Thing I should repeat / stress is the desire to have both the Actinic web shop and the non-Actinic pages looking like one overall site, rather than 2 separate items which happen to be related. Which is why we're trying to integrate the web page requirement with the shop...
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Rich -
Why not just simplify things and have all pages within actinic? Why is the requirement for them to be outside of actinic. If you want actinic content on the pages, use actinic. I see this quite regularly, people wanting to keep their complicated way of doing things and reluctant to move pages into actinic. Once they are convinced and see the pages within actinic, how they look identical to all other pages and how darn easy it is to create and maintain your whole website in one package, they never look back. I suggest you do the same, cos that method is much closer to the 2 hours you had hoped for to implement.Comment
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I accept that it's really simple to maintain things within Actinic. But it's not just a small number of pages, and the navigation on the non shop pages is mainly 2 levels but occasionally 3, and I don't see how to do that with brochure pages which are 1 dimensional.
Or are you talking of using section / sub-section / product, unable to buy online and without prices, to simulate web pages? And does everything stay with the website/acatalog/pagename.html page naming? (I'd rather have page names that say what they are about for SEO purposes.
Many of our info pages are very static and don't change often, so the maintenance is not a major isue - if we can ever get the design to look like the shop and to include shop menus as well.RichComment
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Changing content maybe not a major issue, if you wanted to make a design change on the pages, that would be pretty horrific time wise.Originally posted by Rich Atkins View Post
You do not have to create brochure pages, you can create section-sub section pages and just have fragments on them instead if you are looking to create a hierarchical type index.
The more pages you have outside of actinic, the more correct bringing them into actinic becomes IMO. I've not seen one particular case yet, where doing this was not the best idea and i'm afraid your case will not break that mould from what i have heard. If you are using V9, you can change the 'acatalog' to whatever you want it to be.Comment
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Just to reiterate what Lee said, we used to maintain all our brochrue pages out of Actinic and it was a major pain in the ass. Admittedly they very rarely changed as well but there was always something you changed in Actinic that you forgot to change of the non-actinic pages and, the more you created, the bigger a job it became. Moving them into Actinic was definately a good move.
Ask yourself if the potential SEO benefits on chucking these pages in a /reallyinterestingcontent/ folder will outway the problems of broken links, pages looking slightly different etc etc that you may have to try and keep on top of.
Personally if it is a new site and on the assumption you are on v9, I would change the name of the 'acatalog' folder to something that will suit your products well and not worry too much about the naming on the brochure pages, the products are what makes the money.Comment
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Persuaded!
That's been some really useful feedback for me. Several new things learned:
1) although pointed out to me by Jo at Pinbrook several days ago, I had not really absorbed that fragments can be used on section/sub-section pages, which becomes quite powerful.
2) the fact that I can change the acatalog in V9 to something of my choice had passed me by completely
And the idea of everything being more automatically "updatable" (if there's such a word!) is persuasive. And I can on with getting the new version of my shop up and running instead of chasing something elusive!
Thanks again for the comments.RichComment
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Does this mean you have a site already up?Originally posted by Rich Atkins View Post
If so I would be very VERY wary of changing the acatalog folder name as you will only ruin your listings in the search engines. If not, go for it!Comment
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go to your hosting CP, locate the icon to Error Pages, configure a 404 error to take the visitor to your top level index pageDoes this mean you have a site already up?
If so I would be very VERY wary of changing the acatalog folder name as you will only ruin your listings in the search engines. If not, go for it!
then additionally if you have time, locate the redirect URL icon and use a 301 permanent to direct from old page names to new ones.
this will have the overall effect of having something in place that will redirect specific pages if you have the 301 in place, and the 404 will pick up the rest and at least serve up the index page.
Normally i'd say match your old page names to the new ones, but if you are going to do away with acatalog this won't work.
then use mole ends sitemap generator to get the changes recognised quicklyComment
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