We’ve just updated the minimal theme so that now it can be re-coloured in your theme editor.  You can now easily add your logo, add images to your slideshow, change your store background colour, the colour of your navigation, your links, as well as your text, footer background, and footer text.

The best thing of all is that all of your colour changes are also reflected in your checkout, which also exactly matches the colour scheme you’ve created.

It comes with a few different colour schemes built-in as well, which you can see by clicking on the image to the right.

We’re pleased to announce that we have a new feature for our theme templates… Theme Settings.

Although the Spiffy Stores Themes have always been highly configurable, this configuration necessarily required some knowledge of HTML and CSS.

Not any more.

The new Theme Settings ability means that theme designers can now create a custom settings form that allows the end-user to simply choose from basic theme configuration options such as colour scheme, custom logo configuration and design layout.

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We know we’ve been teasing you a little too much with the delayed launch of this theme… well the Antiqua theme is now available to all stores in your theme gallery.  Check out the theme preview site at http://antiqua.spiffystores.com

To apply this theme to your store, just navigate to the “Theme gallery” section in your Toolbox (in the Design & assets section). You’ll see the Antiqua theme there.

If you want to try it out on your site, remember to save your current theme by downloading it first. This means that you’ll be able to restore it at a later date if you’d prefer to use your old theme.

The minimal theme is a modern, clean theme that features a customisable slide show on the home page to showcase your products, and also includes a stylesheet for the checkout pages so that they match the store.

This theme is very easy to customise and has instructions in the demo store at http://getminimal.spiffystores.com

Oh… and before anyone asks… the Antiqua theme will be ready on the 16th of April.

You may have noticed that things have been a little quiet here lately. That’s because we’ve been busy working on a major update to the software, which is pretty huge!

This update includes a complete re-design of the interface, with a lot of attention paid to consistency… so that once you’ve learnt how to do one thing, it’s pretty easy to work out how the rest of the interface works.

There are also a lot of additions to functionality, including the ability to manage products and orders in bulk, as well as the ability to download them.

With this new version, we can also now release the Showtime and Antiqua themes that we’ve mentioned previously. We haven’t been able to release them earlier, as they include functionality that isn’t available in the current release. There’s also a new theme… Minimal. A screenshot of the theme can be seen to the right.

We’re just working through the final testing phase, so it will probably be about two weeks. We’ll post more info here in the coming days/weeks, and send out an email to all store owners when we get closer to the date.

Fresh from Spiffy labs is the Showtime Theme.  This new theme features some cool dynamic bits, such as a slideshow of products on the home page & collection pages, as well as a cool range of colours perfect for a wide range of stores.  Stay tuned for news of release!

We’ve been working on a new theme that we’ve christened “Antiqua”. This theme will shortly be added as a free theme option to all stores, so stay tuned!  Like our other themes, it will also be available in a range of colours.

I’ve been busy working on a couple of new themes, and can’t believe how annoying IE6 is.  Hours of annnoying bug fixes later, and I just can’t believe that any company can write software so crap.  Why are people still using it?

Internet Explorer 6 has always been crap when it comes to building websites. While many of its issues are Microsoft’s fault for ignoring web standards, newer problems have arisen simply because of its age. It’s now eight years old, and many of the cool new tools on the web just didn’t exist when it came out.

Even if not all of IE6’s problems are its own fault, I know I’ll be joining the millions of web designers & developers dancing on Internet Explorer 6’s grave… when it finally dies the slow painful death it deserves. Until then, designing pages around IE6’s shortcomings is a fact of life.

Still… if you’ve ever wondered what sort of cool stuff you’ll be able to take advantage of when IE6 is gone, Sitepoint’s James Edwards has a list of the 10 cool things we’ll be able to do once IE6 is dead.

We hate you, Internet Exploder. You will not be missed.

You can now update your site with our latest theme, Fresh!

To do this, just navigate to the “Theme” tab, and then go into the Gallery. You’ll see the new theme at the top of the list.

If you want to try it out on your site, remember to save your current theme by downloading it first. This means that you’ll be able to restore it at a later date if you’s prefer to use your old theme.

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Here’s a fresh new Spiffy Store theme that we’ve been working on that’s called… well… “fresh” theme.  This theme will shortly be added as a free theme option to all stores, so stay tuned!

We’re currently up to 14 different colour schemes, but can also create a custom colour scheme for you (design fees apply) if there’s a particular colour you want.