# Anyone ever use Shirt Network with Joomla for their site? It's pretty much a free online designer.



## swannn32 (Sep 1, 2006)

It is free to try - unlimited free trial - until someone buys something. Then you have to sign up for a plan (I guess).

I am interested in trying to do this Shirt Network online designer thing with Joomla - if I can ever figure it out. I feel like I'm going back to school or something trying to read all the instructions. I'll have to teach myself Joomla first. But if I can figure it out maybe it'll be cheaper than what I'm doing now. I was just wondering if anyone had ever checked out this option or was currently using it.

Here are the link to it...

Shirtnetwork - your custom shirtdesigner


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## southlandgraphic (Nov 2, 2006)

I checked it out. They currently don't support PDF or vector output but have been working on it for some time now. You will have to re-build the design that the customer designs. Honestly Expert-logo is still the best out of the box...and I have looked at a ton of them. I just don't like the way it looks and how there is no outline functions for text and no search for clipart.


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## funkytshirts (Jul 26, 2010)

hey, i like the look of shirtnetwork. so much so my webdesigner is currently building the module into my joomla site. ill let you know the progress.


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## swannn32 (Sep 1, 2006)

Thanks - just let me know how it goes ...

I am using expert logo (ossdesigner.com) right now and I like them except they haven't really made any advancements in the last few years (outlines, etc.). And they aren't very good at communicating their future plans. When I signed up they told me getting outlines on the artwork was in the works and would be done very shortly and that's been 2 years. They even told me they were going to start a monthly newsletter - that was over half a year ago & still no newsletter! 
You can't sort your clip art properly, you can't do outlines, if you have two of the same clip art on a design they both have to be the same color (can't have two of the same trees where one is black and one is green) and I still can't figure out how to input my pricing structure so it matches the one that I quote people off of in real life. I enter in the $ amounts but when I try it out in the designer it never comes out to be the amount that I've figured from my price sheet on paper. I'm also limited to only 10 products unless I pay more per month.

I hardly ever have anyone complete their order through the designer on my current website - they usually just call and say "Can you take a look at what I've started on your website and make it better". So if shirt network does the same thing for free then it won't cost me anything - I'll just let my customers design it, save it, then I can take it from there. And I can do all kinds of different products ... mousepads, bags, shirts, koozies, business cards, stationary, pens, hats, etc.


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## funkytshirts (Jul 26, 2010)

yes i looked at that very designer before making my choice, the only thing that put me of was the price. however i am glad i didn't go for it now after your review.

I dont know exactly what to expect from shirtnetwork, although the demo the have seems to work well. and for a relativly low setup cost it seems worth it. 

I believe they charge you 1 euro per item sold. but if it is possible for the customer to do the design and then contact us direct for payment as you suggested. this would be fabulous. 

Hope it should be ready to use by next week so i will keep you informed but fingers crossed it will generate more business. as lots of customers visit my site but little generate phonecalls....

Did the online designer work for you in terms of generating sales!?


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## swannn32 (Sep 1, 2006)

It has made my life a little easier as far as allowing the local high school and college kids to design their own instead of me spending my time on their designs, especially when most of their ideas don't work out or they don't have money to pay. 

But the clients I make the most money from and that order in big quantities don't really go for the online designer - they already have their own logo/design or they want you to design it. They have the money to pay me to do it, but not the time to design it themselves or have already paid someone to professionally design it. A few of them have used the designer to upload their logo so they could quickly see it on a shirt background, but that's about it.

So it doesn't necessarily generate more sales but does keep my time more focused and allows me to still keep the college and high school kids happy at the same time.


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## funkytshirts (Jul 26, 2010)

Cool, i suppose thats good news for us then, as we really focus on targeting that age range college and school students. we find big traffic to site but not much calls. my feelings towards this are that people are looking to go online deign and pay and wait for delivery not mess about calling us asking for a price then emailing artwork so on so on...

Thanks for the feedback ill hit back next week and let you know. feel free to have a play with it once its done too.


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## swannn32 (Sep 1, 2006)

Also Expert Logo (ossdesigner.com) isn't that expensive month to month after the initial setup. It's just the initial setup you have to get over - but I don't really know why it's so much initially if they are charging month to month anyway? I mean I know they have to pay for the development of the software but really they should just up the month to month cost a bit and get rid of such a high initial setup cost. And it's not like they are really developing anything new, so they should have already got back their cost for the design work by now.

