Templates / Layouts available outside Actinic?

[Jeremy]

I am current considering upgrading to V9 from V6, and have spent a couple of weeks working in a trial version of V9, modifying the templates etc so that I can create a site that looks like my present ones, but obviously with various new bells and whistles.

The way templates are edited in V9 is obviously very different from V6, as everything is done within Actinic rather than loading the template within an external editor. Having spent two weeks working in this way I have now realised that the modified layout files I have been creating are not available in the Site1 directory as they were in the old days, and I have suddenly realised that this is going to cause me all sorts of problems.

I currently run five websites in Developer V6, all of which use broadly similar templates, and if for instance I introduce an upgrade or design change involving several templates to one site, it is a simple matter to replicate the change to the other sites by simply copying and pasting the modified templates into the other site directories.

Also, I regularly switch between two variants of the design of all the section & product pages of my sites (hundreds of products), and can do this very easily by having two sets of templates with the same files names, and just dropping the required set into the site directory.

I cannot see how I can do either of these things if I cannot access the actual layout/template files, and I've got a nasty feeling that it's going to cause me other problems too that I haven't thought of yet.

Anyone got any comments, suggestions, workarounds etc?

Thanks in advance


Jeremy


PS. It doesn't appear to be possible to trial the multi-site version of V9 using the 30 day trial download, so I am unable to try out the procedure for creating a second (or third, fourth etc) site in V9. If I already have a set of custom layouts, what would the process be for creating a second site based on these templates, which would then be modified further (with the first site continuing to operate unchanged of course). Again, in V6 this is straightforward because I have full access to the templates, but I don't want to pay for V9 and then find it won't do what I want.

Sorry for the long post

[jont]

Design > Export Specific Design Elements will allow you to export and import the designs between sites

[jont]

You need to forget about how v6 or v7 works and think of v8 & v9 as new systems. Whatever you did in v6 can be done in a fraction of the time in v9 ... you just need to think slightly different. It will make your life a whole lot simpler.

[fergusw]

Jeremy,
A good start for you Jeremy is to imagine that all your well known HTML template files are still there, it's just that they have been renamed as layouts and put into a database field instead of an HTML file.
These 'layouts' are accessed within Actinic instead of notepad/dreamweaver/editor of choice.

That's only the beginning......
V9 design offers WAY more functionality than was ever possible in earlier versions e.g. lists, conditions, variables, selectors etc etc

[Jeremy]

Thanks for the replies, which have helped. Just to clarify my original concerns - I have no doubt that v9 is very clever and will enable the user to do everything that they might ordinarily need to do - it's just that I'm currently using v6 in some ways that are not ordinary - as well as running websites I'm also using it to create eBay listings and affiliate widgets for example.

I will keep trialling v9 to see if I can get it to do the same things

Many thanks

Jeremy