actinic add ons - lightbox

[traffordangling]

hello folks, first time poster on here so my apologies if this is not in the right place.

we have added 'lightbox' to our recently purchased actinic 9, all works very well and very pleased in general all round.

the only thing i can't figure out is when i browse for images (in lightbox) it always defaults to the actinic ' site 1 ' folder.

can i change this to point it to the drive with all our images on and if so, how do i do that.

any pointers would be greatly appreciated, thank you .

dave

[Duncan Rounding]

It is good practice to keep all your images in a subfolder of the Actinic's Site1 folder.
You can of course still browse to any other folder - but the default is Site1. This is not due to the Lightbox add-on but is aprt of the Actinic Catalog code.

[traffordangling]

hello and thank you for your reply, i do understand that this is an actinic related query and not lightbox.

what i didn't want to do if i could help it is store thousands of images on the C drive, they are all kept apart in a separate drive, and ideally i'd like them on an external. are you suggesting copying all images into site 1 subfolder?

i was under the impression that all images used were 'copied' there anyway after you hit 'publish'?

[Duncan Rounding]

You can store images anywhere ou want but be careful to maintain that path - changing it in Actinic later can be very difficult. We often come across people that have copied their Actinic installation onto a different computer and then want to change the path in the database.

The images will not get copied into Site1 on publishing but they will all reside in the acatalog folder on the server.

[traffordangling]

yes i think i just discovered the bit about maintaining the path when i moved and deleted some images around different folders and they dissapeared !
i'm new to this still and just finding my way around, the sites not live yet so no harm done, so do i take it i can't alter the default path from site 1 to my E drive then?

[Duncan Rounding]

If you move images after setting them up in Actinic them you will need to change the path to them. If there's a lot it will mean going into the database to do it. You can't change the 'default' folder other than what it sounds like you are doing.

[Mike Hughes]

Another thing to keep in mind is that I seem to remember seeing that if you don't keep your images somewhere under the site1 folder then they don't get included in the snapshot. The idea being that it would be wrong for actinic to start writing them to someplace outside the site1 folder if you ever had to import the snapshot.

Mike

[traffordangling]

thanks for the replies chaps, as i said i'm new to all this so its a learning curve . . . . . i can live with having to wade through folders to use lightbox, its not like its hard work but a shortcut would have made things so much quicker.

can someone clarify for me please - i create a new product, give it a price, description, thumbnail and pop up image.

do i NEED to have/ create a folder within actinic with a 'copy' of the images in for the whole site? is that the suggestion? as i understand it the 'copy' is stored as said above on the server so what purpose would this serve?

sorry if the questions sound basic but all this is new to me and the terminology is too until i become familiar with it, i've only ever used actinic express before and that was like painting by numbers for me compared with this !

[Duncan Rounding]

You don't have to have a copy of your images in the Site1 folder or a subfolder of Site1. It will work fine without. Just remember to always mainatin that path and don't move the images. If you did have a copy in the Site1 folder then you wouldn't have to worry about the path nor have to browse away for the images.

It's a recommendation based on experience but not a prequisite.

[traffordangling]

i see your point thank you.

so far i've only created a limited number of products as a trial but it sounds like a fair idea to have the images in there from what you've said. it will be simple enough to save the resized images to a different output path so do i just go into the site 1 folder and create a new folder and save them there?

[Duncan Rounding]

Yes - create a subfolder under Site1.

[traffordangling]

thank you very much, i will do that shortly, the help is much appreciated

[parklifeclothes]

and more importantly keep regular snapshot's. Can prove to be your lifeblood!