We must have been posting at nearly the same time. I experienced a variety of bugs from taxonomy terms not appearing, header line-height issues, template export problems, program crashes, navigation menu not functioning, to mention a few.

My sites are pretty basic in structure and don't make use of many modules (no CCK, no Panels, etc.) so I can't speak to module incompatibilities.

In short, I found that the program did not do what is was designed to do. It would require tweaking the code, for example, to make taxonomy terms appear or adjust header line-height, etc. Things the program was designed to do so you didn't have to mess with the code.

Well I agree that $130 is a lot of money for software that you can't use.


I don't have a problem discussing software on this site as long as CC does not sell a competing product. And CC doesn't produce a cms/blog template creator.

I use Artisteer all the time, mostly for WP sites, never had a problem with it and I have been using it since early 2009.

www.morgasstudio.com is my latest project.

Morga

I haven't had an issue with Joomla or WordPress. Nor the brief Drupal install I had been testing out. But I didn't use many features in Drupal, either. So I don't doubt some people having issues. I have have just never experienced any, myself. This is with ver 2.5. I did notice some quirks with 3.0 and Joomla 1.6. To each his own. If it works for you, it is a nice tool.

Here's a simple example you can follow. This problem occurred in the last version I was able to download (v2.5.0.29918).

1) Create a new template.
2) Select Articles from the menu.
3) Under Text Formatting, change Line Spacing to something other than Default.

You'll see that Headline and Slogan Text is affected by changing the Article line spacing property. I've attached a screen print to demonstrate the problem.

Perhaps it's a minor issue but this is an example of something that worked fine in previous versions but didn't in a newer version. There are workarounds, such as altering the CSS file after exporting the template.

I must clarify that I misspoke when I said none of the versions I owned worked with WP 3. The last build I was able to download before my one year expired was the first build to support WP 3. After posting here, I decided to revisit Artisteer and see if I could work around the bugs. All seemed to go okay (except the bug mentioned above). Another problem was that any widgets placed in the footer would not display properly.

Not too long after my year expired, Artisteer released another build (2.5.0.31067). According to their web site, here is a list of the bugs fixed in this build:



This is an example of what irritates me. Artisteer releases a build that fixes bugs in the same version (2.5) of the software but because my year had expired, I would have to pay for another year in order to fix the bugs. I told them I'd be %*!@#* if I paid for another year to be a beta tester.

Yes, I have run into that problem. I must admit that it is an issue if you are tied to the GUI. And I have to say that having the headline as an <h1> tag the same on all pages sucks for seo.

One of the selling points displayed on their front page is "No need to learn Photoshop, CSS, HTML or other technologies." One of the reasons I purchased the software was so I wouldn't have to dig in to the CSS to edit. I wanted to design a site within the program and be finished with it. Kind of like CC Shopping Cart Designer (but it, too, is incomplete and I must tweak the CSS file to get what I want).

I see your point. You only have to read through their forum to see people do have problems. But I do feel that while not perfect, it is a good tool to speed up template creation.

I would agree to an extent. It is an excellent idea. I just believe it fails to fully deliver on what they say it can do. It's half-baked software at present. Coffee Cup may be able to do a better job should they decide to do something like this.