Planting Dates

[mash]

Hi guys after a suggestion from Jan, I want to generate an image of suitable planting dates and harvest times for our plants we sell.

Can anyone suggest the best way to do this, we have some 200 different plants that all have different combinations of planting and harvesting dates. I just want a simple image to capture this information made up of letters for the months and squares in different colours representing planting and harvesting.

Very similar to the backs of seed packets.

It will take me an age to do manually; any suggestions are welcome, thanks Mash

[jont]

Hi Mash,

one solution would be to set up a table in your web editor as say a 4 x 3 cell table to give you the 12 months - add the letters to each cell to identify.

I would recommend using 2 tables - 1 for plantings and 1 for harvest as this will cut down on replicating work as most will be replicated time and again.

Highlight the range of months for the plantings and change the background colour to say green. Save the file as "plantings_march_july.htm". Do the same for the harvest table and use say a red background to the harvest cells. Save this file as say "harvest_july_september.htm". Repeat each harvest and planting tables to cover all the ranges necessary.

In Actinic add a custom property called PLANTING and HARVEST. In the Act_ProductLine.html template add the value CUSTOMVAR:PLANTING and CUSTOMVAR:HARVEST

In each product properties select HARVEST and then PLANTING from the drop down list - enter the name of the file eg "harvest_july_september.htm" click "use as CUSTOMVAR" click "file name" and "use file content". This should insert the contents of "harvest_july_september.htm" into the product page. If you do not have a planting schedule then add a blank image to the properties eg "shim.gif" and this will enter a blank image and not the planting tables - don't click the "use file content" when inserting an image

[mash]

Thanks Jonty,

I had not thought of doing it with html, the only thought was using photoshop and having a large number of layers and switching them on and off depending on the times of the year.

Had a look at it last night, month has to be divided up into 4 to give the flexibility.

I will have a go using both methods and post the results, it won't be until the end of the day, too much other stuff and out of the office.

Thanks Mash

PS. is it possible to import CUSTOMVAR?

[mash]

The PS was not very clear, is it possible to import values for custom properities that you have set up in V7, for example CUSTOMVAR:PLANTING,
ideally it would be great to import the file names instead of selecting them with Actinic.

Only have sub 200 products, but it still will take time. Now I have to leave!

[DaveT]

You might want to check out this link:

http://www.suttons-seeds.co.uk/gg3.html

It's not Actinic but it may be what you are looking to do.

[mash]

Thanks Dave, that is roughly what I am after but at an individual layer, I tried last night unsucessful therefore I think it will require a re think and possible go on the wish list for now.

Thank you. M

[BPJSURF]

we built a plant site some time back and we used custom variables to display bloom times and genius of bulbs and perrinial. You can search by this information which is very useful to people bying plants (so I am told) check it out: http://nwbulb.com/acatalog/brunnera.html#a10380225

The site is under customer maintenance so the products arebeing updated as its almost spring time here in the US.

Having a visual reprentation of bloom time might be great but honestly being able to search by bloom time might be much more customer friendly.

Brian

[mash]

That is pretty good idea, I like the fact you can search on it, currently working on the images for the site.

Will have a go at that later, thanks, Mash