Design snapshot

[leehack]

I must admit in the early days of V8 i tiptoed round just waiting for it to bite me in the ass and i became so cautious, often making 20-30 snapshots a day. Although nowadays i still proceed with a lot of caution, i find it ok on the whole. The lack of user friendliness and common sense is very frustrating and things like the design snapshot failing are absolutely pathetic for the version and price tag we pay for this. I'd give it 7.5/10 as it stands, it lacks class IMO.

The main problem is that it doesn't breed any confidence, you are always waiting for it to trash itself, in reality it does this very rarely, but it has left many battle scars, some of which will take a long time to forget.

Still to this day, i close my eyes in terror as im importing a snapshot, i can't remember having had one go wrong recently, but i expect it each and every day - i think that is the main problem - very little confidence in a product which is actually ok.

[jont]

nowadays i still proceed with a lot of caution, i find it ok on the whole.

For me v8.5 has speeded things along greatly... I can design, make changes, implement stuff I would never dream of doing in v6 or v7... all far quicker and with greater ease .... I do use it about 14 hours per day, solid, it has to be said... (I have said this in other posts only to be accused of being affiliated - George - you know who I mean ) ... all is peachy until trying to hand over the work done which is more miss than hit at the moment.

From a user point of view (or when designing my own sites with no design snapshots involved) it is great. It is the developers / designers that seem to be taking the brunt of the outstanding issues... which then reflect poorly on the software as a whole if paying clients are not able to receive and install work they have paid for.

[cdicken]

I'm guessing that all the deleted posts are the leftovers from some terrible banter. I could undelete the posts and move them to 'Any Other Business' if you like.

Anyway, I thought I would just leap in the defense of this 'half-baked' and 'joke' Partial Site Design Wizard and just explain what it was designed for.

The wizard is a way of sending layouts from one application to another - in the same way as in v7 you sent templates from one application to another. This works fine, and I've used this a number of times to send updates and fixes to clients - but this was never designed as a way of deploying an entire design.

In v7 you never just sent over templates when you wanted to implement a full design - you also had to somehow set colours correctly and also set all the options in Design Options correctly. This would always require a little fiddling in the application before the site was fully up and ready to go.

OK - what does v8 offer you then to help with this? Well, the Partial Site Design wizard allows you to send Variables and Layout Selectors to the client. If you set the 'Top Level Value' of the variable/selector to be the value you want to appear in Site Options, and then set the initial value to 'Use Parent', then the value used in Site Options will be this top level value when the things are imported. This allows you to do a lot of the setting remotely.

I agree that the process of upgrading a site can be a total nightmare - especially when the customer is constantly monitoring stock levels. This is a process flow I use, which seems to work OK for handling this:

1. Get the v6/v7 snapshot
2. Upgrade it into a v8 site A.
3. Upgrade the design.
4. When it's time to deploy I got another snapshot from the customer.
5. I then upgraded it into a different site B.
6. I then just did a hierarchical export from site B
7. I then imported this into site A
8. Then I took v8 to the client with the up-to-snapshot and installed it on the client's PC.
9. I then used 'File | Import Orders' to pull the orders from the current live site.

If the site has fast-moving stock then the last part of it will have to be done on site. There's just no way around that, with any software you would use with that sort of thing.

Hope that helps clear things up. I'm not saying that we don't need some sort of 'Design Transfer', but I just wanted to get things in context.

[jont]

Chris,

due to the issues with Actinic Variables I tend to remove their use and hard code into the layouts. (actstdwidth, colours etc etc).. but this is not an issue in my case as....

The site I am trying to update has already been passed back to the client as a full v8.5 snapshot ... products and all and is working live. The only difference is now a few days later the client has changed product details, taken orders etc. The 2 designs are identical. All variables are the same in design options. All changed layouts are using the same name.

Changes have been made to my local copy (outer layout, CSS, cart layouts etc) and deployed as a partial design snapshot. Every layout is ticked. All additional files have been selected. This has been done twice.

The client has imported the partial design (even done the old double-import trick) .. imported and restarted ... and various other methods of importing the ACD.

There are no absolute paths in the snapshot. The designs just will not stick.

