Actinic Networked

[Classix]

Hey, im currently running Actinic on one computer which is used to maintain the catalog and also process orders. I noticed in the business settings that you can decide what this computer allows access to (e.g. order processing only)

Is is possible to network actinic so that i can use Actinic to maintain the website and another person can process the orders simultaniously?

Thanks in advance for any help.

[James M SellerDeck]

Hi there

Is is possible to network actinic so that i can use Actinic to maintain the website and another person can process the orders simultaniously?

Actinic can be installed on two machines, one will just do the maintaining of the website, and the other will just deal with the downloads.

From the current maintainance machine, go to View|Business settings|Options, and under Allow on this PC uncheck all exept Order Prcessing. Now all you need to do is create a snapshot (File|Snapshot|Export Site), one that is completed, go back to View|Business settings|Options and check all the boxes again you unchecked earlier.

Then go to Housekeeping|Security, and copy the encryption key to a text file.

Now, if you install Actinic on another machine (this will be the machine used for downloading orders), and go to File|Snapshot|Import site, and browse to the snapshot file you created earlier... that will import the site contents, but will only allow for order processing so not uploads, or catalog changes can be made from that machine.

Lastly, go to Housekeeping|Security, and paste in the encryption key you copied earlier over the one that is there already - this will marry up the uploding and downloading machines, so now you will be able to download orders on the new machine.

Hope that helps

[Classix]

Ok i understand, so the other computer would be an exact copy of the origional but would only be used to download orders.

So what happens when i add a new product to the database on computer 1 (used for catalog maintainance) and the order is downloaded on computer 2 (which is used for orders). Wouldnt the computer 2 need the product data that is on computer 1??

[James M SellerDeck]

No that is not nessecery, the only time you would need to send the snapshot to the downloading machine is if you have made changes to the shipping.

Also if you were doing offline odering (which is a v7 feature) then you would need to keep the downloading machine up to date with the catalog.

[Marci]

Or you can link specific tables from the actinic.mdb file over a network. I've also experimented upsizing the MDB file to MySQL Server and dishing it out that way.... there are several unofficial bodge-it style solutions, all of which tend to work well as long as you deal with backing up by backing up the database itself from outside of Actinic. Once running over a network by any of the bodge-it methods, don't use site snapshot or site backup from within Actinic. Backup the mdb file from each machine separately via script.

[Classix]

Thanks, and by the way Marci, is www.overclockers.co.uk on of ur websites or are you a seperate company?

[Marci]

Completely separate company.

overclockers.co.uk << ESNet Ltd
overclockers.com << US Info Site
overclock.co.uk << Perfex Ltd
over-clock.co.uk / over-clock.com << me
theoverclockingstore.com << Deceased
overclocking.co.uk << dunno, example only.

ALL separate companies unrelated to each other.