CMS Made Simple Forums

HI,
I have been reading through the forums and documentation and have a few questions.

I want to use CMSMS for our ecommerce website. I will be using romancart for the buy it now buttons and the cart side of things. We have 5-6 categories and altogether about 10-12 sub categories with approx 100 products, each will need their own page. Then the utilities so I'd say around 125 pages.
Is CMSMS used for this sort of thing?

I have two concerns:
1.I have read alot about 2.0 and 1.1 before 2.0 is due and wondered if it is worth starting now? How easy will it be to upgrade? SHould I be worried?
My webhosts that I am very happy with do not have php5 on linux as they think it isn't very stable atm. So how long could I put off upgrading?

It might seem like I am thinking too far ahead but I've just had so many problems with a shopping cart system where everyone is working on the next major upgrade and no one is around to help with bugs in the current version, it has made me quite nervous!

The other concern is smarty. I've never used it before but I do I know html and css.

I want different navigation (horizontal categories with sub categories displaying underneath when the category link is hovered or clicked) and I can write the html and css, but am not sure how to incorporate that into CMSMS.

I appreciate your help and advice,

Many thanks
B.

Hello,

Here is a thread you may like about versions switches and how the dev team maintains them :
http://forum.cmsmadesimple.org/index.ph ... 605.0.html
I hope this answers your first concern.

About your second concern I think you shouldn't be afraid : CMSms is flexible and user friendly. You don't need to know Smarty. I don't and I can make sites with CMSms. Play with CMSms on a local testing install ; install the sample content ; discover if you feel it easy and intuitive or not ; and see http://themes.cmsmadesimple.org/
CMSms doesn't require PHP knowledge, CMSms doesn't require Smarty knowledge. Anybody who knows 15 HTML tags and some CSS can make great sites with CMSms.

Well, I have a third concern for you :
I don't know shopping cart software because I haven't tried any. You seem to have choosen one, I assume you know what you are doing. My only "advice" (If I can advise about this) is to manage a customer and merchant friendly (productive) integration of products description pages (content, CMSms) and product "carting" (ecommerce software). May be product ID can match ?
CMSms has ecommerce modules and other modules may work too. (edit:typo)
I look forward to reading from you about this integration experience.

Pierre M.

Thank you for your reply.

I will install it and have a go, at least then I will know what i can and can't do!

The regards to the ecommerce, they system I am going to use is similar to paypal shopping cart. You just add "Buy Now" buttons (with the product details in the link or as a form) and the cart pages are hosted by them (www.romancart.com) It is a very flexible combination.

I will update you with news of how I get on

Many thanks
B