Product List Layout Issue - Advice

[I-CC]

Hi all,

Been trying to get a site upgrade from v7 to v8 working where a section within the design uses a couple of Fragments at the top and then goes into its products at 4 per row - I thought.

But, no matter how much I play and play with the settings or options, I do not see this as being possible, as from what I can tell, the Fragments are included in the Column Count For Products, thus the Product list layout is being applied to not just products, but also fragments within that page also.

Anyone tried this and found some solution maybe.

I thought that something bad had been pulled across from the v7 upgrade into v8 to start with, but after a whole day trying to get this working, I wondered on whether this was intentional or a bug maybe, so loaded a default css clean theme and amongst the default products, applied a fragment to the top and chose a count of 2 and hey presto, the fragment was applied to this count also..

So, is it intentional does anyone know or have I missed a bug, or maybe it was just never meant to be

[I-CC]

Nearly a whole day later, but seem to have tracked this all down, which others might find usefull if encountering the same issue.

1. Into Design | Library | Layouts - Web Page Inner Layouts and openned the Standard Section page.

This had a variable called name="ProductList" with a Value fixed to a single Product list layout, which I removed the complete value leaving it completely empty and thus it would take on the Product list layout as assigned in the Layout tab of the section (as it was being ignored due to being fixed with a value).

2. Them, back in the Library | Layouts, located the Bare Product List within the Product Lists category and copied it. I actually did it twice and called the copies - Frag (1) and Prod Lists & Frag (2) and Prod Lists. The Frag (1 or 2) means the section it is going to be used in will have either 1 or 2 fragments which I want to span the full width of the available space, whilst then the products layout as per the columncount I assign as normal.

If I simply changed the Bare Product list, it would affect all pages using this layout, which is not good, so the alternates are needed.

3. I then go to my section where to start with I have 1 fragment which is meant to span the full width and then multiple products per row, where within its Layout tab I assign:

a. Column Count For Products = 4
b. Product List Layout = Frag (1) and Prod Lists

Now the tricky bit - where I change to Design view and show the Layout code at the base. I select the fragment text in the preview and then click the Navigate to parent layout enough times til it shows the Layout Code - Frag (1) and Prod List, where I then click the 'Click here to edit list layout settings'.

Now, within the overall design I assign:

Start of list <table blah blah>
End of list </table>

Then, within the edit rows and columns I add:

For the first row:
No of items = 1
Before row = <tr>
first item (before) = <td>
first item (after) = </td>
After row = </tr>

For middle row:
No of items: <actinic:variable name="ProductColumnCount" />
Before row: <tr>
all (first, middle, last) items (before): <td valign="top">
all (first, middle, last) items (after): </td>
After row: </tr>

Commit all of the changes and hey presto, my single fragment positioned at the top of the sections content is shown full width of the page, with all products then laid out in the columncount assigned, in my case 4.

I also wanted 2 fragments (1 per row) after each other before doing the columncount for products on another page of the site, so....

Assigned the section layout with....
a. Column Count For Products = 4
b. Product List Layout = Frag (2) and Prod Lists

Then, went into its 'Click here to edit list layout settings' and only difference was the...

For the first row:
No of items = 2
Before row = LEFT EMPTY
first item (before) = <tr><td>
first item (after) = </td></tr>
last item (before) = <tr><td>
last item (after) = </td></tr>
After row = LEFT EMPTY

Commited all of that, and again hey presto, my 2 fragments spanned the full width each, with products then displayed 4 per row.

The biggest hurdle in all of this was that by default (in my upgraded v7 to v8 site) it assigned a value to the ProductList variable, which meant it was simply ignoring the assignment of alterate lists, but once that was removed and left with no value and just <actinic:variable name="ProductList" /> then the choices made in the layout for the product list was acted upon, so one to watch out for I thinks...

Anyway, probably other ways to overcome this, but considering this was supposed to be a quick shift from using the multiple products per row as used in the original v7 site, to using the inbuilt ability in v8 and this has taken me 2 days to track it all down after removing the original v7 java script which did it, I think that will do for me for now...

This all said and done, still not sure why it is called a product list when it affects the entire inner area including fragments, as if I had interpreted fragments within products as being included in this analogy, then would have saved me hours of faffing around, but hope this helps some who might be having similar issues with upgraded sites or others.

[I-CC]

Found something else within the Advanced User Guide...

Here it explains that the productlist includes the fragments and explains a means to split these up.

So, something learnt every minute of the day with v8.

[fainster]

Thanks for the tip, i also spent the weekend tearing my hair out over it...