Big Cartel Blog

You may have embraced it early, or you may have been a long time hold-out. Love it or hate it, Facebook’s new Timeline layout is here, and everybody’s got one. With Timeline’s design change in place, we wanted to make sure our Big Cartel app kept your Store tab as shiny as a new penny.

We made things a bit roomier in there so you can really stretch out and get comfy, and we tweaked the product viewing experience to really let your products stand out. These changes are automatic, so there’s nothing to do on your end, just log in and check it out for yourself.

Efficiency is the key, and we’re working our tails off to make your order fulfillment process one step simpler. Very soon you’ll be able to access all of your orders from within your Big Cartel admin.

We’ve done some heavy lifting on the back end to make this happen, and we couldn’t be more excited for this first take. That’s right - first take - we’ve got big plans for our admin, and this feature clears the path for some really amazing stuff to come. This initial launch is designed to help those of you that process orders yourself and ship from a local post office (65% of you, based on our recent survey).

Now we’re still hunting down bugs and polishing things up, so this lil’ feature ain’t quite ready for the big show, but that’s where you come in. We’re looking for the right stores to hop in and beta test this baby for us. Interested? Does your store ship 2-3 orders a week? Do you package everything in-house and ship from a post office? Well, then give us a holler, and join us at the beta party. We’d love to have you.

Get your name on the beta list »

Setting up a custom domain can be a little tricky. Well, it used to be a little tricky, but we’ve built a fancy little tool to help make sure your custom domain can be set up without much fuss. Our domain validator, located in your shop’s admin (Store > Settings), will let you know if your domain is set up correctly - it just takes one click, a couple seconds, and a little bit of behind-the-scenes magic.

If for some reason your domain isn’t set up correctly, don’t sweat it, we’ve got an error message for that. The messages are designed to explain how you’ve got your custom domain set up currently, why it’s not working, and how to fix it. Finally, a tour guide through the complicated mess that is DNS.

Check your existing domain

Already have a custom domain setup? Well, it’d probably be a good idea to test it anyway. We’ll soon be moving our servers into a new home, and that means an IP address change. This change won’t affect your store if your domain is setup properly, so hop into your admin settings, scroll down to Domains, and click Test Domain to make sure you’re good to go.

Continuing our drive to make customization even easier, we’ve just released a few more updates and improvements that we think you’ll love.

The easily uploadable background image in our new Sidecar theme was such a big hit, we decided to add it to all of our themes. Spruce up your shop with a custom background image by following either of these easy steps.

I haven’t customized my CSS

Well perfect, you’re ready to go right now. Simply go to Customize design in your store admin, and in the top left of the control panel you can easily upload a background image to your theme.

I’ve already customized my CSS

No sweat. You’ll need to remove any current background image, and use this lil’ snippet of code at the bottom of your CSS instead:

{% if theme.background_image != blank %}
body {
  background-image: url({{ theme.background_image.url }});
  background-repeat: repeat;
}
{% endif %}

Now you’re set to upload using our built-in theme option.

Bug fixes and page editor tweaks

In addition to background images, we’ve squashed a few bugs and made a few other enhancements that should make the design area a little nicer. Plus, we’ve cleared up the confusion between Save and Done buttons when editing pages. Now you’ll more clearly know when you’re just finished editing a certain page, and when all of your shop changes are saved and live for the world.

From the looks of all the newly revamped stores out there, you’re definitely putting our new customization tools to good work. These new features are a big improvement from our old system, but there were also a number of smaller details we added that we love just as much. Here are just 10 of our favorite little, hidden gems.

WYSIWYG Editor

Style and format your custom page content with clicks instead of code.

Re-order pages

Drag & drop your custom pages into any order you’d like.

Background images

Easily upload a custom background image in Sidecar. A great feature, coming soon to our other themes.

Themes for all

All of our themes (including our newest, Sidecar) are now available to all plans.

More fonts

Themes now include new font options to help your store more closely match your existing brand. We support all web-safe fonts and hope to add more soon.

Functional preview

Our real-time preview area isn’t just great for looking at, you can use it too! Play with your theme’s features, add and remove items from the cart, and more.

Fullscreen editing

For those big edits that require a big canvas. Great for advanced coding.

Preview quicknav

Quickly jump to those hard to reach pages like Maintenance and Success using the quicknav, or hide it to get it out of the way.

Transparent colors

Now when you want something to blend into its surroundings, it can.

Direct links

If you edit a particular page quite a bit, say your Home page, you can get there easily with a direct link, like: /admin/design#advanced/home

It’s official! Our completely rebuilt customization area, and our newest theme, Sidecar, are now yours to enjoy. We put everything we had into building these tools, and we’re very excited to see you use them to bring your stores to life.

Building a custom shop that perfectly matches your brand is now a cinch. Simply login to your admin, head over to the “Customize design” link, and start playing around in the new design area. None of your changes go live until you hit “Save,” and our new preview area let’s you see all your customization ideas come to life in real-time.

Update: With such a huge update, it may be easy to overlook all the details that make this feature so nice. Check out our list of the top 10 hidden gems in the new customization tool.

There’s a lot to love about our upcoming customization refresh, but one of our favorite bits is the new power and flexibility it gives our themes. Themes will be able to offer a variety of design and customization options, and to showcase some of these new abilities, we’re excited to introduce a new theme into our lineup - Sidecar.

UPDATE: Sidecar is here! Check out some great stores using our newest theme.

Sidecar is a fresh take on showcasing your products and interacting with your customers. In addition to the quick and easy customization you’ve come to expect of all Big Cartel themes, Sidecar also boasts some great new features:

• Uploadable images for a logo and a background
• Customizable product grid layout
• Customizable image size for your products
• Multiple font choices for different text areas
• Handy layout and display options

Sidecar will be available (shortly) to all stores with the launch of our new design area, and it represents the first of many new themes we hope to offer in the coming months. We want your store to be as unique as the products it holds, and we think Sidecar is a great starting point to help you do just that.

To pull off our upcoming customization features, we had to tap into some awesome new web browser technology. This new technology allows us to do things faster and more seamlessly than ever before, making these new design features some of the best we’ve ever built.

Unfortunately, about 1.5% of our sellers are using older browsers that don’t support a lot of this new technology, so we want to help you ensure your browser is up to date and ready for these new features (and many more in the future). Use the information below to see how your browser stacks up.

Note: these requirements only apply to your store admin area. Your customers can still shop in your store using any browser they’d like.

Browser Check

Checking your browser…

If you have any questions, or need help upgrading your browser, just let us know.

We want your store to be as colorful as you are, and building that unique look is about to get a whole lot easier.

For over a year now we’ve been working on a new design area for your store admin that will simplify the customization process, for all skill levels, and we can’t wait to get it in your hands. Here’s a glimpse at what we’ve been up to.

You’ll soon have a brand new way to play with colors and fonts, try different themes, see a real-time preview of your changes, and manage your pages with ease. The new design area will give you complete freedom to try new looks and new content, without having to worry about anyone else seeing it until you’re ready.

Many of you have been begging for something like this for a long time, and over the next few weeks we’ll be dropping a few more sneak peeks while we polish up the final product. This is just the start of many customization features and themes we have planned, we hope they’ll leave you with more time to do what you do best – create.

Big Cartel is hiring! We want to strengthen our support fort with someone that is dedicated to helping artists make a living doing what they love.

Customer service is key to keeping our artists out of maintenance mode and in creation mode. So if you’ve got the skills to help and the passion for their success, then visit our full job posting and get in touch.