I have created a website and wish to incorporate a shopping cart capability. In looking at coffeecup shopping cart software it appears that I have to create a website through their cart software. Is there a way to insert links within my existing website (a "buy" link) that interfaces with the shopping cart software? Or is there a better choice for this as far as shopping cart software or did I make a mistake by creating my web page before getting shopping cart capability?

Hiya Martha,

In order to incorporate the shopping cart into your current site you would place a link or button on your menu with the rest of your menu items that would go to your shop. Then create your shop using the Shopping Cart Creator (Designer too if you need to try to match it up to your site theme look). The Shopping Cart Creator only starts off with a few default pages. Shop Home, Categories, View Cart. If you choose to link an external site to the shop, then inside the Shopping Cart Creator is a setting for the Home page to go to your external home page.

This is how my shop is setup so I have many external pages that are created with the HTML Editor, and then I have my shop pages. You can see that in my signature for my shop to see how that works. I did create my theme within the Shopping Cart Designer Pro and then matched my external pages to that theme. Going the other way around might be a little tricker, but I'm sure it's doable to an extent.

There are also many themes for the SCC and VSD that are matching themes that you can choose from also to get an already matched up look that you can then edit from there how you want it using the Shopping Cart Designer (or Pro which I would suggest for the most features).

Hope that helps and good luck on it

You can link your site to the cart and the cart back to your site. Have you looked at the cart themes and the cart designer software? Depending on what you need for your site, you might be able to just use one of the cart themes (they include a home and a few other pages with links). If you want to have a site that links to your cart, the cart designer will let you fix up the cart/store to match your site, or there's several website themes that have matching cart themes.
Here's a site with a separate cart (I took out the links from the site to the cart, since I'm still waiting for the owner to send me new products info, etc... you can go to the main site with the home links in the cart):

http://maryloubarrow.com/shop/

Jo Ann - I swear I'm not following you! It took me so long to write this, you got in there ahead of me (just as well!).

HAHAHA paintbrush, I was just thinking hmm she said almost the same thing I did lol. No worries though, I do that too with many posts and end up posting after someone else lol. Great minds think alike too

I think what he means is. If you create a buy button on the VSD page, when you click the buy button will it update the shoping cart, or do you then have to click the buy button again in the shopping cart.
I would like to know if this works myself.

Craig, it's best to let the Shopping Cart handle the 'buy' functions. You could use VSD pages as an intro to your store and to feature more in-depth info and photos of what you offer, then have a button (go to shop, shop here, see more products... whatever) that links to the Shopping Cart. The Cart and VSD are 2 separate programs, and purchasing done through VSD (maybe with a PayPal button?) wouldn't have any effect on the Shopping Cart.

With the SC Designer, it's possible to match the look and feel of your VSD and Cart to one another, so the user doesn't have the impression of moving between 2 sites. Have a look through the CC Templates - there's some matching themes for VSD and CCSC to make it easy to have a consistent look. Just let the Cart handle the actual purchases.

If I have indeed created a button on VSD to go into my Shopping cart, what link/code do I put on that button to make shopping cart open? I don't see any obvious files to link to it with the URL link capability in VSD. Obviously I am doing it wrong. I just want them to click the Product button and the Shopping cart list of products opens.

What is the magic, please?

Hi Tarie, Browse to the page of your shop on the internet that you want to link to. Now select all the text then that appears in the web address area at the top of your browser. Now right click and click on copy. Now go to VSD and create the link to that page. If your using text to link you highlight the text then click on link at the top of the design window then in the link properties box right click in the box to the right of url then click on paste. This should create the link to that page of you shop. If you link pictures the process is pretty much the same just click the picture then do the link properties box procedure again. You can link to pretty much any page in your shop but you can't add products to your cart from a link on your VSD page. I hope this helps.

'been using VSD for a number of years now and decided to set up shop with Creator Pro. I think I have followed the instructions in the server profile but I don't know how to acess my store once I publidhed it?

goto
http://yourdomain.com/shop/
If you left the default value in SCCP.