Integrating V8 functions with web site

[grantglendinnin]

Hi. Since my last post about this wasn't very clear, I shall start again.
I am working on www.cupargardencentre.co.uk <-visit the site to understand my meaning.

We want to display our 'Latest Products' using the 'New Products' function of Actinic V8. I believe V8 'generates' the code to display 'new products' - but obviously this is designed to be integrated into the acatalog. If you view our site, you will see the section which is all green pages has been created not using Actinic, whereas when you 'Enter Shop' - this is the section which has been generated by Actinic. So, I assume the V8 New Products function generates the code to be displayed in the Actinic section, but it obviously won't work directly importing the generated code into our homepage.

Does anyone know how to display the latest products added to a shop on the homepage which isn't controlled by Actinic - or, is it even possible?

Thank you for your help

[leehack]

If you want new products on the home page, but do not want actinic to control them, that only leaves you to put them on the site, which you can easily do. The new products lists can be part, fully or not controlled by actinic, you have the choice. You can even use the actinic new product list facility and control some of it for the home page and leave the rest for the site pages.

I would first get your head round bringing all of the store into actinic and make your life easier.

[grantglendinnin]

Hiya.

Is it possible to 'import' our html documents (web pages) into Actinic so that it 'controls' them? The thing is I am currently redeveloping the 'green' section, so would like to add the latest products feature on the home page - but would prefer if this was done automatically by actinic. What do you think about that, and how would I go about implementing this?


Cheers

[leehack]

I have just finished a very similar situation. A site with an external (non-actinic shop) and some standalone pages too (16 in total).

I have now brought the lot into actinic and now my client control his store from one piece of software, not 2. If you know what you are doing with html and CSS it is easy to bring pages into actinic, it just takes time and thought, nothing complicated about it at all (apart from knowing the html and css).

What difficulties do you foresee in trying to have your whole site in actinic, what do you think will fail? i assure you it will not, but let us know, so we can help you see how easier it will be.

[grantglendinnin]

Hi there. Thank you for helping me

I'm not sure what you mean by if I know the html/css, then it can be done - what sort of modifications need to be made? I assume the changes are necessary because Actinic only understands certain standards of html/css?

Thanks,
Grant

[leehack]

If you can replicate your pages using standard actinic and not have to touch html and css, then great, that is ideal. If you can't, that is when you need to know about html and possibly css to get the pages to look like you want them to. It all depends on what the pages look like and how fussy you are to replicate them.

[grantglendinnin]

Hi there.

I am confident in my ability of html/css, but not so sure about Actinic software, as I personally have never used it before until now. You can see what I have done so far here - http://grantglendinning.co.uk/index2.html - bearing in mind the menu doesn't show up as I'm currently using a freehost, which, tbh, sucks, but nevermind. Anyway, do you think it'd be relatively easy to implement that using actinic..and how simple is it actually developing using actinic?

Cheers

[pinbrook]

all you do is create brochure pages.
Brochure pages are made up of fragments, so you either paste all your html into one fragment or you make pages from lots of fragments - each fragment has a diiferent layout.

see Lee's website for a good description of brochure pages

websitedesigned.co.uk/Actinic-Tutorials/actinic-brochure-pages.htm

[grantglendinnin]

Hi.
Thanks alot for your help, I'll take a look at integrating the new site with Actinic, and if I run into any problems, which is most likely, I'll get back to you.

Until then...


Thanks