How do i achieve a layout like this??

[zee_b]

I would like my site to look something like this site as in:

The black surround.Either side of the content.
The left hand menu with a logo above and below the categories.
The categories preferably as text.
The information box as on the right.




I have gone thru the actinic themes, and the closest i can find is from specific designs (non css) called "Hyper (Text Nav Links)". Any recommendations on how to achieve this.

Would it be perhaps better to use "Clean Layouts"? Not sure how tho.
If someone can help me out that would be great.

Thanks in advance.

Zee

[Duncan Rounding]

To create a custom layout such as that you would be better of starting with a clean layout - perhaps 13 or 14. You will have quite e lot of work ahead of of you and many modifications to make. Start with the Act_Primary template and make changes to the main layout in an editor (such as Dreamweaver) making regular previews in Actinic.

The specific things you mention such as black surround, left hand menu, logo etc. can all be coded with an editor. I would recommend that you have a good read of the advanced user guide to understand how the Actinic templates work in detail. Also if you're not very confident with html then now would be a good time to play around with an html editor to understand how to create a layout similar to that that you referenced before tryng to do it with the Actinic content.

[zee_b]

Thanks for the reply.

Just to confirm i edit Act Primary - as in move things around?

What about if i have a layout a bit like this site

I mainly like the upper bar - which would incorporate the logo and nav. And then the black side bars.

Is there anyone out there who could assist me you reckon. I'm quite savvy, just might mess it up tho. Not the greatest optimist - i know

Thanks

[pinbrook]

the sky is the limit when applying a design to actinic, you just need to take care you don't remove the important code/NQR/placeholders that actinic required to work properly.

Always take backups of templates as you work, if you are unsure how to do something, backup, try it, test it and learn.

There is no easy way to learn the template system, except through trial and error, you can always ask the community to assist, it just depends on how dirty you want your hands to become.

A major design change will require a steep learning curve (HTML) or you can make a few minor tweaks there and there.

How far do you want to go..

[zee_b]

Hi Pinbrook,

How would i achieve then the black background if it is that, or border in DW. I mean do u make a background ... migraine time

cheers

[jubbbird]

You are jumping RIGHT into the deep end

I don't mean to undermine anyone here, or offer advice thats not true to me own experience, so kindly shoot me down if Im off at a tangent here...

Admirable is your willingness to get stuck in, which is probably what will make you succeed in the end. However, as has been mention above, you have a STEEP learning curve starting now if I have been a reasonable judge of ability based on this conversation so far.

There is, however, little hope of creating your own custom theme in Actinic without fair-good knowledge of HTML, as well as the Actinic template system. Even if you use Dreamweaver, you will still need to modify a little HTML to get certain templates to appear correctly if you would like to use the WYSIWYG (what you see if what you get) interface, as opposed to hacking code (HTML).

If you plan to design a custom theme as you have described, which is apparently quite different to any you will find already shipped with Actinic, I would recommend designing a graphical/html mockup of the basic site template ('template' used in the normal sense, rather than the specific Actinic sense) and then "chopping it up" into the smaller Actinic templates as needed. One of the advantages to this is that you get to design a basic website, regardless of Actinic functionality which is a whole new ball game.

Doing it this way also allows you to step back and learn the basics for webdesign/development before you jump into Actinic, which is what you desperately need to do if you want to achieve what you have described above.

Once you have designed your site template, with help from HTML websites/forums (check out "iDocs" for a great HTML documentation), you can come back here and people will gladly help you implement your design in Actinic.

[zee_b]

david, a

thanks for the response.

I honestly thought it would be straight forward well kinda straight forward to achieve the black surround.

Is there anyone here who could provide the borders for me - for a small fee ???

I like the actinic functionality of the clean theme in general , just want to tweak a few things, namely the borders and header.

Thanks

[NormanRouxel]

Zee,

The sites you refer to look like they're from a professional graphic designer (although their HTML / CSS skills aren't too good as they fail to render properly in Firefox).

As said above, to get what you want will require HTML and design skills. You may want to investigate taking Actinic temporarily out of the loop by seeing if you can make a small stand-alone HTML page that looks like what you want. If you can manage that, you can then resume looking in the Actinic Primary Templates to see if you can adapt them to follow.

[jubbbird]

I think anyone with general HTML skills would gladly provide you with a basic site outline with black borders - to be fair it ISNT difficult. However thats unfortuantely not likely to be where the buck stops :/

I have attached a text file that contains the code necessary to knock up a basic black border, white content page. Use it as you will, but know that this forum is not the place to obtain basic HTML tutoring. There are of course plenty of places to get that, no worries. But come back here when you are ready to convert your design to Actinic templates.

All you need to do to see it in action is rename the file - remove ".txt" from the end.

[acompton]

Zee,

I can only add to what the others have said with a couple of suggestions:

1. In order to get a design to work in Actinic, you are going to have to get to grips with HTML - get a good book and start learning the basics. You can do quite a lot with the TABLE tag.
2. Start building the design you want in a simple HTML page (as Norman says). You can do all this offline.
3. You can learn a lot about how other people's sites work by using the right-mouse-button and selecting View Source (this option won't appear if your mouse is over an image). The divashoes site is good for this because the HTML is readable, well laid out and has comments in it.

Alan Compton
www.greenknightgames.co.uk

[zee_b]

Thanks all.

I am familiar with html - just wasnt sure how to go about it.

Will give it a shot tonight.

Thanks again to ALL OF YOU :-)

[zee_b]

Is there anyone who can develop it for me for a fee? Just want the black background and actinic components ?

[jont]

To get the black border try the following in your actinic.css (this will also remove the need for any further nested tables and create a fluid layout)

in the body tag add:

background-color: #000000;
margin: 50px 50px;

(check in the Act_Primary.html, Act_BrochurePrimary.html and Act_PrimaryCheckout.html the background colour is not also being specified there - if so then delete it out ... it may appear as a NETQUOTEVAR)

that will add a 50px background in black.

This may cause some havoc with the rest of the layout depending on which theme you have .. if is it is fluid theme you are in luck. YOU may need to also reduce the ACTSTDWIDTH setting to allow for the reduce window view size under Design | Options | Site Defaults

The other option is to go with a fixed width layout as per your example sites (both are shoe sites so if you are also in that line of trade you may not want to play follow-my-leader too much) and simply center align the text in the HTML and BODY tags in the CSS and then bring it back to text align left for the rest of the layout.

Try the first solution first as this may achive what you are after in a blink.

[zee_b]

Jonty John,

Thank you very very much - i shall try that out tonight.

Appreciate it mate.

[ampg-it.co.uk]

hi zee, i would be happy to help you.

there would be a small fee involved, if you email me with your requirements i'll give you a quote.

Kind regards

Matt

matt@ampg-it.co.uk