All I am trying to do for this site is the equivalent of attaching a load of Act_Templates.html to an email and asking the client to copy into their local folder.... which is what I imagined the partial snapshot would do now the layouts (templates) are all held internally.

[pinbrook]

Ok we accept the way the design snapshot currently works, but I feel the frustrations that are currently being expressed means it could be so much better and a real asset to the software if it were made to work the way we'd like it too.

At the mo I think we are being toyed with, you've fed us half a useful tool. It feels like we've got the baby and the nappy but you are withholding the nappy pins.

[leehack]

I think the naming of it, is the problem then, as its misleading. When i do 'snapshot' i know it takes everything - which for me is stunning, i love this facility. When i see design snapshot, i expect it to be a full design snapshot.

I've often commented that i think snapshots are fantastic and i think you need to expand on this facility. Forget all of this hierarchical mallarky and get snapshots available for all aspects of a site.

This would be my ideal upgrade process:

• v5-v7 snapshot received off client
• Upgrade to V8 and finish site design
• Client suspends ordering and downloads any orders
• Client takes a 'products' snapshot - all product and stock info included
• Client takes an 'orders' snapshot - all old and new orders
• Import 'orders' and 'products' snapshots into new design
• Take full snapshot of new site
• Send to client

Client happy, designer happy and hopefully actinic happy.

In addition to this, a 'design' snapshot is available that takes every conceivable 'design' element into a snapshot. This means that a client can (within an hour or so):

• Suspend ordering on v5-v7 site
• Download their orders
• Upgrade to V8 - whether that be a complete balls up or not
• Import the design snapshot you provide

Client happy, designer happy and hopefully actinic happy.

Snapshot is the greatest thing, so broaden it's use, making the following available:

• Full Snapshot (all of the below)
• Orders Snapshot
• Products Snapshot (includes stock)
• Shipping Snapshot
• Design Snapshot

Web designers/developers are getting stuffed at the moment with this software and they are also shouldering most of the help on the forum.

In addition, your process is good on paper, however if the hierarchical export fails, you are stuffed and your process won't work. Both myself and Jo have had a hierarchical that would not work in the past 10 days. Nothing obvious missed, but fragments just got trashed for some reason, sadly my client had 208 of them. There was sod all wrong with the site as it has now been live for 7 days and is functioning perfectly. Your software inexplicably cannot deal with [LINK] either, now that is appalling, we're on 8.5 for heavens sake, who on earth tests this? The [LINK] facility is your own functionality!!!

Even if your process did work each time, it's outdated, archaic and needs improving. I'm sure i may have missed a few little things out above, but i don't think any of us would be unhappy if the exact process above was available.

Designers/developers have been through the mire in the early V8 days, have helped you create a good piece of software now, they support the forum massively and yet they are still getting shafted. It's time for actinic to give them something back and it's no good in 6 months or 12 months, it needs immediate attention IMO.

[completerookie]

Chris
you said

but this was never designed as a way of deploying an entire design.

assuming that you are JUST the designer, what is /should be used to transfer the DESIGN of the site to a new machine / site / customer

I've tried in vain to make a new designs on one site and "simply transfer" that design to a site that is ALREADY up and running.

How does the designer do the "transfer / update" part of his job (I can't)

If you want a way of making this work, allow us to "set a date/time" and then ANYTHING (and I mean ANYTHING) that has changed since that date/time - include it into a snapshot that can then be COMPLETELY uploaded onto the new site - I don't care if its layouts, variables, additional files - anything

Most designers would know what state the "old site" is in - they probably have a working backup copy as a "starter" for their changes.

It may be that the designer takes the "starting point" of the site, upgrades it, takes a FULL snapshot of the new design, then sets the date finally when complete, he should just take a second "final snapshot" (ignoring all those safety backups in the between time)

when he goes to the site to install, update with the "upgrade snapshot", then follow this immediatly by the "final snapshot"

At the moment, I automatically click ALL possible boxes, copy any file I THINK I've changed and then hope for the best - but I must say, I can't ever remember being aply to apply and say "there you go, all done !"

