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**wjcampbe** · 17-Jul-2005, 06:04 PM

Had a quick look. Some comments which are meant to help, please don't take this the wrong way.

Would expect some of the graphics to be links - the house animated gif perhaps, or the logos near the bottom of the main section. Since they are not, you might want to add some text telling people how to navigate.

Looked at the brads section - what are brads? How do you use them? How big are they? Lots more info could be added to entice the casual browser who does not know much about your area of expertise to actually buy something and take up the hobby.

Maybe just needs a fragment at the top of each page that answers a few of these and similar questions. The text would not hurt your SE rankings either.

Just my opinion, others may disagree.

Kindly,

**delboy** · 17-Jul-2005, 10:36 PM

Hi Joy,

Bill's comments are very relevant. MY own comments, like Bill's are meant to be constructive so please don't take any criticism to heart. There's a number of small things you could do to make your site look more appealing and be user friendly. You've clearly put a lot of work into the site but perhaps a little polish would not go amiss.

Why not center the headings in your section panels by simply adding the align="center" tag in your main heading <td> cells. Your H3 font size is also set for 12px, you may want to think about increasing this size and perhaps changing the colour from black to make the statement "COME IN AND SHOP" more welcoming.

The credit card payment section at the bottom needs some improvement in layout, you've got at least thre nested tables there which could be simplified to generate a smooth heading graphic.

I think all products down the RHS should be hot linked. Also if you could add images to your product info, or provide some inviting text then this would be helpful as would some sales blurb which would add to the overall friendly feel of the site.

Hope you found these suggestions to be useful.

Regards,
DElboy

**CraftyJoy** · 18-Jul-2005, 12:33 PM

Thanks for your comments - they are greatly appreciated. I would love to do some of the things you suggest if I only knew how! I am finding Actinic a steep learning curve as i know hardly anything about html and don't have dreamweaver.

Bill -
I really liked your payment methods section and the cart details.

Would you be willing to point me (stage by stage!) in the right direction.

I never thought about using fragments in my sales pages, will definately do something about that.

Delboy

Yes headings would look better centralised, just got to figure out how though! As for H3(don't know what this is) font size I would like it bigger but all I can see is 'actxxsmall' etc. Still need to find out how to change font colour as well.

I agree with the Credit Cards section but am still awaiting HSBC who have taken over a month to sort out my payments account - hence the quick addition of Paypal.

I am going to try and link the best sellers to the relevant sections - this is a table created in MS frontpage, do you think a hyperlink inserted to the catalog page will do the job?

To you both

How do I insert another section box down the RHS or LHS?

Other than that I truly appreciate your comments.

Joy

**wjcampbe** · 18-Jul-2005, 01:08 PM

Here is the code for the cart and payment sections - one table each. Just highlight the code for each table and copy, then go to your Act_Primary.html template, Advanced | Template Manager | Main | Primary if you are using the grey button view, Advanced | Template Manager | Overall Layout if you are using the alternate layout, find the table for the same function in the <BODY> of your page, and highlight from <table to /table> and paste the new code.

OR

Copy this code into notepad and then print it, and go through your code adding the missing bits (exactly as they are here).

<table width="150" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" >
<tr>
<td height="22" bgcolor="NETQUOTEVAR:PALCOLOR1CSS" background="tab_pal2.gif" class="actsmallheading"><b>  CART DETAILS</b></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td class="thinred2"><br>
<table width="100" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" align="center">
<tr><td valign="bottom"><input type="button" value="Empty Cart" onclick="ClearDetails()" /></td></tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr>
<td> <div align="left"><span class="actxxsmall">
<script language="JavaScript">
document.write("NETQUOTEVAR:CARTCOOKIEITEMS " + getCartItem(3)+" <BR>");
document.write("NETQUOTEVAR:CARTCOOKIEVALUE " + getCartItem(1));
</script>
</span> </div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr><td valign="bottom" align="middle"><img src="g.gif"> <a href="NETQUOTEVAR:NAVBCARTLINK">View Cart</a></td></tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
<tr><td valign="bottom" align="middle"><img src="g.gif"> <a href="NETQUOTEVAR:NAVBCHECKOUTLINK">Checkout Now</a></td></tr>
<tr><td> </td></tr>
</table><br>
</td>
</tr>
</table>

