Dreamweaver-Actinic

[Doc]

Am I right in assuming that I can create my website front end with Dreamweaver and easily integrate it with Actinic?. It seems that I have to put all these placeholders everywhere..The NETQUOTEVARs....there are so many of them...The templates that come with actinic do not fulfill my requirements...I have to design something with dreamweaver...Is interfacing to Actinic a major problem?
thanks
doc

[wjcampbe]

Doc, you could benefit from some face to face time with someone who has experience of using Actinic. What country are you in?

[jont]

To create your own style and layout the best way is to select a clean CSS theme in Actinic and then edit the resulting Act_templates accordingly using Dreamweaver - so long as you retain the NQV's and other Actinic codes you can position them wherever you want on the page to integrate with your layout.

It is very possible with time to create a site that shows none of the Actinic template hallmarks

[Chrismarworth]

I made my site using Dreamweaver.

I designed my own index page which has no Actinic place holders. The catalogue pages are based on the index page but I have added the necesary place holders to make it work.

It took me some time and I am only reasonably satisfied with the current version, but it works fine and I am sure no one visiting knows the parts that annoy me. I am now in the process of making a new site. It is possible to make a site which does not look at all like Actinic and it is quite an intesting learning process if you like to do that sort of thing.

I would add I got great help in making the site from people on this forum.

Chris

www.centraltickets.co.uk

[RuralWeb]

These two sites ( www.TrafalgarTeas.co.uk and www.TrufflesChocolates.co.uk ) are currently being built with a Dreamweaver front end. A clean Actinic template was edited and the Dreamweaver navigation etc was added, all the Actinic "bits" not required were deleted.

Its a bit of a fiddle but once you get it set up it works great and lets you do so much more with the other pages.

[Doc]

Malcolm
Thanks...I will do that..but how do you know which bits are not required?. Through trial and error or is there a more logical way..
thanks

[Doc]

I wish...I live in South Africa ........bit of a long way for face to face

[Chrismarworth]

If you check out the details on page 27 of the downloaded version of Getting Started with Design the basis of making your own templates is there.

Chris

[RuralWeb]

It depends on what functionality you need to keep from Actinic - the user guides tell you what all the bits of code do, so as you say trial and error works well.

WARNING do one change at a time and test it before continuing, that way you can undo the changes you made.

[jont]

... and make a duplicate of the file before starting on the original

[Doc]

Chris...thanks I read this page...my 20+ years of experience in IT tells me that people's experience adds significantly to whats in the documentation...thats why I am asking the qs...you guys have done it and been thro all the pitfalls..from what I am hearing here its not as easy as cake..some of the guys here have gone thro lots of trials and errors..so i hope to learn from that..plus the fact that I have very urgent timescales...but I am reading all the documentation I am getting my hand on... ...I remember years ago when I used to wade thro manuals and manuals of VAX Assembler and having to write device drivers for Vax VMS..