Any Examples of Great PowerStore3 Sites?

I posted this query in the "Announcements Discussion" section without any response. So I'm now posting it here as well ------

I am new to PowerStore3 and would like to see some current examples of the creative ways people have used this package to develop their site WITHOUT the use of any Dreamweaver extensions. I could sure use an idea or two.

I'm sure there are a few out there. Please link what you can!

Thanks!

Hi

Dreamweaver is only an HTML editor with a few bits added. any serious coder (and I'm not one) can do anything DW does using a simple text editor.

DW like WA products just save you time and a lot of the learning curve, however nothing can beat a good knowledge of hand coding when de bugging etc.

If it's ideas you want then there are plenty of shops around and most designs could with time and effort be made to work with PS3
HTH
Ian

Correct... you can easily use PowerStore without having Dreamweaver. In fact, I rarely use Dreamweaver for pre-built solutions - even when I want to modify them.

That's because the basic code and all the queries are already there... it's much easier to just open the pages in either Coda or Espresso (two incredible web code editors for the Mac) and use their corresponding CSS editors (Coda's is built in, CSS-Edit from MacRabbit is the Espresso companion).

Dreamweaver can provide a great starting point and speed up a little heavy lifting but it is much easier. in my opinion, to edit code using a real code editor.

Regards,

Brian

Hi gkj,

I haven't checked to see which are PS2 and which are PS3, and I can't guarantee that no extensions have been used, but there is a PowerGallery sites thread which may provide a part of what your looking for.

Powerstore functionality is ready to go, with settings particular to your site being defined during the easy visual set-up process.

The limits to design customisation are dictated by your imagination and CSS skills. Being template based, you can propagate your design ideas site-wide by adjusting the templates (apart from one or two pages). Branding your site with site colours, logos and graphics is fairly staight forward. More extreme modifications require a good understanding of CSS (or asking questions here!).

Thanks for the direction to this beginner.

Does WebAssist offer a "course" on using their own extensions to modify PS3? If not, any suggestions to get me started in the right direction to reduce my learning curve? I would think that WA extensions are the natural choice once an overall understanding to making changes is grasped.

Thanks again!

You're welcome gkj,

That's a wide open question, without knowing how far you want to go! Broadly speaking, as WebAssist used most (if not all) of their own extensions and solutions to create this ready-to-go solution, then having access to these tools could prove useful.

It's worth mentioning though, that although all the products carry guides and extra documentation, the documentation for the 'solutions' themselves (i.e. not the extensions) may not cover everything you might want it to if you were planning an extreme function/design mashup, because they are largely designed (and priced) to upload and go with minimal modification. I've seen on the forum somewhere someone saying that the new 'Theme-It' extension is a handy tool at this stage, although I haven't played around with it yet. I've also seen mentioned in the forum that people using CSSSculptor and SiteAssist Pro to restyle the pages didn't have much luck with those extensions in this scenario.

My advice for customisation of the design would be to do just a basic colour/logo/graphics modification, upload to the live site and get used to the functionality and make mental notes of which bits of design need adapting and how. In the mean time you could run a copy on your local machine using a testing server and do your styling and tweaking to see what works best. The best tool for this is a knowledge of CSS, for which there are loads of tutorials (Google) and a lot of knowledgeable people in this forum who can help.

The extensions themselves, are well documented with Getting Started Guides, Support Resources, Solution Recpes, How-tos and FAQs as required.

Not sure if any of this helps, but post back with specific queries as and when you need to, someone will be along to help.

Just to be clear at this stage, I'm a big fan of most (but not all) of the WebAssist products, particularly those that have nudged me towards the development side of things. A whole new layer of opportunity has opened up for me because of them, but I am still (especially compared to the WA Guys and experts here) a comparative beginner. This is a great way to learn stuff.