<br>


<table width="150" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr>
<td height="22" bgcolor="NETQUOTEVAR:PALCOLOR1CSS" background="tab_pal2.gif" class="actsmallheading"><b>  PAYMENT METHODS </b></td>
</tr>
<tr align="center" valign="middle">
<td class="thinred2">
<table width="100%" cellspacing="2" cellpadding="2">
<tr align="center" valign="middle">
<td><img src="visa.gif" width="34" height="22"></td>
<td><img src="master.gif" width="34" height="22"></td>
<td><img src="elec.gif" width="32" height="22"></td>
</tr>
<tr align="center" valign="middle">
<td><img src="swi.gif" width="29" height="22"></td>
<td><img src="solo.gif" width="30" height="19"></td>
<td><img src="delta.gif" width="32" height="21"></td>
</tr>
<tr align="center" valign="middle">
<td colspan="3"><img src="paypal.gif"></td>
</tr>
<tr align="center" valign="middle">
<td colspan="3"><img src="protxsecuredtrans150_75.gif"></td>
</tr>
<tr align="center" valign="middle">
<td colspan="3"><img src="chequebook.gif"></td>
</tr>
<tr><td colspan="3">CUSTOMVAR:RIGHTBARTEXT</TD></TR>
</table>
</td>
</tr>
</table>

You will also need to add this next bit before the </HEAD> tag

<script type="text/javascript">

</script>

BTW - I really would not use frontpage with Actinic, FP has a bad habit of adding lots of extra code to every page, can break Actinic, and can also make your pages slow to load.

**jont** · 18-Jul-2005, 01:27 PM

Originally posted by CraftyJoy

Yes headings would look better centralised, just got to figure out how though! As for H3(don't know what this is) font size I would like it bigger but all I can see is 'actxxsmall' etc. Still need to find out how to change font colour as well.

The "actxxsmall" is the code Actinic replaces for the actual specified sizes. You can change in the template to "actxsmall" ... "actsmall".... "actregular" for increasing sizes or actually edit actinic.css and specify the actual size there.

H3 tags tell the browser to make the text a specific size - this is generally a larger "heading" size, search engines like these as they think the text must be important to be specified as a H3 tag... as DELBOY suggests you can change these by editing the actinic.css file.

Open the actinic.css style in frontpage and look for soemthing like

H2, H3, H4, H5, H6 {
font-family:CUSTOMVAR:ACTCSSFONTFAMILY;
}

delete H3 from the list and create a new line beneath such as:

H3{
font-family:CUSTOMVAR:ACTCSSFONTFAMILY;
font-size:18px; text-align:center
}

you can change further properties - in FrontPage click on Style, selct H3 in the style list and hten "modify"... then click "format" and select "font" ... you can then set the color of the font plus lots of other options.

If you have FP2002 or later you shuold be OK modifying templates so long as you stay clear of the Microsoft specific codes (feedback forms etc) as the code is now much much cleaner than it used to be with older versions of FP

**Owen Drumm** · 18-Jul-2005, 01:37 PM

The background colour of the table in catalog body and your shopping cart would look better if it was the same as the rest of your site. Your free posting and packing should be an inticement for people to shop with you so should really be near the top of the page so people can see it.

**CraftyJoy** · 18-Jul-2005, 02:40 PM

Bill

Re Frontpage

I just created a simple table in frontpage with the bestsellers etc in and had intended to now add hyperlinks from these. I have saved the table as a html file within site 1 and then uploaded via actinic not via frontpage. Would you not recommend this either, someone suggested on the forum to do it this way.

Thanks Joy

**jont** · 18-Jul-2005, 02:48 PM

That is probably the best way - if you are including the table by using it as file under Design | Options | Site Defaults don't forget to tick "file name" and "use file content". You need to also remove the <head><body></head> and </body> tags from the HTML before saving the page as these already feature in the Actinic template and can confuse web browsers

**wjcampbe** · 18-Jul-2005, 04:23 PM

I bow to jont's more up to date knowledge of FP, my comment was based on an older version (but I personally still don't like it <grin>).

**SusanF** · 18-Jul-2005, 10:55 PM

Hi Joy,

I've only got access to Frontpage too. I tend to use it stand-alone to figure out how to construct the html I need (okay, and sometimes just to be lazy!), then just cut and paste the bits I need into the Actinic scripts using Notepad. This way you don't get all the rubbish Frontpage produces included too. I wouldn't advise you to use it for large chunks of code, but for small things it can be quite useful.

**TraceyHand** · 18-Jul-2005, 11:32 PM

Originally posted by SusanF

Hi Joy,

I've only got access to Frontpage too. I tend to use it stand-alone to figure out how to construct the html I need (okay, and sometimes just to be lazy!), then just cut and paste the bits I need into the Actinic scripts using Notepad. .

Hahaha... I do that too!!
My html is limited but improving so I regularly have to use FP to point me in the right direction (with many <p> tags removed!) and then paste into Actinic!

Good to know I'm not the only one who does that!

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