Can't get products to display!

[laina crafts]

I have just upgraded to version 8 and have a bizarre problem. I cannot seem to get the sections and products to display in the pages I have created.

I upgraded from v4 through version 7 (long story - but because v8 cannot upgrade a v4 site and because I was originally sent the wrong version by Easyspace). All of the sections and products are there with the correct information in each listing in the content tree in v8.

I have been redesigning the templates to fit in more with our new website design (http://www.laina-crafts.co.uk), but the site has never displayed the products in the pages in offline preview. It goes through the motions of making the site, but each page only has the basic outline with no products pictures or details shown at all. I know the site map facility works, so it is obviously picking up the structure from the content tree, but why can't I get it to display anything at all on the page? There is no navigation on the left either so I cannot even navigate from page to page.

I am new to v8 so I would be very grateful for any help on this mysterious problem!

[jont]

Hi Rob,

if you are unable to see any of the products or navigation etc it suggests some of the layouts are not registered in your outer layout. Before hacking away at the templates to get them looking like the rest of the site it may be worthwhile applying a default theme in v7... exporting a snapshot and then doing a clean import into v8 with a default theme... that should at least get you to a clean sheet to work from. You can then edit the templates to suit the rest of the site.

Alternatively try simply adding the missing variables to the existing layout such as:

<Actinic:Variable Name="TopLevelSectionList"/>
<actinic:variable name="ProductList" />

and see if that resolves.

[laina crafts]

Thanks Jonty

I will try that and see if works this week and let you know!

Thanks for the help!

[laina crafts]

That works - in part!

Thanks for the advice - I have finally gotten around to putting in the attributes and I now get products on the page!

It has thrown up two further errors though:
1 - I have a top level menu on the left hand side of the screen. I cannot access the individual product pages or subsections on either the menu or the page that you get when you click the top level product link.
2 - The right hand side of the product disappears under the table I have put them in! It is too wide for the table I have set up to fit in with the site design. How do I change the dimensions of the product details section in order to make it fit on the page?

[Bruce]

All links are working fine for me off the menu. Have you managed to correct the issues with the display and such as I cannot see where it is happening.

Kind regards,

[laina crafts]

Not online yet

Bruce

thanks for your reply - I have not uploaded my site from Actinic v8. Still building it in the software. The one online was from the old v4 and works fine.

The issues I am having are in the Offline Preview mode of the site. I have put in the code to display the top level section menu on the lefthand side of the screen, but no links are appearing to subsections, so there is no way to navigate round the site yet. I am going to try to sort this out today by trying one or two things on the section pages.

If you want me to upload a test site that will not affect my current site, how do I do it?

[cdicken]

Hi there

The TopLevelSectionList layout selector you have put in your design will only show top level sections, not sub-sections.

If you get hold of the 'Advanced User Guide' for v8 you'll see on p52 there is some code that will insert a section list into your design which has the sub-sections in bullets. Try copying and pasting the code into your design and see how it looks.

With regards to having products and sections appear within your section pages, did you try going to 'Design | Library | Layouts' then going to the 'Web Page Inner Layout' group. You can then right click on the 'Standard Section Page' layout and select 'Revert to Factory Settings'. This should get everything appearing within the main part of the section pages correctly.