Default homepages, any good?

[Haydock Music]

Ok guys, please dont shoot me here as this is my first post on the forum and having been on other forums if i have duplicated the question from elsewhere, sorry!

I would like to know the following:

On my website i have had a homepage www.haydockmusic.co.uk built outwith the site, it was done for version 6 catalogue some time ago by someone else and now that i have upgraded to version 8 due to having vista i am thinking it may be easier to use the default homepages Actinic give you.
Reasons for this are:

1. i can change it myself, as i am not programmer and have no idea about HTML

But in order to decide if they are for me:
1. Are they any good?
2. Where can i see them, options wise?
3. Does anyone use them?
4. Does anyone have any advice for me?

Thanks for reading guys and i look forward to reading some responses!

Alistair

[leehack]

1. Are they any good?
This is like asking whether felt tips are good for colouring to be honest, you can do anything on an actinic home page, just like you can outside of actinic. Its how good you use it, not how good it is itself. 99.99% of home pages on sites are within actinic.

2. Where can i see them, options wise?
There aren't options as such, you build them using fragments (lego blocks) and you can choose which shapes and colours you want to use - tutorial on my site if you like reading.

3. Does anyone use them?
99.99% of people do.

4. Does anyone have any advice for me?
Take a look round the example store and the user guides before you start using it, i think you have slightly missed how things come together. You build things up in actinic using layouts. You can choose an overall theme for your site in actinic, but that doesn't build everything for you, the idea is to make it easy for you to get stuck in and build yourself.

Stick to a basic theme for starters and get used to it, there is a lot to learn.

[RuralWeb]

What you have is technically not a homepage - it is using the catalog page as the index. I would suggest you use the correct homepage in actinic as this will be better liked by google

[Haydock Music]

that is brilliant advice guys and thank you, i am still up for seeing some great examples and where in V8 can i have a play with the homepage to see some themes?

Regards
Alistair

[RuralWeb]

have a play with the homepage to see some themes

Read the getting started guide

[leehack]

There is a V8 showcase thread, take a look in there, it will show you some different stores which have been built and what you can do with them. Search for 'showcase' and it should appear.

[jont]

I used to be a believer in the external homepage but have since moved everything inside Actinic to no detrimental effect in terms of SEO but a massive saving of time and hassle.