Split Design and Order Management

[RuralWeb]

It is not uncommon to have site design/updating done by one PC and order management done by another PC in a separate location. This works very well with current versions as the order management PC dose not have any effect on the website.

However V8 may be different. I may be wrong but I assume that when the marketing features are active the PC managing the orders will upload new pages as and when the best sellers change as determined by sales.

My question is: following upgrade the design/updating PC will add new products, change text, change prices and change outer layer design as would happen with V7. The new product maketing info and other changes will be uploaded and all will work ok - until the order manager PC detects that the best seller has changed. It will then upload new pages to show the change of best seller, in the process it will overwrite all the changes done by the design PC putting the site back to the original state but with the best sellers now upto date.

Am I correct in assuming that if you use V8 with the marketing features enabled that after every design/update the order manager PC will need updating with a snapshot to ensure that the site is not changed back everytime orders are downloaded.

[Jan]

If you want to use split order processing and catalog management, along with the marketing features then you will need to transfer your orders to your upload PC at regular intervals. To do this you need to firstly, take a snapshot from your upload PC and transfer it to your download PC, making sure that you do not transfer the orders. You can then take a snapshot from your download PC and transfer it to your upload PC, along with the orders.

The other option would be to maintain the best sellers manually on the upload PC, generate them on the download PC and then just enter by hand on the upload PC.

Regards,

[pinbrook]

Another thing to consider with V8 is the option of Designer and client catalog.

If you choose this route, product input goes to the client but client also will be able to upload bestsellers, new products etc.

[RuralWeb]

Thanks jan & jo but I had worked all that out. What I am trying to say is that with V8 there is no longer the option of maintaining a clients site remotely while using the marketing features.

With V7 I can maintain a clients site easily while they download orders, it does not matter what I do eg add products, change text or change the design. There is no need to send them a snapshot if all they are doing is downloading the orders.
Thier copy of Actinic never interacts with the website. V8 however is different if the advanced marketing features are used (I think most people will upgrade just to get these) then whenever a change in best seller is detected then the client software will update the site with the new information and overwrite any changes done by the designer - this is not good IMO.

You will need to do a snapshot everytime a change is made on the designer/maintainer PC and as the client PC will I suspect do what is almost a refresh when it will need to upload every page on the site this may take quite a while.

This overwriting problem is common in CMS software and products such as Adobe Contribute have a check in/out system to prevent this happening. I can see a problem especially for larger sites as downloading orders may take a long time if it triggers a best seller update.

Obviously this is not a problem for a site designed and used to download orders on the same PC.

[wjcampbe]

Unless New Products and Best Sellers are php includes with only a reserved area in the website pages - in which case the separate lists are uploaded (only) and the pages remain unchanged from the refresh point of view???

[RuralWeb]

Dont know bill? - I am assuming that a complete set of new html pages are uploaded thus overwriting the live site and any changes made by the other PC.

[wjcampbe]

I would expect those little snippets are an include - hopefully Chris or someone at Actinic will confirm. Apart from that, if the customer is using the client version, the design side will be protected from him/her and will not change. If they are using the full version (and thus are able to change the design content), you cannot make changes without first getting their latest snapshot - and then ideally, sending them the completed update by snapshot for them to reload.

[RuralWeb]

if the customer is using the client version, the design side will be protected from him/her and will not change

I think I may not be explaining correctly what I am talking about. Forget about the designer/client.

A simpler example may be a website which is maintained ie products added and prices changed etc in one location and the orders downloaded in another location.

With V7 you would not have to update the download PC at all as all it is doing is "downloading" orders ie only one PC is activly maintaining the site content. With V8 both PCs are now maintaining the content of the website and may be overwiting each other. It looks to me that you can only use the marketing features if the site is maintained and orders downloaded on the same PC - I hope I am wrong.

I have several clients in this situation - I suppose the only way to find out is to try it, unless chris has the answer.

[Jan]

Firstly, you should only upload from one machine, uploading from both will not work. Secondly, this is not a new situation, it has been the like this for stock control and customer accounts for many versions. You can use marketing on split maintenance / order processing systems but you have to transfer the orders to the maintenance machine to do this or maintain them manually.

Having said that you could design the site so that the marketing information (instructions in advanced user guide to do this) are separate pages, included on the final page, in which case the order processing machine could generate them and then upload them manually when changes ocurred

Regards,

[RuralWeb]

this is not a new situation, it has been the like this for stock control and customer accounts for many versions

I realise this but not everyone uses stock control and customer accounts.

So you are confirming that you can only use the marketing features if you use one PC which is what I thought.

This will make it harder for designers who want to maintain a site for a client. At the moment I have several which I add content to and the client downloads orders - I rarely need to send them a snapshot. If they upgrade to V8 and use the marketing features then I will need to send them a snapshot after every change I make to the site.

[Jan]

So you are confirming that you can only use the marketing features if you use one PC which is what I thought.

No I am not, the opposite in fact.

Regards,

[RuralWeb]

If you use them as supplied in V8 then I dont see how it can work without lots of snapshots/updates going on. If you build a separate page then its defeating the object of getting the info onto every page of the site.

Dont get me wrong I think that the marketing features are a great addition to Actinic but for some people and the way that they use Actinic it may not be possible to use them.

If something smart is going on as bill suggests then there is no problem but if a new best seller triggers a "refresh" of the site in order to populate the pages with the new info then it may cause problems for some users.

Chris if you are there can you confirm what happens to the pages when when a new best seller is detected?

[cdicken]

Chris if you are there can you confirm what happens to the pages when when a new best seller is detected?

By default, a change to the best sellers would mean a change to every page that includes the best sellers list - hence the next upload you do will include all the section pages.

Not good.

Fortunately there is a way to generate the best sellers list to an external page snippet and then include this code into the page on the website. This means that a change in the best sellers list will only update one page - rather than 1,000.

This technique is detailed in the Advanced User Guide - look at the chapter on 'Advanced Best Sellers and New Products Lists'.

[RuralWeb]

By default, a change to the best sellers would mean a change to every page that includes the best sellers list - hence the next upload you do will include all the section pages.

Thanks for that Chris - I thought that that was waht would happen. For some of my sites and the way they are managed this will be important.

I expect that some very large sites may also have problems with the site being uploaded during the ordering download although this could be minimised by careful settings.

Not good.

No not in the areas discussed above BUT I think it is excellent news as far as SEO goes. When the best sellers changes it will change the content of the page and the date the page was last uploaded, these are both things that google etc check to determine rankings.

On the negative side it will make it more difficult to control the content of each page in terms of keyword density and placement. It may be best to have the two lists on the right of the page so they are not the first text that the SEs see and use to rank the page. On the right they will be the last text so it does not matter so much.

Lots to think about

[RuralWeb]

Fortunately there is a way to generate the best sellers list to an external page snippet and then include this code into the page on the website

I think that this is the way I will upgrade my sites initially - I think the potential SEO problems will be difficult to control.