A few questions

[danlou84]

Hi, well I guess I should start by introducing myself. Dan -Designer - started my own clothing store. That should do it ha..

Ok, to the questions...

Being a graphic and 3D designer I have great creative control over my projects but I cant for the life of me design a site with actinic. Heres my idea (if at any time this isnt possible please do let me know) so basically I planned on having an "empty" actinic site made with all the content needed. e.g. the products etc.

Then have that actinic site sit within my design. e.g. So my design would act as a shell which would house the functionality of the shop itself.

So in essence a site within a site. Design wise i would control all the hypers and the banners etc.

Also I wanted to offer two types of navigation. One being select by designer then style etc. and one to be done by type e.g. Jeans, Shoes, Hats etc..

Would I need to have multiple instances of each product? or just hard code it? Also on that note, anything "hard" coded outside actinic and saved would I lose that using the upload feature in actinic? I would love a feature that client sides a copy of the website so I could manually upload it myself.

Now to my final question (sorry), with it being a clothing store I have various sizes for the items I have managed to get the drop down selection of sizes sorted but the stock control is the issue. I currently have an excel sheet with the stock control listed - e.g. jumper - L x2 M - x3 etc and manually editing that seperate from the site. Using actinic it says your have 5 or whatever but doesnt tell you sizes i guess this is perfect for people selling books or anything that doesnt need sizes or the like but not idea for the clothing designers/developers here.. I searched and only found v6/7 answers, maybe it is still the same as them? I do not fully understand how to work this process and get my stock control system working. So a brake down would be much appreciated.

I look at this program after all my experience and still dont fully understand it but that's a positive everyone should draw from, that no matter what skill level you are you still have to learn! So I'm here; ready to learn.

I have a very high level of Photoshop, DW and flash if anyone needs any return favours and tips.


Thanks for reading, Dan

[leehack]

1. Create an external design and apply it to actinic through the DW interface. Best of both worlds.
2. You can duplicate products into various sections to your requirement.
3. For stock control, create each instance of each product with each size, these then fill out the choices on the main products with these actual items. You are listing products not choices then, so a sale results in stock level of that item reducing. Each product created is hidden on your website, it is just created to fill out the list on the product and provide stock monitoring.

[RuralWeb]

All of what you want to do is possible in Actinic and as you say many of your questions have been answered in the V7 forum. Most of this is still orrect for V8.

As for the design you will need good html skills to edit the design in V8 or use Dreamweaver to create an external design - as search for this will show thousands of posts on differing ways of building this. Also if you have just purchased the software you have 30 days direct telephone support from actinic to get your site working. Another solution would be to go on the Actinic design course.

[danlou84]

Perfect DONE IT DONE IT DONE IT lol yeah I was on the phone to them yesterday... very helpful..

Dan

[RuralWeb]

I was on the phone to them yesterday... very helpful..

Great news - I wish more people would do that rather than posting the same old questions