Your Advice Please...

[mikejc]

I am just begining to develop my first Actinic site for a customer. I have a couple of questions:

Firstly I am working with a graphic design - the current method we are using to create the site is: he will create a completed web page in Photoshop with all of the necessary graphics, i will then slice this image and take the slices to make the website in Actinic. Is this how a designer/developer usually work together on a project like this? Is there a more suitable way? Are there any potential pitfalls to look out for?

Secondly I am also working full time, and am just doing this evenings and the occasional weekend. I am hoping to get the site completed in 2 and a half - 3 months - is this realistic? (none of this time will be spend on developing logos/images etc - this is all being done for me).

Thanks for any advice you can give me

[jont]

The process should work so long as you take into account the various Actinic requirements - particularly navigation and retaining dynamic navigation links when new sections and sub sections are added or removed.

I did the same thing for my site (albeit using Fireworks at the time) and then sliced the file into the Act_Primary and let Actinic add in my bespoke images for navigation.

2 months of evening should be more than enough to get the site up and running if the graphics are done and depending on how much typing work needs to be done for inputting the products... get the coffee on stanby...

[BPJSURF]

Design in Photoshop and slice in dreamwaever is the right thing to do.
Keep in mind there are 60 templates in Actinic and to make a highly functional website using Actinic you should be prepared to work through a large number of templates. Download the netquotvar guide to help you with the variable placement in the specific templates.

Sure Solution has been building templates for Actinic for a very long time. A custom design can take between 50 and 150 man hours depending on functionality requirements and product merchandising. So plan accordingly and give yourself plenty of time to learn the templates and differnt aspects of Actinic.

Also start with a clean layout or businesscss theme when building your design and templates. It will save you time with templates and deployment.

good luck