Uploading Pages Made Outside Actinic

[missy]

Hello, I am new to Actinic, I have been working on a shop page, that has already been created in Actinic.

The page has shop product pages, and pages inbetween that divide the products into catagories, and link them to the corresponding pages. They are all included as Sections in the Content Tree.

I want to edit these pages, but they don't seen to be editable in Actinic, so I have been trying to edit them in Dreamweaver. This isn't a problem, until I come to uploading them.

The pages are basically just pictures being used as links. If I upload them with Actinic, some of them will be fine, but some of them will change back to their orginal state, and not stay how I edited them.

When I uploaded the pages via FTP, they will display correctly, but as soon as I update anything else with Actinic the pages will change back to their previous versions.

I don't understand if I save over these version of the pages, with Dreamweaver, where Actinic gets the information to change them back to their previous state. Does Actinic upload everything in the directory as is, or does it have some sort of check which is changing my files back, and if so is there anything I can do about it?

I know if I upload the changed version of the page first, view it, then update with Actinic, the page will still change back to the previous version, so it can't be that the files are not being uploaded. I thought also it could be something to do with the template settings, but that wouldn't change the pictures.

Very confused, any help would be muchly appericated!

Thanks,
Amy
Saltrock

[I-CC]

If you have edited the resultant pages and then uploaded those via FTP, then when you do an Actinic upload it overwrites the resultant pages and then uploads them.

You should do the changes in the templates which is then used to produce the resultants pages on generation or upload time.

I think you are editing the pages which have been generated from the templates with how you want the results to look, as opposed to using the templates within Actinic to generate these pages (I think).

[jont]

Hi Amy,

sounds like you are editing the previewd HTML pages inside the Actinic folder and not the ACT_templates themselves. The preview pages are what Actinic compiles from the info your input regarding products, company details, prices etc etc and compiles these into the relevent ACT_templates you will see in the root of Site1 folder.

As Actinic compiles the ACT_templates during an upload it will overwrite your manually modified pages you have created in Dreamweaver. You need to edit the ACT_templates to ensure Actinic compiles its pages to upload the designs how you want.

Tracking which ACT_template can be tricky but if you have the Actinc Extensions Plug in with DreamWeaver this will tell you which ACT_template is generating which part of the page so you can open the corresponding ACT_Template and make your alterations there. Save the template and then upload via Actinic and your changes will appear.

HTH

[jont]

2 answers for the price of 1 there

[saltrock]

Thank you both very much, I can see you are right, I must be editing the previewed files. One more question if I may, where/how in Dreamweaver does it show you which template the file has been made from? I have the extension installed, but it didn't seem to do much, I think I am missing something

[saltrock]

re

And I managed to change names, its been a long day, excellent

Cheers again,
Amy

[wjcampbe]

To get dreamweaver to work with Actinic, you have to find and untick the Compact HTML/CGI option on Design | Options - miscellaneous tab. Actinic will then show all the template identifiers which dreamweaver recognises and flags.

[jont]

.. and then best to recheck Compact HTML before uploading via Actinic again to help speed up download times

[missy]

Sorry, confused again, looking at templates leads of insanity I think!

I have been looking at the templates, but they don't seem to contain any information that would change pictures and the location the link is pointing to.

I litterally just want to change the picture and the link, leave everything else where it is, but that information isn't in the template, just page layout info and such. Those pages I can't edit in Actinic either... I really wish I knew how they were created.

If I can't edit in Actinic, the information isn't in the templates, I can't edit the .html files directly, I really can't see where to go with this anymore :/ aside for putting the pictures directly onto the templates, but I think that might be a bit drastic.

Any ideas?

[jont]

Do you have a URL we can take a look at and what exactly on the page you are trying to change?

All links and images are usually changed inside Actinic - as you rightly say the templates are merely "placeholders" which Actinic then compiles with the info inside its database to create the finished pages.

A URL would be most helpful

[missy]

Sure thing

This is the page I am trying to change, as you can see at the top the links are 2 hardware pictures, when they should be a wetsuit, and a skateboard.

http://www.surfline.co.uk/acatalog/hardware.html

This is another example of the problem:

http://www.surfline.co.uk/acatalog/h..._wetsuits.html

I don't really understand why the hardware picture is put in place to begin with rather than the page being blank.

If theres any more info you need please let me know, I can't think what else you would need atm. Thanks.

[jont]

OK... should be simple to solve ... in Actinic go to your Section called Hardware (you will see the subsections called hardware_wetsuits, hardware_skateboard etc) Click on the Wetsuits subsection and where you see Section Details | General you can specify the image there eg wetsuits.jpg

What is happening is I think the wetsuits and skateboard sections do not have an image specified against the sections details | general tab so they are inheriting the parent section image

HTH

[wjcampbe]

Hi,

These are your section images which are controlled by your selection in the second box on the General tab of each page in Actinic. See the attached screenshot.

Just click on the button to the right of this box, and select the name of the picture you want to show, then click apply.

[missy]

Thank you ever so much! All fixed.

http://www.surfline.co.uk/acatalog/Hardware.html

That was the problem, I was making it a tad more complicated than it needed to be. You must really know your Actinic well Is that all from experience of using it or..?

I would still like to learn about templates though, do you know if there are any resources that explain them a bit better, or any tutorials on the subject? Been reading the Advanced User Guide, just wondered if there was any more info out there.

Thanks again for your help,

Amy

[jont]

Glad you got it sorted Amy.

May be worth downloading the Design Guide and Advanced User Guides from the main Actinic websites.

One tip for editing the templates is to add in temporary <table> and </table> tags at the start and end of the template codes to show the tables and cells... as most templates sit inside a table (ultimately the Act_Primary) the <table> tags are not needed in the majority of templates.

Add them in temporarily and you will see the table and the cells to aid in the layout - don't forget to delete the <table> tags prior to saving and then preview the modifications in Actinic. As always take a copy of the original template before any mods