Selected section links on home page

[maroni35]

I can't see that this is specifically dealt with in the advanced users guides or on here and not sure how relevant the advanced user guides are with the new version anyway.

So I have what I believe is a fairly standard setup, I have home page which is outside the acatalog directory this has a house symbol in the sellerdeck tree. Then a catalog home page which is in the acatalog directory and has a green oblong symbol in the tree. Under this are all the various sections and subsections that make up the website.

On my catalog home page I have section links in a box with an image and some text. These are on the order that they are in my tree. I have these as three columns which are responsive so they shrink down to 1 column if viewed on a mobile.

What I would like is the ability to put on my home page about six of these section OR subsection links with an image and some text. I would want to change which particular sections are shown on the home page every couple of weeks so I can promote particular areas of the website and keep the website looking as if it changes for those who visit regularly.

Any ideas?

[saucysal]

What I Do

This is not quite answering your post, but may be an alternative way of doing it. What I do is use the Best Sellers on homepage only, but change the name of Best Sellers to say Featured Products. In the Marketing tab, Best Sellers, I have 4 products enabled, and choose 4 products that I wish to feature (not necessarily best sellers or new) and Lock them in the list. This then brings these 4 products up on the home page, 4 abreast on a large monitor but one abreast on a mobile, two landscape. I choose products that come from different sections of the site, and give a cross-section of what we offer.

I also have a shop section called Featured Products, into which I put copies of these 4 products manually, so that when a customer is not on the homepage they can still click to see the Featured Products.

On the homepage, just below the Featured Products, I have New Products on homepage only, and have 4 of these showing. Again, I manually choose the 4 new products and Lock them. They may not be the 4 newest products. I have a New In section, which can be accessed from all pages, into which I manually put a copy of every new product, latest at the top.

Sarah

[maroni35]

Dear Sarah,

Thank you for the reply. I have got some best seller products on the front page, but what I am trying to get across to the customers is the broad range of products, hence that is why I wanted to use sections and also subsections rather than say six best seller or featured product items.

[maroni35]

Right taking things in stage.

So I believe the surrounding block if to get something to just appear on home page is

<actinic:block if="%3cactinic%3avariable%20name%3d%22IsBrochureHomePage%22%20%2f%3e">


</actinic:block>

then copy responsive section list layout in the library and rename.

Then I could create a new section variable and then nest that as a criteria for a blockif inside the homepage one, therefore hopefully only pulling in the correct sections or subsections

[graphicz]

This was originally Norman's code so taking no credit:

Design, Library, Variables, right cick on Section: New Variable:
ShowInExtraHomePageList
Type True/False
Values False
Thus:


Similarly create a variable: SubsectionListColumnCount
Type: Number
Whole numbers only
values 4.

This is the subsecton list for the home page showing only selected subsections:

<actinic:block if="%3cactinic%3avariable%20name%3d%22IsBrochureHomePage%22%20%2f%3e">
<h2 class="clearall">Sub Section List</h2>
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="10" width="580"><tr>
<actinic:block php="true">$myindex = 0;</actinic:block>
<actinic:block type="EntireSectionList" >
<actinic:block if="%3cactinic%3avariable%20name%3d%22IsSectionIncludedInSiteMap%22%20%2f%3e%20AND%20%3cactinic%3avariable%20name%3d%22ShowInExtraHomePageList%22%20%2f%3e" >
<td style="padding:5px; border:1px dotted silver; vertical-align:top;"><actinic:variable name="SectionLinkHomePage" /></td>
<actinic:block php="true">
if (++$myindex >= <actinic:variable name="SubsectionListColumnCount" />)
{
$myindex = 0;
echo '</tr><tr>';
}
</actinic:block>
</actinic:block>
</actinic:block>
</tr></table>	
</actinic:block>

Now just make showinextrahomepagelist true in any sections you want to show in the list.

NB: This is a table, so you will have to fiddle with it to make it responsive. Maybe change table cells to percentage width divs?

Once again - thanks to Norman http://drillpine.biz/

[maroni35]

Thanks Johnathon,

Anything that uses Norman as a stating point has a good chance of success. I'll work on not using tables and report back if I think I have got something to work.

Thanks for looking.
David