Product Layout of duplicate item only Uses Parent

[Steven Barkess]

Hi

I have created some duplicate products and have the following tree structure


Catalogue
-----Singles in Store
----------New Releases
---------------X
---------------Y
---------------Z
-----X (dup)
-----Y (dup)
-----X (dup)

('-' used above to reflect indent!!)

I have set the dup products with a page layout of 'Layout designed for new products' but they use the parent layout.

I have imported a v6 snap shot and previously created a manual layout 'Act_PrimaryFrontpageSubSection.html'.

Any thoughts on how I can use the 'Layout designed for new products' as I want to show these products seperatly in addition to being in my main prod table.

Thanks

Steven

[jont]

Duplicates can be set to any layout overiding the default section layout. I have just tried a combination and have discovered an issue with a modified product template as the section default and pasting in a duplicate and changing to another layout - the default layout is corrupted due to the layout of the cells and columns.

Try using a standard layout for the section and then pasting in a duplicate with the "new" layout specified to check it is not your modified template causing the issue.

[Steven Barkess]

Yes, it is the modified template carried over from v6. That was a customised one that I did to get specific layouts.

When I used a system parent layout and then looked at my dup products, I actually expected only 1 product to be displayed. I was trying to acheive a single product per page. In my case here, all the dups appered on 1 page.

So... I dont want to move away from the custom v6 section templates, and I need to show each dup product on a seperate page.

Any thoughts?

Cheers

Steven

[jont]

1 product per page (duplicate of otherwise) can only be acheived having 1 product (or duplicate) in a section - if you can see more than 1 duplicate on the page you must have more than one in the section.

[jont]

Which looking at your original post above with the X,Y,Z products showing as listed under the "singles in store" section

[Steven Barkess]

Thanks for the replies, apprecaite that.

Re the parent section template, I am pretty dissapointed that it does not allow dup product template when a customer parent has been designed. I did the customer parent as I did not want the product table headers that I had created (another customer file) at that level.

Re 1 product per page, I have got almost 1000 products in stock, I was kind of hoping that it was a simple case if duplicating a product and then dumping them in a different section or even straight into the Store section and then being able to specify display only one product per page. It seems that to create seperate sections for each products is very manual.

I am only on day 1 of the V7 trial after using V6 for the last 16 months. Bit of time to play with this before upgrading in full, maybe there is a solution to this?

Steven

[jont]

You can specify a custom template as the section master and over-ride with the duplicate (see my first post above) - there may be an issue with column and cell layouts depending on what you have created but for most part if the custom layout is basically just moving things about within the same <td> tags it should be OK.

Keep in mind you have a "layout" tab and a "product" tab against the sections where you can specify the templates and then a "layout" tab in t he products - may be worth double checking you are calling the right custom template in the right place.

Actinic generates static HTML pages compiled from the info provided in the sections and the default business settings. As such it is best to think of a section (or subsection) being a single page once compiled for the internet. As such to get 1 product per page this has to be in a section by itself.

If you are creating lots of new sections to display 1 product per page it may be quicker to export the database, create the new sections and bring it back into Actinic else it could take a long time doing it manually.

[Steven Barkess]

Hi

Good plan.

I exported the db, created new sections, added in and have just reimported back into Actinic.

I have a number of errors due to the Section name being too long:

Line 116: Field data too long. The field Section name expected a string with less than 50 characters.

Is there any way of increasing the number of characters? Mine are so long as they are the Artist - Title of the records I sell.

Cheers

Steven

[Nadeem]

Hi Steven,

I'm afraid in the import routine, you are limited by 50 characters. It is hardcoded within the application, so you cannot change this. I will add you comments to our wishlist regarding extending the number of characters when importing.

Kind Regards