Page Layout for "contact us" page

[graphicz]

I bet this has been answered a million times but I can't find the solution and support didn't know.

My site has a number of page designs.

I wish to either:

1) Specify the page design used by the 'contact us' page. At present it uses site default. I want it to use a different page design.

OR

2) Create a brochure page with the fragment containing the 'contact us' inner layout and have it work. I made a new brochure fragment and inserted the 'contact us' inner layout and it looks fine in preview but when uploaded the boxes all contain NETQUOTVARS.

This must be a common issue. Can there not just be a 'contact us' fragment that we can drop in wherever we want it???

Thank you.

[leehack]

Design | Themes | Advanced Theme Configuration | Page Layouts is where you want to be for this. It would be exceedingly rare for anyone to want this so it won't be made too obvious to do as it would be somewhat wasted on the vast majority of people. I suspect your different designs actually just need one design with blockifs for various pages, but that's another story for another time.

[Chunkford]

1) Specify the page design used by the 'contact us' page. At present it uses site default. I want it to use a different page design.

Goto Design, Library, layouts, and right click anywhere in the tree structure. Select 'Find' and type in 'Contact Us Bulk Area'. When highlighted right click on it and select copy. A duplicate copy of the layout has now been created 'Contact Us Bulk Area (Copy)' for you to play with and change. If you want to rename the layout to another name just right click on the (copy) version and select rename.
To choose the new layout for the contact us page, goto settings, site option, and select page settings. You will now have an option to change the layout. The reason why this has appeared is that you now have a choice for the 'contact us page layout' and you can tell actinic to hide options when there is only 1 option to choose from.

2) Create a brochure page with the fragment containing the 'contact us' inner layout and have it work. I made a new brochure fragment and inserted the 'contact us' inner layout and it looks fine in preview but when uploaded the boxes all contain NETQUOTVARS.

U can't really use a brochure page to use the actinic contact us form as Actinic uses perl scripts to control it.
If you wish to use a brochure page you will need to use a script like sendmail or qmail to turn the values in the form on the page into an email.
If you went down this route make sure you use some form of anti spam method.

[leehack]

Goto Design, Library, layouts, and right click anywhere in the tree structure. Select 'Find' and type in 'Contact Us Bulk Area'. When highlighted right click on it and select copy. A duplicate copy of the layout has now been created 'Contact Us Bulk Area (Copy)' for you to play with and change. If you want to rename the layout to another name just right click on the (copy) version and select rename.

Why would you want to duplicate a layout that is perfectly fine as it is, seems rather pointless. If you want the selector to appear, then unticking the hide selector option is surely a better idea that duplicating something for no other reason than to get a selector to show?

It's the outer layout that needs to be changed, not the inner, so it's off to the advanced theme config as mentioned before, it's one click on the outer selector for that page and job done.

[Chunkford]

Why would you want to duplicate a layout that is perfectly fine as it is, seems rather pointless. If you want the selector to appear, then unticking the hide selector option is surely a better idea that duplicating something for no other reason than to get a selector to show?

It's the outer layout that needs to be changed, not the inner, so it's off to the advanced theme config as mentioned before, it's one click on the outer selector for that page and job done.

Ah, yea, your right Lee . I only did it that way so he could revert back to the original if needed. But i need to read more carefully. For some reason thought he wanted a different inner layout. Must catch up with my sleep after a crazy stag weekend

[graphicz]

Lee Hack
You are a veritable legend.
Thank you!
Blockifs are still a bit of a mystery to me. Customer has seven layouts where the header image and colour change as well as hard coded images in side bars and other content. Your advice worked perfectly and I am a vey happy person again.
Thanks everyone.
J

[leehack]

You're very welcome.

Blockifs do seem a bit like a black art, i remember thinking what the hell are these i can assure you, however once you get to grips with them, your eyes are truly opened up to the possibilities. They really are immensely powerful and after you do your first 2 or 3, you get both hooked on them and also start to see new avenues opening up etc.

Your changing content could be easily managed using these, in fact for some of what you are doing, you only need section level variables holding the various files for the areas in question, no blockifs at all.

Problem with multiple layouts is that a change on one of them, often means it needs repeating on all of them, so costs a lot of time and prone to mistakes (the worst part of this IMO). Seriously, have a good read of Gabe's tutorials and have a play, you won't regret it, much better to spend your time learning these than managing multiple layouts.

[graphicz]

Thanks again Lee.

Rakhi in support has come up with another way round the question.

She replaced INNERLAYOUT in the page layout with Contact Us Bulk Area

I expect there's a blockif to do that?!! I promise to learn them soon.

Cheers again

Jonathan

[leehack]

That one would be a mystery to me i'm afraid, nothing internally needs changing, it's the outer skin that needs the change. I think you've been sent up the creek with that idea, how can that be better than defining the outer layout to be used in theme config.

If you have an alternative page layout, by all means you can add the bulk area into it instead, however that goes totally against the ethos of one page layout. Your situation doesn't really need blockifs, it needs body ids or variables defining images to be used on which pages. Some thoughtful CSS does 95% of what you need.