Best Sellers List in page outside Actinic

[ASMO]

Once again I come to the gurus for assistance.

I am working around http://www.hamradio.co.uk.
The way it was set up (before my time), the index page is outside of Actinic but with Actinic links in.

I am not very hot with html (but am learning fast!). However, I cannot get my head around how to put the Best Sellers list in the index page. I have it in the left sidebar within Actinic and I would like it to go within my virtual leftmenu part of the index page as well. The previous "web designer" put the index page together and has product section links (from Actinic) put in manually.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Louise

[jont]

There is really no need to have an external homepage as the design is a standard exec theme ... you are best to move it inside Actinic and then everything is taken care of automatically.

[ASMO]

I know that, but unfortunately the chap who set it up has not done it like that so I have to work with what I have at the moment.

My long term aim is to get everything back into Actinic, but in the meantime the owner wants work done on it, so I have to make do.

I am frustrated by all the work arounds, but will get there in the end.

Thanks for the advise though, I do appreciate it.

Louise

[ASMO]

I have to do it in html. I don't have dreamweaver or such like. I open it in notebook and amend.

If I simply copy nothing happens, but this is probably because I don't know what I am doing!

Can you expand on your explanation and maybe it will give me a better idea of what to do.

Thanks again

Louise

[gabrielcrowe]

another approach:

create a blank brochure template, with only the content in it. no extra code.

call it 'ext-bestsellers.htm'

paste into it, only sufficient code to make the html for the best sellers render.

now, in your homapge/external page, use an iframe, or a javascript include. I have done this with ajax (search the forum).

i have also done this with server side includes and a modification to the htaccess.

so, to recap, create a page showing only what you want, then include it in your external page, somehow.

[RuralWeb]

And another idea - the brochure pages are already created for you in Actinic - create a homepage and copy the html from your current front page (but only the stuuf you want to keep) into a fragment and upload.

You will then have your content on your homepage with the best sellers etc and its all within Actinic. You can then move on from there. Total 1 hours work IMO.

[NormanRouxel]

Here's a way to write a small textfile "bestsellers.html" containing the current list. Put this lump of code anywhere in your Overall Layout. The file will only be written once per site build (when the Search page is created).

Add "bestsellers.html" to Design / Additional files and include it onto your non-actinic pages via an IFRAME or Ajax.

<actinic:block if="%3cactinic%3avariable%20name%3d%22PageType%22%20%2f%3e%20%3d%3d%20%22Search%22" >
	<actinic:block php="true">
		$bfile = fopen('bestsellers.html', 'w');
		<actinic:block type="BestSellersList">
			fwrite($bfile, '<a href="<actinic:variable name="SearchCGIURL" />?PRODREF=<actinic:variable Name="ProductID" />&NOLOGIN=1<actinic:block if="%3cactinic%3avariable%20name%3d%22IsHostMode%22%20%2f%3e">&amp;SHOP=<actinic:variable name="ShopID" /></actinic:block>"><actinic:variable name="ProductName" /></a><br/>' . "\n");
		</actinic:block>
		fclose ($bfile);
	</actinic:block>
</actinic:block>

[gabrielcrowe]

thats a clever snippet norm.

i'd never looked at a blockif file write in that way before.

could do some interesting things with that.

[NormanRouxel]

And the lazy way to include this into your site would be (in the external pages):

In the head area add a line

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript" src="http://www.mysite.com/acatalog/actiniccore.js"></script>

Which loads some useful code. Then where you want the best seller list to appear simply put

<a href="http://www.mysite.com/acatalog/bestsellers.html" rel="fragment"></a>

And the file will automatically be loaded and displayed via the HtmlInclude routine in actiniccore.js.

This would be also a useful technique for someone with a huge number of pages who didn't want the lot uploaded every time the Best Sellers list changed.

[ASMO]

WOW
Thank you all so much for all the ideas. What a clever bunch you are. When I get a couple of spare minutes I will be trying them out to see which one works best.

Thank you so much.

Louise