Catalog sections checked 'hide on website'

[mikejharvey]

Hi, I opened up my website this morning and noticed half of it was not working. I checked in Actinic V6 to find that 6 product sections out of a total of 13 had been checked ' hide on website' I had not done this, and no suprise the weekend's sales were a bit down! Any ideas please? This is a real worry incase I am being hacked or got a virus. I regret I have little technical knowledge to put things right, as I had the site built for me.

Thanks Mike

[TraceyG]

Hi Mike,

I or any of my colleagues have never seen this happen before. Does anyone else have access to the pc that Actinic is on?

All I can suggest is to keep an eye on it and if it happens again register a support query here for further investigation.

[mikejharvey]

It certainly seems a strange one, and thanks for looking. We are a family business, and only I know how to use Actinic, so I can't suspect anyone at this end. Thinking about it, I'm at least confident it's not a software problem, but the boxes were checked somehow..........curious!

Cheers, Mike

[garyhay]

I was wondering if you imported products using a spreadsheet and maybe linked the wrong field

[mikejharvey]

spreadsheets

Thanks Gary for the thought. I'm afraid tasks like that are way beyond my level of ability. I am terrified of messing things up and putting the business off-line, so I leave well alone, and only put new products on and process sales. I do use macromedia contribute to update my non actinic pages though, so there's a thought. I've always found it pretty unstable and prone to doing odd things, which I am not certain to e pilot error.

Cheers

Mike

[Bottlehead]

Mike
If this happens again, you could try connecting to your site with a ftp application and noting the modification time of the .html files. These should show if updates have been made since your last known update. If you suspect changes are being made from another location, have your hosting company change the ftp password.

Had you made any off line changes to your site structure then uploaded before the problem? I discovered a bug in 6.1.3 where the "ship separately" boxes in products changed to be un-checked, each time I changed the section order by dragging sections to the top of the product tree in catalog editing screen. There may be something like this that changes the hide check box.
I generally keep an eye on which files are being changed during site uploads.

Stephen

[mikejharvey]

Hi Stephen,
Changing the ftp password seems a good idea just to be on the safe side! I'm afraid I cannot remember if the checking of boxes corresponded with anything I did, as I was only made aware of the problem by someone in Canada emailing me to say I had broken links on the website, and consequently trying to sell me their services. Now there's an uncharitable thought....

Many thanks for your ideas and comments.

Mike