Taking store offline

[Wulfstan]

Once I've created the site and put the framework in place, can the site be uploaded and set to offline? I want the customer to be able to add the stock themselves, without the site being live. Can this be done?

[leehack]

Why upload it all? just don't upload it at all or upload to a test domain. You can also suspend ordering in business settings if you did want to pursue that route.

[Wulfstan]

How does that work?

From my understanding I create the site in Designer and then export it once finished. This is then uploaded to the customer's chosen server, where they would populate it with the stock they are selling.

Obviously the customer doesn't want the site to be live whilst they "stock the shelves", so to speak. Do I put the site in another folder off the main server, or is there an option that allows the site to appear as offline? I know Joomla has this option for site maintenance and it's a simple tickbox.

[leehack]

Actinic is a desktop application, you choose when to put it live, none of it has to go live until you want it so. It's not an online solution.

[Wulfstan]

I must be missing the point here with how the software works. I was under the impression that I could design a site using Designer and then leave the customer to then stock it, having first uploaded it. Am I wrong in this understanding?

I don't want to be in the position of having to upload a store that is 100mb in size.

[leehack]

Customer can stock it as you want them to, they do this on their desktop as you would in fact, they're just using a different product to you. It's a desktop application like excel or word, works on the desktop on which it is installed. Perhaps it's worth taking a few minutes out to get to grips with how things work, the AUG has details i believe, you might end up making a mistake for both yourself and more importantly your client.

If the store was 100MB in size, it would only be a single upload to get it online, only changes then made would need to be uploaded.

[Wulfstan]

Ok, I can understand that. If I understand this correctly, with the customer using Catalog Client, the updates happen as they go along? So you're not uploading a big site in one hit?

[leehack]

When you select to upload, anything that has not been uploaded up to that point is uploaded.

[Jan]

The site can also be put into test mode (on the network menu), so that the products are uploaded into a test area until the site is complete.

When you have completed the design of the site, export a snapshot (file menu) and send that to the customer, they can then load that into their catalog client.

Regards,