View Basket page generation query

[delboy]

In a comment about a site (thread http://community.actinic.com/search.php?searchid=145293&pp=25&page=2" ) Jo Morecroft said:

Also a different act_primary should be declared for the checkout pages to get rid of the menu which again is obscuring the chechout process

How do you do this? I notice that when you click on 'View Basket' then the perl routine ca000001.pl (I think) calls Act_Primary to generate the basic page framework, then fills in the details using Act_ShoppingCartXML and also Act_ShoppingCart.

I would like the perl (?) routine to call a new template instead of Act_Primary, anyone know how I could do this?

All replies gratefully received.

Delboy

[Mike Hughes]

Design>options>layouts.

Mike

[delboy]

uhmm, like I don't know why I always look for the complicated solution!

Thanks Mike, I'll try to stay awake in future.

Delboy

[Mike Hughes]

The great thing with actinic is that there's nearly always a way to do the things you want to.

The tough thing is that sometimes they make it easy and sometimes you need to dig deep into the bowels of the system.

Knowing where everything is only comes with experience and lots of trial and error. That's why the forum works so well, there's nearly always someone who's been their before and had to find the solution.

Mike

[delboy]

Mike, just to come back on this one.

The: Design>Options>Layout options allows me to change the Checkout pages, but not the View Basket template?

Further comment would be appreciated

Delboy

[Mike Hughes]

I'm not sure about this but the cart page could well be fixed to the default overall layout. This would be very hard to change as the layout for the page will be generated when actinic 'compiles' the webpages on the PC before uploading them to the server.

You can set the default layout to have the look you want and make sure it's only used on the cart pages. If you didn't want the same look to appear on any other pages then you'd probably have to build your own info page (and any others that use the default layout, I'm not sure which ones do this).

What are you trying to achieve ? Generally speaking, the cart page is used several times when customers are shopping, so it's not unusual to keep the layout similar to the rest of the website.

Mike

[delboy]

Thanks for the feedback Mike.

What I want to do is try and unclutter my View Basket page and remove some items which serve no useful purpose at that point (i.e. some of the custom Navigation I added to Act_Primary). However, altering Act_Primary is not an option because (as you say) it is used for a number of the catalog pages.

Delboy

[Nadeem]

Hi there

What Mike has written is correct, the Checkout page layout is also used for the view cart layout. Version 7 allow you to apply another primary template for the view cart.

For the "Checkout Stage Layout", could you not save the "Act_Primary.html" as another file, (ie "Act_PrimaryCheckout.html") and apply it to the "Checkout Stage Layout".

Kind Regards

[delboy]

Hi Nadeem,

Sorry to labour the point but I would like to understand this one. I am running V6.1.5 and on my system, the View Basket screen originates from the Act_Primary template, and the Checkout screen from Act_PrimaryCheckout.

As you say, in Design|Options|Layout a choice is given to use a different template but, on my system this does not affect the View Basket screen, only the Checkout screen.

Please advise.
Delboy

[delboy]

To add to what I've said above ......

The generation of the View Basket page is different when you 'add' an item (the screen shows the basket for 5 secs) to the basket page you see when you click on 'View Basket' to get the static screen.

Delboy

[Nadeem]

Hi Derek,

Been doing some investigation on this, and yes your right - sorry, the "Act_Primary" is the template for "View Cart". I'm afraid apart from upgrading to version 7 (which allows you to have a different template) for "View Cart", there not much what you can do.
If you make any change in the "Default Overall Layout", the same change will apply in "View Cart" and vice versa.

Kind Regards