Over-Long Brochure Pages - How to Generate Sub-Pages?

[SteveECrane]

Folks,

Does anyone have a simple or elegant solution to our dilemma:

The Brochure Pages of our web-site are fast-becoming far too long.

('Humorous' suggestions - as in "cut out all the typographical diarrhoea", as per my wife - are not encouraged!)

This has particular resonance to our web-site as we detail each and every brand we stock at length ... because this is something research (and subsequent interest and feedback) suggests customers of the luxury goods industry seems to favour and warm to.

What I'd like to be able to implement is a scenario where we can include multiple derivative pages on a brand (or topic or whatever) , e.g. pages 2, 3, 4, 5, etc., etc., each 'connected' to the 'primary page' by a suitable button ... but with the minimum of hard HTML coding.

That is, I want to shorten the first 'controlling' web-page (as constructed in an Actinic Brochure Page) such that this page can still readily access the remaining information stored in identically formatted second, third, fourth and fifth (et al) 'sub-pages' ... without these sub-pages necessarily being visible from each and every Brochure Page (because this tends to make the menus ergonomically confusing and aesthetically untidy!).

When generating Actinic brochure pages, there are currently only 2 (binary) options:

"Hide on the Web Site"

or include them in the web-site Actinic generates, together with the subsequently cluttered Actinic menu. Now, whilst I wish there was a third option:

"Generate Brochure page as a sub-page"

there isn't! That's where you folks come in ...

[...Although, I have dropped it as a suggestion onto Actinic's 'Wish List' - please see the rest of my suggestion below, if you're interested, as it simply follows on from the observations above:

"To 'connect' the relevant pages together, on the 'parent' Brochure Page, one could enter the 'child' Brochure Page's name or, on the 'child' Brochure Page, one could indicate the 'parent' Brochure Page's name.

The 'parent' Brochure Page could then be generated to include a "More" or "Next Page" button at the bottom, whilst the 'child' Brochure Page could be generated to include a "back button" at the top and/or bottom of the page (top, bottom or both optional).

Obviously, this would help prevent unnecessarily long web-pages (like ours!) without the (non-technical) designer (me!) having to code separate HTML-based web-pages which look near-as-damn-it identical to Actinic's own formatted pages.

Furthermore, it would also stop these additional pages from having their associated Actinic Page Names appear as separate user-selectable items from within the main Actinic-generated menus which are a constituent part of the Templates/Themes.

Our once elegant site is looking a poor aesthetic companion to competitor's (non-Actinic) sites and fast-becoming an ergonomic nightmare - quite unusable to the more mature users which we attract - and I'm trying hard to decide what to do next ... consternation and development time we (I?) could quite do without!"]


Nevertheless, whilst we're waiting for Actinic to implement this, any help, suggestions or comments are welcomed.

Cheers all ...

[KarenBM]

Hi

I had the same problems and spent quite a while trying to find the answer, there isn't one. You cannot create child Brochure pages - one reason why I initially decided to use FrontPage for informative pages. After a fair bit of head scratching I decided to create an informative section in the catalog instead, and putting links to those pages on the home page. It does have the added advantage that the pages will come up in searches.

If you do find out how to do it, then please do let me know.

Kind regards
Karen

[NormanRouxel]

Not quite what you're after but is is easy to use CSS to make a scrollable region of your brochure page that contains the entire text. This way you still have all the info on one page but it doesn't seem overlong.

You may have problems if customers want to print the entire page though.

[SteveECrane]

Norman (folks),

What I ultimately want to achieve is replacing many (overly long) Actinic-generated Brochure Pages with 'master' pages linked to 2 or more related 'sub-pages', pages which are not directly accessible from any Actinic-generated menu bar ... and all this achieved with as little effort as possible.

Although there will be some necessary "!!<" and ">!!" delimited HTML code in the Fragments (to control back and forth navigation to and from these sub-pages) I want to try to keep the overall generation of ALL such pages within Actinic (including the generation of the ensuing Actinic web-site's menu bar items) and remove as far as possible the need for HTML / Dreamweaver coding (or the reliance on additional JavaScript).

Here's an approach I've come up with thus far:

• Copy'n'paste an entire Brochure Page (copying it, for the purposes of this example, 3 times) and subtly renaming parts 2 and 3;
• Next, edit the 3 new pages down into a 'top', 'middle' and 'bottom' section which reflects the nature of the original Brochure Page (which is kept in case of problems during the subsequent edits!);
• From here I would hard-code the <Next> and <Back> buttons on the relevant Brochure Page sections (in this case Page 2: the 'middle' bit and Page 3: the 'bottom' bit), in Fragments created at the top and/or bottom of each of the new Brochure Pages / Brochure sub-Pages;
• Next I would generate the web pages off-line (<Ctrl> + <W>). These Actinic-generated pages would then be copied and removed from their Actinic-provided default folder in their entirety, for use later on;
• Then I propose flagging the original 'master' page (from which all the subsequent information was derived), as well as the new pages 2 and 3 (in this instance), such that they would no longer be created on-line (using the standard Actinic tick box for a Brochure Page);
• Finally, I would upload the 2 newly-created pages: that is the 'middle' and 'bottom' bits (in this instance, pages 2 and 3) to the "acatlog" folder of our web-site, together with the remainder of the Actinic-created web-site (which obviously uploads automatically during a <Website Update>).

