Creating Single Product Pages automatically

[Richardpixel]

Pretty much all Actinic sites I do have single product pages (for obvious reasons I won't go into here), and I'm working on a re-design for client who currently doesn't have this structure/format.

Is there a way to automatically create this structure i.e. a section per product, maybe via an export and import somehow?

They have a few hundred products at least and trying to avoid completing the process manually.

[leehack]

Wait for v11, auto feature to be added on there.

[Richardpixel]

Oh, cool!

I'm not really up to speed with V11 - has there been any further announcements regarding a release date? Last I heard was May/June which obviously isn't happening.

Thanks for the heads-up Lee.

[Darren B]

its in Alpha testing

[Richardpixel]

Thanks Darren.

So probably a couple of months I guess?

[Jan]

Another way is to use my product mash product to produce an Actinic flat file format export file and then edit it in excel and add an extra path to the section tree (so Product|Section|Subsection would become Product|Section|Subsection|ProductRef) and then import the file into actinic, Actinic should create a new section for that product when you do that.
You could also modify the file a little more and add section images, prices etc to it based no the product settings.

More details and a free trial for the program here :

http://www.mole-end.biz/acatalog/actinic_Mash.html

Give my support desk a shout if you need a demo license for the Actinic flat file export.

Regards,

[Richardpixel]

Thanks Jan.

Might be worth a try if V11 is too far off.

To be honest, I thought you could do something similar natively within Actinic regarding exporting/importing. Is that not the case?

[Jan]

Hi Richard,

Actinic only exports hierarchical files and so I don't think that you would be able to do it through Actinic.

Cheers,

[Richardpixel]

Okay, thanks Jan.

[AndyBorrett]

Have a look at the google feed output built into Actinic to give you your flat file. If you have user variables you can make them exportable to this file too. Once you have your file you can import it back into a fresh site and map the product name to the section name too. All your products will now be in their own section. It is worth playing with the file to get all your section images, page names, page titles etc as you want them.
Dont forget if you use user variables you will need to convert the file using the flat file converter.

[Richardpixel]

Thanks Andy, hadn't thought or heard about doing it that way. Sounds good.

Cheers, Richard.

[Jan]

The google feed output produced by Actinic V10 does not contain the section tree though which is required for import (earlier versions might have it though).

Regards,

[Richardpixel]

The google feed output produced by Actinic V10 does not contain the section tree though which is required for import (earlier versions might have it though).

Aaahhh... so that sounds like an issue. Thanks for the update Jan.

[Jan]

Check it though, I might be wrong.

Regards,

[AndyBorrett]

If you map the product name to the section name then this creates the sections. The way I do it is to put all the new sections into a section in Actinic called temp (hidden) then drag them to where you want them.