Designer > Dev, Sitebuilders > Kirby CMS & eCom?

Hi :slightly_smiling_face: I’m new here. I’m a designer who has been using sitebuilders such as Squarespace and Shopify for client sites. I’m now venturing into development and am keen to write my own code and switch to Kirby CMS. I’m just at the start of this new adventure so my coding knowledge is limited.

I’m working through a PHP course right now. I already have some HTML & CSS. Is that all I’ll need to successfully work with Kirby? Will I need to change my templates already written in HTML/CSS to PHP?

I also have another question - what solution are you using for eCommerce? I’m currently looking at Snipcart and Merx. Are either of these ‘white label’ (no branding) and is it possible for a client to manage orders with these directly from the Kirby interface? I don’t want clients to have to use multiple platforms to manage their site and orders, and I’d like for it to be white label.

Thank you!

Hey @des.dev, welcome to the Kirby community. Hope you’ll have fun developing your first projects with Kirby and we are here to help.

You probably won’t have to make changes to your CSS. As regards the HTML, if you currently have no logic in your templates, you will end up removing a lot of repetitive stuff when working with loops. So they will probably end up a lot cleaner then before :slightly_smiling_face:

As regards the eCommerce stuff, with Merx everything is stored in Kirby (products, orders). There is definitely no branding involved. @tobiasfabian, you can probably laud Merx best ;).

With Snipcart I think the orders are stored on their website (at least if you integrate Snipcart the basic way). But you can also integrate it with Kirby via the Snipcart API. But others here are more familiar with this, so I leave it to them to provide more information.

Hi Texnixe. Thank you so much, that’s very helpful. Am I correct in thinking that I should do away with HTML and just use PHP + CSS? Or is there still a case for using HTML with Kirby?

It’s great to hear that Merx is integrated and doesn’t have branding. I’ll have to dive into it.

While I have you, what would you recommend for Analytics? I have to make sure my client sites are GDPR compliant which is what initially attracted me to Kirby, so I’m keen to know if anyone has any suggestions with this in mind. We are UK based and despite Brexit we must of course still handle EU data carefully.

This whole process of switching from a site builder is a bit of a headache but I’m hopeful that once I have everything in place it’ll be ten times better for my workflow and my clients :slight_smile:

Thanks again!

Yes, you definitely do need your HTML to display stuff in the browser.

Matomo is a great choice and from my point of view I’d always prefer it to anything Google.

There’s also a Matomo plugin for Kirby which allows you to display your statistics right in the Panel.

Brilliant, thanks so much :slight_smile: Best support team I’ve seen so far!

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If you check out the source code of the Starterkit, you will see how to mix PHP code/Kirby’s API with HTML to create clean templates, especially if you dive in to using controllers and models at a later state of the learning curve to separate logic from presentation as much as possible.

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