Home Page Issues - Can anyone help us get out of a hole?

[Phil G]

Our site www.paragon-matrix.com was developed by an actinic approved design partner, but now we are now having to support the site ourselves as the actinic developer does not seem to do Actinic design work anymore and can’t give us a solution to our problem.

It seems they developed our homepage, referencing different fragments used in the center of our homepage ie; Latest Products, Special Offers, Paragon Matrix – Product Tables etc back to html files they put into an includes sub-folder located in Site1 of our Actinic Business software 8.5.1.3 IDHB

Although the main site is still working and looking ok, our desktop actinic system now has a problem on the homepage viewed in preview screen and we have uploaded this to an actinic test directory to see if it effect a live upload at http://paragon-matrix.com/acatalog/test/ In addition, please find attached some attached pics which also shows the issue on the desktop system.

Untitled2.gif Shows our actinic business desktop system looking at the home page that is made up of fragments referred to in an includes file ie latest products is referred to a HOME_NEW_PRODUCTS html page in the includes directory of actinic on our system. However, if you look at the preview screen you now only see the statement [HOME_NEW_PRODUCTS] AND [HOME-SPECIAL-OFFERS] However, the latest products table is still working ok on preview screen and when uploaded?

Untitled1.gif - Shows how the Actinic designer set up the fragment
Untitled2.gif - Shows them in the design library variables which seems ok
Untitled3.gif - Shows the basic definition in the design library
Untitled4.gif - Shows the includes directory in actinic v8 and the specific file
Untitled5.gif - Shows the html code of one of the specific file (to date these files have been working ok)
Untitled6.gif - Shows the Additional Files which are uploaded with the site which includes this file.

Other bad news for us is that we have tried to recover from this problem by rolling back the system with a snapshot but this does not recover us from the problem.

Any help or suggestions to recover the site from this issue would be much appreciated

Regards

PhilG

[Duncan Rounding]

The design method should work.

A couple of checks...

In Actinic go to Settings|Site Options - Properties tab and make sure the filenames are entered against the variables.

Also try copying one of the files into the Site1 directory instead of the includes directory and see if that works.

[Phil G]

Many thanks Duncan for your input.

I've put 2 of the files outside the includes folder into the site1 folder but this does not seem to make a difference.

I've tried to look at Settings, Site Options and properties but when I choose properties Actinic gives me a fatal error pop up and produces a dmp file which I have now forwarded to Actinic.

I’ll put up their response when I get it

Many Thanks

Phil G

[leehack]

Are these ever changing details or pretty static? If pretty static why not get rid of the include completely and just use fragments? It's not as if this content is on multiple pages and even if it was, i still wouldn't use includes.

If you must use includes, then i favour the php and text file route:

<actinic:block php="true" >
echo file_get_contents('http://www.mysite.co.uk/myfile.txt');
</actinic:block>

[RuralWeb]

Ditch it all and start again with a more simple method such as what lee suggests - KISS

[Mike Hughes]

This should have been simple, but there is a problem if actinic crashes. As Malcolm and Lee say, a good workaround is a simple php include. My version, similar to Lee's, but builds the page locally and avoids the need to put the file on the server is:

<actinic:block php="true" >
include("filename.html");
</actinic:block>

Mike

PS. Probably the easiest way to make this work is to create a new fragment layout and then place this code in the design of the layout. If you only use this once or twice then you can create a different fragment layout for each one. If you're using it a lot then it would be better to also create a new variable and use that to specify which file to include.

[Phil G]

Guys, - Thank you for your suggestions and feedback. I've managed to recover the site from the issue outlined for the time being, but it does not take anything away from the advice you have given. Lee is mostly likely right that we should start again from basics with a simpler design and mike’s input on a simple php includes is much better which we may use. – Many thanks for your input

Regards

PhilG