Everytime I call them their voicemail says ... I'll be working out of the office today so please call this number... so they probably only have one guy handling it anyway & he works from home all the time. 

Chris - the main guy that I used to talk to - isn't there anymore, which I found out from this forum a few months ago. Like I said before - they just don't let their current clients know what's going on enough. It makes me question them even if they are working on changes or they have developed updates & there are 20 of them working there ... I wouldn't know that cause all I get is a cheesy message telling me to call some guys cell phone. So they lose points on that too.


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## Pwear (Mar 7, 2008)

I use expertlogo on one of our websites. The product is great for what we need, but as said above the customer service is lacking. I've gone weeks with an issue on my site that they were supposedly working on, without being able to get in touch with anyone there. Last year their entire system went down and I couldn't reach them to see what the issue was - almost wrecked my store. They posted no updates either so I didn't know what was going on. But, the product itself works great so I suck it up for the most part. When something else better comes along I'll definitely consider moving to another service.


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## MrTheTree (May 24, 2010)

Hi

I'm using shirtnetwork for allmost a year and a half now.
It is workable but not finnished in my eyes.

Yes, you have to redesign the customers design, wich is sometimes hard because the output is an image of 350 x 350 pixels.
They are working on a pdf output for some time now (since 2009).

I was interested in the marketplace feature but this part still has bugs and is not completly finnished.

Support varies, sometimes you have fast respons and sometimes you have to try different ways more than once to reach them, before you get a respons.
Support is through forum, skype or mail.
I have many open topics on their forum.

Same is for development some periods you have regular updates and than you have long periods with no activity.

I'm using the virtuemart version, don't know how the x-cart and magento version are.

Hope my English is clear enough .

Cheers
Marco


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## funkytshirts (Jul 26, 2010)

Thank you Marco, so it seems then that both platforms are troubled with customer service issues! I am still exited to see what shirtnetwork can do for my business in the way of generating sales!


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## Maryonee (Aug 4, 2010)

As a webdesigner I have worked with Shirtnetwork for Joomla several times. I believe it is the best online designer by far. Some of the really positive things about is their support and that bugs are always fixed really soon. The team working on Shirtnetwork is very ambitious in making the program perfect and they listen to feedback from their customers.

But in order to have it running smoothly, you will have to invest some time in it. It is not that hard, but you just have to find out how to work with it. But the guys from Shirtnetwork are very helpfull to their customers and the have a great online helpdesk with Skype. Just sign up and join the conversation.


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## swannn32 (Sep 1, 2006)

Does anyone have a shirtnetwork webpage in the U.S.? I was just curious if someone could post a link if they have a website using shirtnetwork because all the store examples on the shirtnetwork website are from other countries.


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## Designfrog (Apr 7, 2010)

Hmmm, if Shirtnetwork get's some major issues worked out soon I might have a US website to show you . First, let me say I've been working on two websites since Feb. that use the Designer Tool and have yet to be able to "Go Live" with either one and it's now August. The HBE tool is a bit cumbersome to use and parts of the documentaion are vague, so your left to "figure things out" for yourself. If using VM as your shopping cart be prepared for bugs, warnings and error messages. Why, because they are only using the Tool with an old version (vm 1.1.3) that you can't even find on the Virturemart site anymore. They now have a "fix" for VM 1.1.4 but you must hack the code yourself. In my opinion you should be able to install the lastest version of VM which is 1.1.5. How much can change from one version to the next that would effect the interface? When asked if we can use the newly released version of VM they reply "well if we have time, we'll test it". I would think they would want to make time as the older version shows errors and warnings and not what you would want your customers to see. They have been spending a lot of time with Oxid E sales to create connector to work with them however in doing so have left the majority of Joomla/VM users on the back burner. You can read about it in their forum. Now, for US folks you need to deal with sizes in *CM* and not *inches* and when you ask them change some of the verbage, ie: VAT to Tax they say they are working on a languange file to correct these problems (for months now) and need upgrades. Well anyhow I'm just "keeping it real" as they say and I hope they can get things corrected very soon.
*@Maryonee-*Do you have a live website in the US? If so, do you mind sharing your link?


