# Software to create site



## Hodo (Jan 6, 2007)

Note: I am new to web design.
I am trying to understand how to build an e-commerce site designed the way I want. I signed up for Yahoo Merchant Solutions and built an e-commerce site. I wanted to learn by building a site. I modifed the template with my own design (I know Photoshop and Illustrator) but it is very limited. I have a Mac , no PC.
Other sites I have visited have designed pages and only when you go to the shopping cart does it look like the site I built on Yahoo.
Can I use Go Live or Dreamweaver?
Do I build a non e-commerce site and then link the shopping cart to it?
Thanks


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## EmbDigitizing (Oct 30, 2006)

Best is to create a non ecommerce site preferably in dreamweaver. then you can integrate the shopping cart to the site.
Let me know if you need any help


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## Hodo (Jan 6, 2007)

Thanks for the reply. I have been digging through the site and learnt a lot more in the last hour. E-commerce look intresting and Mals-e.com
Amy preference to GoLive or Dreamweaver. I use the Adobe CS2 package and they tell me the intergration with Illustrator etc if I keep it all in the family.
I do not know HTML. Is it easy to intergrate the shopping cart?


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## EmbDigitizing (Oct 30, 2006)

Well to integrate the shopping cart , you will certainly need good if not extensive knowledge of either PHP or ASP. Depends what language your ecommerce site is running on.

If you dont know much programming, i would suggest you to create the main template in photoshop. Slice it up. Convert that into HTML, using Dreamweaver, no you do not need to know HTML.. most of it is WYSIWYG.

Hope that helps.


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## Hodo (Jan 6, 2007)

Thanks again for your feedback. Very helpful. Sorry but what does WYSIWYG mean?


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## Jasonda (Aug 16, 2006)

Hodo said:


> Sorry but what does WYSIWYG mean?


"What You See Is What You Get". In this case it refers to a website editor that works like a word processing program, so you don't have to edit the HTML code by hand.


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## EmbDigitizing (Oct 30, 2006)

Thanks Jasonda for the quick reply.


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

Usually, people will design a site how they want it to look, and then integrate the shopping cart to match the design.

This can be done by many shopping cart programs like zencart, oscommerce, cubcart, yahoo merchant solutions, miva, shopsite. Most all of them can be made to look how you want it (with varying degrees of difficulty)



> Amy preference to GoLive or Dreamweaver.


I've never used golive, but I've heard good things about it. I like dreamweaver and have been using it for years.

A free website editor on par with dreamweaver is Nvu - The Complete Web Authoring System for Linux, Macintosh and Windows



> I do not know HTML. Is it easy to intergrate the shopping cart?


If you don't know HTML, it will be harder to integrate a shopping cart into a site design. If you learn HTML, it will make it easier, but if you don't have the time to do that, there are people that you can hire (like at rentacoder.com) that you can outsource the work to. 

You don't really need to know php/javascript or any of that stuff really, but knowledge of HTML will help immensely when trying to customize a shopping cart to look a specific way.


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## Hodo (Jan 6, 2007)

Thanks again for the info.


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