Deploy Partial Snapshot problems - merging sites

[kathynewman]

I have a developer copy of Actinic. I have been working on a redesign of my site and now I want to get all the product content from my current live site into the new design site or overlay the new design into the current live site. I assumed (rightly or wrongly!) I could do this by using the Deploy Partial Snapshot. It doesn't seem to matter which way I try to do things I dont get the result needed - ie current products and new design. I have read through forum and there seems to have been issues in the past and wondered if anyone had a work around or another solution?

TIA

Kathy

[TraceyHand]

hmmm...yeh, it doesn't work overly well in V8, that Design Snapshot.
Have you tried just doing a product import into the new design? It's prone to various issues itself but these can usually be worked through to give a sucessful import eventually.

[leehack]

Duplicate images into same place and you can copy paste the sections between sites.

[jont]

The only real way to get the partial ACD to work is to not do anything with the design layout, to use existing library layouts and ensure any modified list layouts do not have empty cells.... not simple and you do really need to plan for this from the start. That said a partial ACD should get you 95% of the way there and is then a case of putting back what Actinic deems necessary to reset to factory.

[RuralWeb]

The design snapshot never worked properly in v8 and was rebuilt for v9 but I'm finding that v9 does not work either.

[jont]

The design snapshot never worked properly in v8 and was rebuilt for v9 but I'm finding that v9 does not work either.

Aye - I fear there is almost always going to be user intervention, especially when building a full site design.

[RuralWeb]

yep - v9 fails to get the designer bit of designer working. V7 is still better in this area!

[jont]

V7 is still better in this area!

This is the only area where v7 excels over the later releases - the external Act_templates were a breeze to copy and paste between sites - the internally handled code has thrown out a load of bugs along the way.

[Cheapprices4u]

all i can say is
when jont did my site design i exported as hierarchical
then imported his design
then reimported the file back
job done

[RuralWeb]

yep that does work but the idea behind the design snapshot is that you just need to import a snapshot and its done for you. This makes simple design changes easy to pass to clients rather than having to mess about exporting and importing other files which some users can have problems with.

V7 is even easier than the method you describe so in v 9 we still have not progressed IMO. I'm doing some v7 design work at the moment which is why its crossed my mind again.

[jont]

we still have not progressed IMO

If the layouts could be stored in the site1 folder but accessed via the library that would give greater flexibility and cover both users and designers requirements and allow for glitch free transfers. One for the v11 wish list ....

[RuralWeb]

When I tried v9 design snapshot it looked so much better until I imported it them it all went tits up and I was back to square 1. As you say greater accessability to layouts would be a step in the right direction - v13?