate that the painful procedure this task entailed should be a thing of the past. For the average CubeCart user, adding additional features to the software suddenly becomes a drag and drop procedure. It is rather unfortunate that the Installer feature, which was included in the beta release of V5, has subsequently been removed. I hope that the developers reconsider this decision.

Some CubeCart users seem to have misunderstood the benefits of code hooks. Rest assured that they are advantageous for both ordinary CubeCart users and experienced developers alike.

Included Themes

It seems that every time Devellion release a new version, theme developers complain about how awful the included offering is. And why wouldn't they? Circulating this sentiment surely sells more themes. I'm not suggesting that the themes included with CubeCart V5 are a magnificent work of art. Instead, I think that they will meet the requirements for a considerable portion of the company's target market. Developers should also be pleased when they are greeted with some considered markup - rather than the usual mess of nested tables that we have come to expect.

Worth the license price?

Cost is always one of the biggest influencing factors when considering whether to jump aboard. Devellion have historically priced CubeCart for the small business market to which they cater. If you own a CubeCart V4 license, you might be pleased to hear that upgrading to V5 only costs £40.00. However, for those without existing CubeCart V4 licenses, I fear that the standard cost for a license may now price Devellion out of the market. A few years ago, £120 represented good value. Competition today is fierce with ever more open-source alternatives springing up which, generally speaking, boast equal or better features. For this reason, Devellion might see a declining market share over its entire product range. Only you can decide whether CubeCart V5 makes economical sense.

Overall Perception

Overall, a cautious thumbs up. There's always room for improvement, but CubeCart V5 is the definitive choice over previous versions.

Download Alpha 0.1

What does it do?

The Visual Editor provides an intuitive interface for altering any CSS property. You'll no longer need to look-up any selectors. The inspector reads all the CSS properties applied to the selected element in realtime. Then, at the stroke of a key, you can alter these properties and receive instant gratification through the preview window.

What's the installation procedure?

Step 1:
Download the zipped plugin and extract the DNA_Themer folder to your computer.

Step 2:
Upload the DNA_Themer folder to the following directory on your server: /modules/plugins/

Step 3:
Login to the administration panel and select "Plugins" from the left-hand navigation menu.

Step 4:
Click the "DNA Themer" icon and ensure that the plugin is enabled. The status icon should show a tick. Enter any series of numbers into the license key field provided and hit the "Save" button. A "DNA Themer" link should now be shown in the left-hand navigation menu (under "Advanced"). If you do not see this link, please clear CubeCart's cache using the option under "Maintenance".

Step 5:
OPEN: /js/common.js

FIND:

/* Break out of iframe - mainly used for iFrame payment gateways to stop confirmed page showing within CC */
if (top.location.href!=self.location.href) {
	top.location = self.location.href;
}

REPLACE WITH:

/* Break out of iframe - mainly used for iFrame payment gateways to stop confirmed page showing within CC */
/* if (top.location.href!=self.location.href) {
	top.location = self.location.href;
} */

Step 6:
FOR EACH SKIN, OPEN: /skins/{SKIN_NAME}/templates/main.php

BEFORE THE <head> TAG, INSERT:

{if isset($DNA_THEMER)}{$DNA_THEMER}{/if}

We need your feedback!

Did you find any bugs? Is it too difficult to use? Do you have any suggestions? Please do let us know! You can post any general feedback in the comments section below. Alternatively, you can open a support ticket via the Client Panel. If you would like to report any issues or have a feature request, please use the bug tracker.

So... What's different about this one?

We have taken a completely different approach in terms of implementation. Our "Visual Editor" reads through all the stylesheets, recognizes inheritance and presents the applicable properties in a tabular format for the selected element. These properties can then be edited freely at the click of a button. You're not limited in terms of the elements that can be selected, properties that can be edited or values that can be entered. This means that we can support literally every CubeCart theme. Furthermore, since we don't rely on the browser's ability to read the CSS properties, we can theoretically support all current and future CSS specifications (yep, that includes CSS3).

How does it work?

We put out a short video some time ago as a proof of concept to demonstrate how the Visual Editor will work. Please note that significant architectural changes have been made since this video was released in order to integrate the Visual Editor into the wider suite of tools. We are also now making full use of the jQuery UI library. The appearance has therefore changed somewhat.

The roadmap

We're ultimately aiming to include three tools in the suite:

• Visual Editor (~80% Complete)
• Code Editor (~50% Complete)
• A/B Test Suite (~10% Complete)

As you might imagine, each of these tools constitutes a rather extensive project. We therefore want to start pushing out a beta version in the near future. The initial beta release will not include the A/B test suite and may or may not include the Code Editor. The entire suite will be packaged as an easily installable CubeCart V5 plugin. If you are interested in beta testing this, please watch out for further announcements in the coming week(s).

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and will be working diligently to clear the backlog of support requests.

Update

Responses by email are not getting intercepted by our Help Desk. We are now working on the backlog of tickets which have accumulated.