Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Navigation on pages outside Actinic / acatalog

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    Navigation on pages outside Actinic / acatalog

    Morning all and a Happy New Year to you (can we still say that?).

    I have a bit of a challenge at the moment which I wonder if someone might be able to help with. I don't have a URL I'm afraid as this is just something I'm currently chewing on, trying to find out if it's even possible at the moment. Anyway, here's the situation:

    The issue

    There are one or two pages that I'd really rather not include within the Actinic infrastructure, specifically: custom site error pages (e.g. error 404 etc) and form pages (e.g. enquiry, tell a friend). The latter will use PHP and Smarty (it would just be the Smarty template HTML within Actinic if I were forced to do it as a 'Brochure Page' obviously).

    The reason

    I don't want to include these within Actinic because I don't want the customer to have access to them (imagine the horrors if they deleted the error 404 page!). It's also not terribly good practice to have template files (i.e. Smarty templates) in a public directory (even though they can of course be blocked in a robots file).

    The question

    Is there a way of getting the navigation generated by actinic (for brochure pages / shop departments etc) on to these pages outside of Actinic?

    I suspect that there isn't and I did search the forums quite a bit last night, but I wonder if my search term phrasing is letting me down - it's difficult to know what to search for.

    Possible solutions (not good) and further questions

    Possible solution 1

    The one thing that I did consider doing was creating a brochure page in Actinic that contained nothing but the navigation menus. I could then potentially bring this into my pages outside Actinic as a server side include or similar. The brochure page would look a bit messy in the Content Tree, however, so could it be hidden in a site deployment from Actinic Designer to Actinic Business / Catalog?

    Possible solution 2

    If it's easy enough to hide sections of the Content Tree in a site deployment, I could put the pages mentioned through Actinic as brochure pages. I would, however, still need to have the generated pages appearing somewhere other than acatalog on the website (e.g. Smarty templates are held above the public area of the site and error pages are in a directory called 'error' - this is standard). I fear this idea may be beset with permissions problems etc and won't have a hope of working, but would greatly appreciate comments.

    I think that's about it, if anyone has an ideas on this one I'd be really greatful.

    Many thanks in advance.

    Angi
    OXLink Web Design (Oxford)
    Actinic developers since version 3
    01865 361696

    #2
    Originally posted by Tiger
    Morning all and a Happy New Year to you (can we still say that?).
    You just did!

    I did something similar under v7 on a clients site to create a custom 404 page. I created a page in Dreamweaver and included the code for the navigation (this was the yahooscript), added the page to the Additional Files and uploaded. This compiled the navigation but was outside the main site navigation structure.

    May be a starter for 10 for you depending on the theme in use and your exact requirements.


    Bikster
    SellerDeck Designs and Responsive Themes

    Comment


      #3
      Cheers, John.

      Mmmm.... that sounds like a really interesting idea. Do you think it worked just because it was the Yahoo script thing though? Would it work just having the navigation variable in there? I'd like to avoid using obtrusive js, if possible.

      I may just give it whirl and see. I assume it put the page up under /acatalog/ though? Do you know of a way around that?

      Thanks again for your help.
      OXLink Web Design (Oxford)
      Actinic developers since version 3
      01865 361696

      Comment


        #4
        I was indeed dumped into /acatalog/ as it was added via the additional files menu


        Bikster
        SellerDeck Designs and Responsive Themes

        Comment


          #5
          Ah, okay. That's a shame. I wonder if there's anything I can do with PHP locally in the file to make Actinic put it somewhere else...

          Really useful idea though, John, I'm going to give it a try.

          Cheers.

          Angi
          OXLink Web Design (Oxford)
          Actinic developers since version 3
          01865 361696

          Comment


            #6
            No joy - another idea...

            Morning all.

            Unfortunately, John's idea didn't work for me so I was thinking of another way around it, much more complex probably but I'm wondering if it has a chance of working and would be greatful for the forum's feedback.

            My idea

            Using the local PHP function, could I add a little script to one of the generated pages, say, the home page that would generate a separate (i.e. not on the home page itself) little HTML / text file containing just the navigation? This separate little file then being happily uploaded to the acatalog folder? I could call this file into my enquiry form templates and my error pages stored elsewhere on the site.

            Any chance of working, do you think, or is it way out in left field?

            Any and all help appreciated.

            Many thanks in advance.

            Angi
            OXLink Web Design (Oxford)
            Actinic developers since version 3
            01865 361696

            Comment


              #7
              You could upload the site to a web server, view any web page and use View Source to get a copy of the generated HTML. Use that, which has all the Actinic Navigation in place (but translated into HTML) as your template in your non-actinic package, and just replace the Actinic Central content with the stuff you want.
              Bill
              www.egyptianwonders.co.uk
              Text directoryWorldwide Actinic(TM) shops
              BC Ness Solutions Support services, custom software
              Registered Microsoft™ Partner (ISV)
              VoIP UK: 0131 208 0605
              Located: Alexandria, EGYPT

              Comment


                #8
                Thanks for your suggestion Bill, but it won't really work for the end user of Actinic (we're a developer for other people).

                The good news is that I have just been playing around with my PHP idea and it actually seems to work a treat!

                I'll post up the code and instructions for anyone who might want to do something similar when I've finalised it.
                OXLink Web Design (Oxford)
                Actinic developers since version 3
                01865 361696

                Comment

                Working...
                X