Upgrade your Creative Cloud sites!

[florincarlig_a]

This article has been ported to Upgrade your Creative Cloud sites

Now is the time to take your Creative Cloud site to the next level: add ecommerce, blogs, email marketing and more.  Make your site stand out and start increasing your site's impact.

The 5 sites included in a Creative Cloud subscription are 5 fully functional webBasics sites.

Until recently, the option to upgrade a Creative Cloud site was not available, but since we received a lot of requests from site owners that were hungry for more, with the latest release we launched the workflow that allows a Creative Cloud site owner to move the site to a higher BC site plan.

How does that work?

Access your site's admin area  -> Site Management -> Upgrade Now -> choose the desired site plan and billing frequency -> Add personal and credit card details -> Submit.

Please note that this operation will trigger a separate billing cycle for the higher plan, charged at the standard rates, depending on the billing frequency.

The initial webBasics site slot will be freed up instantly so you can use it for other projects.

More than that, you can use this workflow to add your client's billing information so the future site owner can pay for his site's hosting fee from now on.

If you want later on to upgrade the site plan further, you will be able to to this from the Partner Portal that was triggered when you fist signed up for BC.

Since this operation  actually launches a separate subscription, if you decide at some point to not use or pay your Creative Cloud membership anymore, the standalone BC site subscription will remain up and running.

For any questions regarding this process, please contact the BC Partner team - BCPartner-Team@adobe.com.

[PRB-FEC]

Yes indeed, everything is GREAT, Everybody is HAPPY......... NOT

I have upgraded my site. Wanted to add a blog, which has to have the same look and feel as the site itself.

Now....... having built this site with Adobe Muse, I w a s  enthusiastic about it. No more or just a little coding, just concentrate on the content.

However, after upgrading to webMarketing it feels as a cold, cold shower.

After spending a day or so searching (bad search results taken for granted), I'm afraid Business Catalyst together with Muse is just a lollypop for nonos like me, who don't want to specialize in web coding, and thus step into what is thought as the ultimate solution. But: no. It is not. Coding, coding, coding is all you still need to do and BC is for small enterprises not worth the money to invest in.

So. My advice: think twice before you invest in upgrading. Maybe in a year or two development  will be what it is suposed to be.........

[Diana_Herac]

Hello,

Thank you for your feedback.

Although Muse is created as a coding free site design tool, in order to use Business Catalyst's more advanced modules you will need some basic HTML and CSS skills.

This is also explained here: http://www.businesscatalyst.com/faqs/product-information

Sorry, we didn't mean to misinform you in any way... And it would really help us to know where/how exactly did you get the idea that BC means no coding at all?

Note though that if you need professional assistance with the more complex/code-based features, we can recommend some BC Partners in your area that could help you further with the implementation services.

And of course, we provide step-by-step instructions all the way through our extensive knowledgebase: http://www.businesscatalyst.com/support/customers.html

Hope this explains things a bit.

Diana

[videoreview]

I am a creative cloud subscriber and I am interested in trying out Business Catalyst for my current website designed on WP and hosted on my ISP but I am very confused:

1)  Does the WebBasics plan that is included support blogs?  From what I can tell it does not.  So does this mean that if I need a blog that I cannot use the websites offered under CC?

2)  How much for an upgrade to the webMarketing plan?  Or is there no "upgrade" and you pay full price?

3)  Can I assume that any of my WP plugins won't work for things like ecommerce etc?

4)  Where is the actual site design done?  I created a free trial site and liked the online navation but it didn't link to my CC account and offered me a full featured trial site.  I tried to upgrade but is asks me to pay for even the webBasics site.  Does this mean that I have to design in Dreamweaver or Muse and can't take advantage of any of the BC design features?

[Diana_Herac]

Hi Shawn,

I'll try to answer your questions in order:

1) As mentioned here: http://helpx.adobe.com/business-catalyst/kb/detailed-plan-breakdown.html you will need at least a webMarketing plan if you want to add blogs to your site.

Note that you can either upgrade an existing Creative Cloud site to the webMarketing level or use this plan right from the beginning.

Indeed, this plan will not be included in your Creative Cloud membership, but you can purchase it separately, at the standard rates for this plan: http://www.businesscatalyst.com/pricing/monthly

2) As mentioned here: http://www.businesscatalyst.com/bc-blog/Creative_Cloud_sites_upgrade_workflow_-_now_available, although you can upgrade a Creative Cloud site, this actually sets a new billing cycle and you will pay the standard price for it - $18.88/month.

3) No, WP plugins are not compatible with Business Catalyst. The main reason why we are not integrated with any plugins is simply because ecommerce, email marketing and so on are "baked" in BC - that's actually the beauty of it.

4) You'll be able to use Muse/Dreamweaver as a starting point or you can  build the site directly in BC - this is 100% up to you.

The included webBasics sites can be redeemed like this: http://tv.adobe.com/watch/cs6-creative-cloud-feature-tour-for-video/publishing-and-managing-a-websit...

Please note that a prerequisite for the workflow presented in the video to work is that the trial site is set in trial mode on a webBasics plan. If the site you want to push live is set on any other plan please let me know what is the URL of that site and I will change it from our backend to activate the workflow.

So no, using DW/Muse is not a condition.

I hope this helps&please let me know if we can provide further assistance.

Diana

BC Sales Consultant

Business Catalyst Team