Technical problem

[Mark Young]

Hi,

wonder if any one can help.

Yesterday i did a snap shot to load on one of my spare computers when it loaded it came up with this message.

c:\programme files\actinic v8\sites\sites1\Act_DesignExport.txt was not found.

So it couldn't load the snapshot up. The snap shot was taken from my main PC which also has a problem listed below:

Next, the main machine i use has actinic minimised on the toolbar when i went to open it fully the arrow changed to the egg timer very quickly for a couple of minutes and then said this programme is not responding please close which i did. When i re-opened Actinic,

It then dumped my first section of products into the 6th section and took away a percentage of the products and all the pricing structure disappeard
(this included all the atributes and components for the entire 1st section)
All sub-sections are o.k. with in the 1st section the problem has only hit the products and attribute sand components

All other products and attributes etc are ok through the rest of the site.

I have done virus scans using Spybot, AVG7.5 & Ad Aware, nothing was found apart from the usual tracking cookies and a couple of files pointing to remote assistance that i have installed.

Not sure what the problem is but none of the 2 machines will accept a snapshot. i have several snapshots saved but they wont work neither of them.

[jont]

I have fooled v7 similarly in the past (don't recall what the file was) by creating a blank document and saving into the site folder before creating the snapshot. Probably not ideal but got me out of a pickle at the time.

[RuralWeb]

'partial site design'.

This feature never has worked correctly and I never use it.

[pinbrook]

'partial site design'.

has never worked for me either, i don't touch it with a barge pole

Having said that i've had complete snapshots lose design features too

[pinbrook]

I suspect it works under some circumstances and doesn't under others.

I've never spent the time working out when it does and when it doesn't. So i just don't use it.

[leehack]

100% full snapshots for me too, too much bad press on partials, don't even give them the chance to bugger me up. In v9 they will resurface and work OK i reckon.

[pinbrook]

That's why I'd prefer the partials (if they work), keep everything intact and then just transfer the layouts like with dropping HTML files in for V7

I'll go to heaven when this works 100%

[leehack]

Yeah know what you mean, can be a pain, i guess my approach is to take the long way round so i can never get annoyed on tight timescales, it's a pants way of working at times though, especially when you are talking about 300mb snapshots.

I have written off v8 in this area and look forward to a deluge of snapshot options in v9. I think we will have something great in that area, if not, then it says alot on their thoughts and the way forward IMO.

[pinbrook]

youd be fine if you're updating layouts already on the selectors

that what i suspected months ago, if your changes do not involve any new layouts etc you're ok. I fell foul as i tried to use PDS to release a brand new design and assumed the design would drop in ontop of client site re products/orders.

[cdicken]

Another method for transferring a design is to use a standard snapshot but when you import it you untick 'Overwrite Orders' and 'Overwrite Content'. This brings in the design/Business Settings/Search Settings etc. It doesn't bring across Site Options settings though.

[RuralWeb]

I thought this was all corrected in 8.5.0

Nope - it never has worked which makes designer a complete waste of time IMO

[RuralWeb]

Another method for transferring a design is to use a standard snapshot but when you import it you untick 'Overwrite Orders' and 'Overwrite Content'. This brings in the design/Business Settings/Search Settings etc. It doesn't bring across Site Options settings though

This is a step backward chris - as we discussed back in Oct last year when we all found out that the designer bit of designer didnt work. V7 was and still is far far better at deploying bits to clients.

This fundimental part of designer ie deploying design mods to clients has to work properly. At the moment its a real pain in the arse.

[Orchid]

Well looks like Actinic support have replicated this issue and it's been passed to the Development team so I hope this isn't the sign of another bug.

I'm having a similar problem with partials at the moment and support have kinda just said they don't work give up on them - they're rubbish at the moment - though they might work in the future.

http://community.actinic.com/showthread.php?t=27792

Hi Wayne,

This is a bug in the software and it is deemed to be fixed in one of the future maintenance releases.

Kind regards,

Marcello Fenwick
Actinic Support

Which is not much of an answer.

Jonty has pointed out in the past that the "partial" in partial site design means that the site design transfer "partially" works.

The fact that they "partially" worked meant that the problem didn't show up for a couple of months and now too much work has gone by to go back to a back-up. Leaving me in a right mess.

[RuralWeb]

problem didn't show up for a couple of months

The problem was highlighted last October and has been discussed several times on the forum since then.

THEY DONT WORK - DONT USE THEM

[Orchid]

The problem was highlighted last October and has been discussed several times on the forum since then.

which is why I now check the forum on a daily basis like a paranoid little geek.

Mistakenly I had previously thought that if I kept my patches upto date and my sites seemed ok - then everything would be peachy. OH Actinic you groovy little piece of software - I've never worked with anything before that produced such mixed emotions.