Hiding

[kessock]

Hi Everyone,
When I was thinking of upgrading to V8 I asked if in V7 stock items could be hiden when out of stock, this I was told was only possible in V8.
Can anyone guide me to doing this as I have searched this forum and read the manual but cannot seem to find out how.
Thanks.
Mark

[jont]

Yes - you can wrap whole swathes of code in "conditions" .. these can be set to test, for example, if stock is greater than 1 then display.. otherwise it is not compiled by Actinic and therefore not displayed on the final page

[kessock]

??

hi jont,
thanks for the reply.
any chance of expanding a lot as I havn' got a clue how to do anything at present.
cheers.
mark

[jont]

This assumes you are monitoring stock. In a trial section of say 3 products add stocks of 10, 0 and 10 to the 3 products

In design tab mode click on the product and then click the "up arrow" until the dotted line in the preview window surrounds the whole of a single product .. you will see the layout beneath called something like "standard layout using css" or similar depending on your layout / theme in use.

In the code pane at the bottom highlight all the text - then click the green "C" button .. this is the condition button and will eventually insert a "block if" around all the code.

In the condition editor click on the blue "variable" button ... start typing "stock" and click on the variable "StockLevel" .... this inserts the variable into the editor... add a space then click on "insert an expression into the expression" ... click on "greater than or equal to" ... this inserts >= into the editor ... add another space and enter "1" ... without the quotes.

The finished code should read

StockLevel >= 1

Click OK to close the editor and apply to add the code to the layout.

This basically tells Actinic not to bother displaying the product unless stock levels are 1 or more .... if 0 (ie no stock) the product is not displayed.

As you set the middle product to 0 stock above there will only be 2 products now showing in the preview window. Change the stock to 1 - hit apply and the product will re-appear by Actinic magic

As usual best to make backups etc before starting any work. This is fairly minor modification however despite the immense power it wields and if it does go pear-shaped simply reset the layout back to factory in the library.

HTH

[kessock]

thanks

Cheers.
I will give it a go.
Thanks.
Mark

[kessock]

Strange

Hi Jont,
I am (trying) to have a go at this, but I cannot seem to get the selector to work.
Can you tell me what I am doing wrong, I am selecting the design tab, but when I try and select the product the dotted line is not going around anything.
Think I must have something set wrong in the preview page or something like that.
Any ideas.
Cheers.
Mark

[cdicken]

Hi Mark

Sometimes with upgraded sites, Actinic struggles to put the dotted line around things. You can maybe work through this with Actinic Support to resolve.

With regards to the showing and hiding of products, the way to do this is to go into 'Design | Library | Layouts' and then open the 'Product Lists' group. There are three alternative lists there - you might want to do this to all three.

1. Double-click on the layout to open it.
2. Highlight all the code in there down to line 15
3. Click the 'Insert Block' button (green C with a '+')
4. Copy and paste the following code in:

   <actinic:variable name="IsInStock" />

5. Click 'OK' to save your changes.

This will only show the product if the product is stock monitored, and the stock level is above the suspend level.

[jont]

Chris - what are the implications of using the method you suggestion compared to mine? I don't use stock monitoring but interested to know if there is anything different about using IsInStock compared to StocKLevel >= 1 from the way it is handled internally.

[cdicken]

The only difference really is that the method I gave will cope with products that are not stock monitored - i.e. they might have a stock level of '0' but that doesn't matter as you can never run out of them.

[kessock]

Sorted

Hi Chris,
Thanks for that.
It all worked a treat.
Now on to the next job.
Does anybody know an easy way to get your head around a file import for all my products.
I want to learn the EASIEST way to do this whilst putting the right product in the right dept of my e-store.
I have printed off the AUG but it really hasn't made much sense to me.
There are a great number of products in spreadsheets given by suppliers, and it makes more sense to import these rather than doing what I have to date (manually input each product).
I realise that I will have to go in and manually input images etc as these are not included but it has got to be easier than the other way I was doing it.
Is it easier for me to try and learn how to import from spreadsheet into Actinic or from Sage into Actinic.
I did do an import as a test when running V7 using the sage link but couldn't seem to get my head around how I got products into the right e-commerce dept i.e. cars into cars section, and planes into aircraft.
Hope this makes sense.
Cheers.
Mark

[leehack]

What products are you going to list, i may have some lists of use to you.

If you cant get your head round the import, keep it simple.

Short Description
Full Description
Image Filename
Price
Section name

Import this into actinic and then do as you wish, its much simpler.

[kessock]

Lists

Hi Lee,
I am really wanting to import all products and then will hide them automaitcally using my new found tweak (cheers again chris).
I will then go through and mark what I hae in stock and what I don't.
It would basically take me months to go through the spreadsheets and pick out what I want to import and what I don't based on what lines I have in stock.
So I thought the easiest way was to add everything and go from there.
I was contacted by Actinic sales the other day, and they are close to releasing the EPOS/Catalogue linked version enabling me to have live stock levels both in my shop using there epos and on my website.
I really just want to get live stock on computer/epos and website and am looking for an easy (ha ha) and not too expensive way of doing it.
I really want to utilise my Sage line 50 from the next financial year as to date I have not used it because it was not easy to use it for stock control as it is not fast enough to use as an epos system.
Any advice would be great.
When you say keep it simple, how do you mean.
Cheers.
Mark

[kessock]

Import

Sorry Lee,
I only read half of what you said.

The trouble is I really haven't done anything like this before and am running pretty well blind.
So the keep it simple sounds good, but I still am unsure of how to go about importing the file, and how I am best arranging the csv file to begin with.
Cheers.
Mark

[leehack]

The import facility is in the file drop drop down menu and is called "import".

Create a spreadsheet with the 5 fields i have said to use, use excel to save this a csv file and then use the import facility on actinic and import the csv file.

Its a very simple process, i still use it today.

[kessock]

Csv

Hi Lee,
Thanks for that.
Do I need to put the five things you said in the top row or down the side.
Thanks.
Mark