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## swannn32 (Sep 1, 2006)

I was thinking that the money conversion would be the issue - didn't even think about the cm vs. inches! But I bet they've already figured out the money part! lol


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## imyomel (Jul 22, 2010)

swannn32 said:


> Thanks - just let me know how it goes ...
> 
> I am using expert logo (ossdesigner.com) right now and I like them except they haven't really made any advancements in the last few years (outlines, etc.). And they aren't very good at communicating their future plans. When I signed up they told me getting outlines on the artwork was in the works and would be done very shortly and that's been 2 years. They even told me they were going to start a monthly newsletter - that was over half a year ago & still no newsletter!
> You can't sort your clip art properly, you can't do outlines, if you have two of the same clip art on a design they both have to be the same color (can't have two of the same trees where one is black and one is green) and I still can't figure out how to input my pricing structure so it matches the one that I quote people off of in real life. I enter in the $ amounts but when I try it out in the designer it never comes out to be the amount that I've figured from my price sheet on paper. I'm also limited to only 10 products unless I pay more per month.
> ...


I had ossdesigner.com and I think they are a joke. They have a good concept but the person (Joe) is a liar and you can't hardly get tech support without them rushing you off the line. If you do not want to fight with them about a refund according to their terms and condition I would suggest you not give them any money. I am in the process of suing them right now. If they want to know my name etc. they can reply to this message and I will continue to tell everyone about them until I get my money back.


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## swannn32 (Sep 1, 2006)

This a bit of a double post because I posted it on another thread already - but this was the thread I originally started so I thought it was the better place for it...

Update -
I used OSSDesigner for YEARS - yes that's right - YEARS!! (since 2007) And I was still never able to get the checkout part to work right. I also spent tons of hours converting clipart to flash & creating product pictures in every color for each product. From the very beginning they said they were working on a way to add outlines around text & put their clip art into categories. Which they didn't do either thing the whole time I used them.

So needless to say (I'm stupid for not doing it sooner) I canceled my account with them. And usually that'd be the end of it, but after numerous phone calls and emails they were still billing my checking account (and ironically for a higher amount than my usual monthly payment). They kept saying "you have to get a response email back to confirm your cancellation". Well I can't MAKE them send me the confirmation email so what am I to do. And before you ask - yes I'm sending to the correct email addresses (terri & jedwards). I'm hoping they do the right thing and get this cleared up quickly. I will keep you posted as to if I get my money back for the months they charged me for after I canceled. 

OSSDesigner & all their no customer service people - a big THUMBS way DOWN! Stay away! 

This company may have started out ahead of the game but since then there are many more companies out there with better prices, service, and a better product.

Wow, this post seemed really mean when I read it back to myself! I'm still posting it though!

I guess no one from ossdesigner reads these forums because you never see a response from them anymore. They should, then they might realize how bad we all speak of them and start trying to actually do something to fix their service / product.


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## imyomel (Jul 22, 2010)

I think, NO I know you are right about ossdesigner because I had a very bad experience with them and is currently trying to get my money back. he tech support sucks and the edwards guy is a big liar. I do not see how they are still in business. Maybe their bigger acounts are taken care of properly. They are the bottom of the barrel to me.


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## swannn32 (Sep 1, 2006)

Quick Update ...

OSS Designer has officially canceled my account with them (finally) & they also credited back the money they took out of my account by mistake. So they made good. It just took a few months.


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## Pwear (Mar 7, 2008)

Great to hear.


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## funkytshirts (Jul 26, 2010)

Ok so it's been some time since I have posted on this subject, but I am here with an update!

Firstly my web designer did a runner on me, personally I think the shirtnetwork component was too "Specialist" for him. So I tool it upony self to undertake the project myself.

Good news is today, with a little final tweaking help from the guys at shirtnetwork I successfully completed the setup and it's all working great! 

All that's left to do know is populate the designer with products and it's ready fir live mode.

In conclusion, so far I am very impressed with the shirtnetworkncomponant, it's very flexible and can be run as simple or as complex as you need or want it to be! Fingers crossed now!


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## dptk (Aug 14, 2009)

i like joomla, I'll check it out


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## woodstock (Jan 31, 2012)

I've been following this post and wondered if there was any new development with you using Shirt Network for Joomla and Virtuemart.
Thinking about it and now using VM 1.1.9a and hope that it is compatible and bugs fixed?


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