[pinbrook]

I've had a site this week that upgraded to V8, then because of the topsy turvey way of doing things, I had to take an hierarchical export that subsequently refuse to import into V8 - despite the fact I did nothing to the export. When I additionally used the import orders feature it split the customer name across customer name and company name. All this took time to remedy and by the time I had the clients stock control was trashed. So I had to start again with another snapshot.

Another suggested order of events:

1 Create a design in V8 - this can take day/weeks - and could be done with or without client data.

On the day of release.....

2 Ask client to hold off downloading orders
3 Get snapshot (5,6,7,8) from client, upgrade DB
4 Put design from 1 into DB from 3
5 Release snapshot to client
6 Upload site, download orders

[RuralWeb]

This is all very familiar as I remember us all discussing it in August last year and nothing has changed. It was immediately obvious that the V7 method of just passing templates backwards and forwards was dead in V8 and there was no way it could be reproduced. I remember jont and I explaining how the process worked and I think that is were things may have gone wrong with V8 ie because Actinic never really understood how designers worked with the software the best feature IMO ie the template manager and ability to move templates about has been lost.

What we need is something very simple ie you send a file to a client and it transfers the design you have created in one go. Yes the ability so send bits of a design is usefull but its far too complex at the moment - think the way it worked in V7 and IMO thats all thats needed.

This thread will grow as now people are upgrading as they consider the software to have stabalised over the last year also more designers are comming on line who will be trying to deploy sites but failing.

[jont]

What we need is something very simple ie you send a file to a client and it transfers the design you have created in one go. Yes the ability so send bits of a design is usefull but its far too complex at the moment - think the way it worked in V7 and IMO thats all thats needed.

This is exactly how it should work. Tick all the boxes for a full design export or tick a few if just sending over a few layouts.

Peeking inside the ACD you can see all the layouts in there so the export is working fine (apparently)... it just won't stick properly to the import site.

[leehack]

Although i agree with simplicity as often as possible, i get the feeling that whatever they improve in this area, it won't be touched for considerable time after, as there are so many others things to do. Therefore, i would disagree with simplicity, if they are going to address this area, then do the lot at once. It's the only real chance we have of getting all that we would like. The difference (for us) between a simple solution and a full solution is probably about 3 minutes reading and 10 minutes playing around and testing. There will hardly be a learning curve, if they provide what we collectively ask for, how complicated can it be?

If they are going to try and get this issue solved in as little time as possible to shut people up on this issue, then yes just codge a simple solution together. I'd much prefer to see them attack an issue, give us what we will need for the next few years and then move onto the next issue. Short term fixes and quick solutions when addressing a particular area of any software is never the answer IMO.

Do one thing, do it properly and then move on.

[jont]

Layout Lists

Just spent 3 hours working on a partial design snapshot as follows....

Site A ... v8.5

Site B ... same as Site A but with some design modification to various layouts

Exporting partial design snapshot from Site B into Site A (the old double import trick was used) only showed some of the changes.

Swapping back and forward between the two sites all errors could be put down to the Layout Lists .. in particular the properties contained inside the orange "click here to edit list layout settings" link. Creating a partial design snapshot of just the list in question and importing into Site A did not make any of the changes inside the orange link layout.

Manually editing the list in Site A resolved all the errors (on that particular site at least).

This may be site specific but could be a pointer in a possible direction for the Actinic crew.

[leehack]

Jont have you tried importing onto a brand new clean store with no products yet, then importing the main snapshot and then reapplying the design snapshot?

[jont]

Yep - that's how I got Site A back onto the system via a newly licensed site, installed the full ACD and then applied the partial snapshot from Site B over the top.

I am not sure what the limit in MultiSite is but I am quickly filling the site list with a load of temporary sites licensed just to make a few changes

Even if it is trackable back to the layout lists this still makes upgrading clients sites a nightmare if all lists need to be checked between my copy and the clients copy ... and necessitates full snapshots being sent .... which are huge in size.

Even upgrading my own sites on the same machine often results in failure. More experimenting is need I think.

[leehack]

Yep - that's how I got Site A back onto the system via a newly licensed site, installed the full ACD and then applied the partial snapshot from Site B over the top.

To confirm, have you done:

New Site - import design snapshot - import main snapshot - reimport design snapshot?