What this hopefully means is that Page 1, that is the 'top' part from the overly long (original) Brochure Page (aka the Brochure Page which will actually be automatically included in Actinic's self-generating menu bar), is the only page 'readily visible' to customers.

Pages 2 and 3 (the 'middle' and 'bottom' bits from the original 'long' Brochure Page in this example) can now only be readily navigated to from the newly-created Page 1 or the 'top' part (i.e. they are not accessible from within the Actinic-generated web-page menu).

What I now need to ascertain is whether there is a flaw in this approach? (Undoubtedly!).

It seems that this would keep all the relevant Actinic Theme/Template formatting but remove the unwanted pages from the ensuing menu bar. Does anyone/everyone agree?

Can anyone think of anything worth watching out for in this approach? e.g. would it affect the Actinic search engine? (The site map is really of no relevance here as it does not include Brochure Pages, only Shop Pages).

Finally, if I am to go ahead with this approach - yikes - in which of the Actinic-provided folders would I find the suitable off-line generated web-page HTML for the purpose of manually uploading to our on-line web-site? Is it this:

C:\Program Files\Actinic v7\Sites\Site1\PreviewHTML

or this:

C:\Program Files\Actinic v7\Sites\Site1\SiteHTML

Am I correct in thinking the (default) path to the former Actinic folder is for HTML code generated by <Ctrl> + <A> whilst <Ctrl> + <W> places code in the latter folder, which is subsequently uploaded to the on-line web-site?

[cdicken]

Steve

What I now need to ascertain is whether there is a flaw in this approach? (Undoubtedly!).

I think the main problem is that your approach is really really complicated. You don't need to create a 'top', 'middle' and 'bottom' page design. Just use the same brochure overall layout template for all three pages. People on the internet are used to a single document straddling multiple pages.

Also, to control the menu items that appear on your brochure pages, replace NETQUOTEVAR:HEADERGUIDE with the HTML of a set of links you want to appear. Remember to use fully-qualified URLs (with an http:// prefix).

That way, you don't have to worry about rooting round in your installation directories for generated files. Actinic will upload all the files in the normal way.

[SteveECrane]

Chris,

Thank you for your response - I appreciate your personal involvement on such a 'mundane' matter. However, I'm fairly certain that one of us is not too sure what the other means ... and it's quite probably me!!!

As per your feedback: I am readily aware that a single logical page of information can effectively (and often does in practice) span several physical web-pages ... that's what we want to achieve! Yet, what I cannot understand is how to ensure that such 'sub-pages' are created automatically from within Actinic ... are subsequently uploaded by Actinic ... but do not leave any trace of these 'sub- pages' visible to the site's visitors, save from within other related Brochure Pages (that is, by remaining visible in any Actinic-generated menu bar!). And all of this needs to be under our control with the minimum of fuss.

Sorry to appear a bit 'lacking' here ...

Is your observation:

"Also, to control the menu items that appear on your brochure pages, replace NETQUOTEVAR:HEADERGUIDE with the HTML of a set of links you want to appear. Remember to use fully-qualified URLs (with an http:// prefix)."

effectively saying one has to edit the Actinic-provided Brochure Page template(s), to remove in its entirety any code related to the menu bar ... and subsequently manually re-create the menu bar each and every time its links (i.e. the constituent Brochure Pages which go to make up our web-presence) change?

If so, although it actually means I have to learn how to code the HTML for this particular element(!), which are the 'relevant bits' of HTML, JavaScript and NETQUOTEVAR's and in which Actinic-provided Brochure Page template(s) do I have to look for and delete/manipulate the menu bar code?

[cdicken]

Steve

This solution will do exactly what you need, but it will involve hand-coding some HTML. And yes, this will need to be changed if you add or remove a brochure page. How often do you think they will change? If they change weekly, then this may not be the ideal solution, but if they change every three months or so, then this is worth considering.

The template you need to enter is the 'Default Brochure Overall Layout Template' called 'Act_BrochurePrimary.html' which you can access via the 'Overall Layout' field in 'Design | Options | Brochure'.

What I suggest you do is

1. Create all the brochure pages you need
2. Generate the web site by going to 'Advanced | Generate Web Site'
3. Locate one of the generated brochure files within 'Site1\SiteHTML'
4. View the source of the page and locate the code for the list of brochure page links.
5. Copy the code for this list to the clipboard
6. Paste it into Act_BrochurePrimary.html in place of NETQUOTEVAR:HEADERGUIDE
7. Edit the code so only the links you want to will appear.
8. Save the template

Because you are editing the brochure page template, it will apply this change to all your brochure pages.

[george]

Found this while searhing for something else. I think theres a couple of folks requested this `mod` recently. Good workaround for a common question.

[Nemisis]

Is this what you are trying to do?

Is this what you are trying to accomplish?

www.chaseavdirect.co.uk

It's not easy...