CRE Loaded Template Design Dreamweaver Extension

Posted on August 20, 2007
Filed Under Portfolio, Products |

One of the more ambitious products I design for is also one of the most frustrating for new or inexperienced designers. CRE Loaded is a forked variant of osCommerce that was modified to feature some pre installed contributions and then made commercial.

CRE Loaded shares with its parent a rather standard old school early PHP 3 method of templating for presentation. osCommerce as many will note, has been the most downloaded and widely used shopping cart on the internet second to none. As template options like BTS and STS came available, forked versions started to popup beginning with Zen Cart then others that have come and gone. BTS and STS adds a degree of design control that is easier understood and quicker to implement template changes lending a great deal to the continuing growth of each solution.

Why on earth then would a person need to create a Dreamweaver Extension for CRE Loaded? A few minor but relative routine reasons; template design for CRE Loaded is anything but exciting and most if not all the designs people take notice of are as indifferent as the next. Take any 100 or 200 designs you like, stack them on top of one another and peer down into them and you will see that almost all of the stock inventory available are essentially the same. The same features, the same menus, the same navigation types, the same everything but design elements and graphics.

The Dreamweaver Extension includes a few pre defined features that will hopefully change all that. Of all the designs I get contracted to do for osCommerce or CRE Loaded, most if not all of them request the same old run of the mills look and layout that they could easily go to Template Monster and purchase. 90% of all templates I design for either solution are for template houses and template resellers. In recent months I’ve spent a great deal of $$$ redoing my code base and snippet inventory to make some rather proprietary, detailed and fully unique features for future templates. This extension is the result of that.

If a person truly wants to be able to design a template for CRE Loaded or osCommerce and has only basic entry level skills than this extension is the answer. I had planned to release it free of charge and just charge for the tutorials and support elements but after looking more at my design inventory I realized I could be cutting my own thought. When the extension is released it will feature some additional packaged elements along with a few dozen unique feature sets that will likely sell for $40.

I’ll present more details later on some of the elements of the extension.

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2 Comments so far
  1. Mike November 1, 2007 9:25 am

    Interested in your CRE Loaded Dreamweaver Extension and was curious if you’ve released it yet, if not do you have an estimated release date?

    Thanks,
    Mike

  2. Jared Ritchey November 1, 2007 9:38 am

    I did release it then took it down because of an error in the shopping cart system. I have a new install of Joomla (my version) that will have a registered member download area. I’ve been away for 30 days handling a personal family issue and I’m simply just way behind.

    I’ll get it published for download when I apply the new design.


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