DW questions-presales

I have tried to contact sales but cannot get an answer so am posting here. We need to build a cart, we are not developers but know some basic things and have managed to build our site with DW CS3, we just upgraded to DW CS5. We have tried CS Cart but it isn't DW friendly unless you really know your code. We have tried ecommercetemplates.com but found it hard to intergrate into our site plus it doesn't have the option to have multiple shippers for customers.
My questions here are 1. does this ecart have the multiple shipper option?
2. can we upload our own design and intergrate it into our site?
3. the demo video said there is no backend so which extentsion do we need for that?
thanks

1) There is not built in multiple shipper option, but it can be accomplished with a little work.

the basic idea is to create a select list for the different shipping options, on the checkout page:

<select name="shippingOption">
  <option value="FedEx">FedEx</option>
  <option value="UPS">UPS</option>
</select>

Then on the confirm page, crate a hidden form element with the same name to capture the value that was posted:

<input type="hidden" name="shippingOption" id="shippingOption" value="<?php echo((isset($_POST["shippingOption"]))?$_POST["shippingOption"]:""); ?>" />

Using the eCart Set Session Value server behavior, capture the selected shipping option in a session variable.
Go to Window -> Server Behavior.

Click the plus button in the server behaviors window and select eCart -> General -> Set Session Value.

set the name to "shippingOption"

Set the trigger to any form submit.

for the value, click the lightning bolt and select the shippingOption form element.


Then apply the FedEx and UPS server behaviors to the confirm page.

the last step is to manually add an if statement around the code for each shipping type so it will only be used if it was selected:

<?php if((isset($_SESSION["shippingOption"]))?$_SESSION["shippingOption"]:"") && $_SESSION["shippingOption" == "FedEx"); { ?>

<fed ex code>

<?php } ?>

<?php if((isset($_SESSION["shippingOption"]))?$_SESSION["shippingOption"]:"") && $_SESSION["shippingOption" == "UPS"); { ?>

<ups code>

<?php } ?>

2) Yes, you can use your own design with eCart

3) The extensions needed to create the back end are DataAssist and Security Assist at a minimum. There is a tutorial for creating The admin back end on the Data Assist support page:
dataassist/

look in the how to section.

Is it as complicated as it looks or could we just follow those directions you just gave? If we subscribe instead of by, build what we need then cancal the subscription can we do that without losing our cart?

It looks more complicated than it really is.

just keep in the back of your mind a picture of the flow:

On Checkout page:
-Select list to select sipping service

On Confirm:
-Capture selected service in session variable
-Capture selected service in hidden form element
-Trigger selected service using if statement.


If you cancel the subscription, it will not effect the pages you create with the tools, they will still function.