Home Page Fragment Linked To Catalogue Section

[denspad]

Hi All,

Firstly can I say what an excellent forum this is, very active and lots of useful advice from both new and veterans of the product. I am a developer subscriber breaking myself in gently!!

Be gentle with me as a newbie, I have been reading all the guides but some things don't seem that obvious until someone say why do you . . . if you know what I mean.

I am trying to create a home page for my site with two nice graphic images. One for Special Offers and one for Coming Soon. I want my client to be able to change these images (seasonal for example Christmas etc) from within Actinic (I presume I have to tell him the image size restrictions to stop him blowing the template content area?).

I have read about Fragments but it does not say how you can reference a specific fragment in a specific page within the HTML. One image will be to the right of the page and the other further down to the left. So I need to be able to plug each fragment into a specific part of the page.

Can anyone point me in the right direction here in terms of reading, happy to do that.

Many thanks in advance and keep up the good work.

[wjcampbe]

If he is maintaining the site in Catalog, he will have the same tree view on the left as you currently see. You would tell him to expand the whatever name page click on the first fragment and change the image name

OR

Probably better to create CUSTOMVARs to hold the file names and just have him change the value of the CUSTOMVAR in the page Properties tab.

BTW - if you are going to specify absolute positions for some of the content, you will be doing that in the css file with div's??

[denspad]

Hi Bill,

Thanks for the reply. Yes, he will be using Actinic Catalog to modify his product file.

In relation to the CSS point, my real concern is how do I reference specific fragments in order to place them on the homepage in the HTML? Can you simply use a NETQUOTEVAR with the name of the fragment to place it in the page? If so, can you provide an example.

Secondly, am I going about this the right way as obviously the client will need to create an image to put in this fragment each time he wants a change?.

Look forward to a reply.

Alan Wyatt-Jones.

[wjcampbe]

I have never looked for a way to identify a fragment.

If I was to approach a css controlled fragment layout - which I have not, the framework I would use is to create a css class, then within the fragment, include the html to implement that class, wrapping as required with !!< >!! Actinic HTML identifiers.

Jont is the forum's css expert - hopefully he will pass by with corrections if my approach is wrong.

On your second point, the client will need to create an image and/or move it into the site1 folder and if necessary - add it to Advanced | Additional Files. As I mentioned earlier, the lwest maintenance method of getting the file reference into the fragment may be to use a customvar - that way he would change the value of the customvar, rather than overtyping the file name inside the fragment.

Sounds a bit iffy if the client is not a Computer Savant.

[gabrielcrowe]

frags

you can target fragments.

firstly, you can specify any template to be used as a fragment. all you have to do is make sure that the template you use carries the appropriate placeholders, to insert data.

title, text, image. i forget what they are, but they are hidden in some frag templates. for instance 'image only' has no title or text displayed, and lets you use the image and its link properties. that frag template is a good palce to start.

find it in your site1 folder, and make 2 copies.

call the first: left_homepage.html
and call the second: right_homepage.html

(or indeed anything you like)

then open them, and surround the contents in a div, and some css.

i made mine like this:

<div class='container_left'>
<div class='title'>
NQV:TITLE
</div>
<div class='content_left'>
NQV:IMAGE
</div>
</div>

(i cant recall offhand what the nqv are, you'll have to take a look for them in the templates)

then, use css to style the left and right items how you'd like them, colours, font sizes and borders and the such.

Now, make 2 fragments, and assign the different templates you made to each frag. This means that you can change the image in the frag, the link in the frag and the css in the actinic.css, and style your frags with minimal fuss later on.

hope i'm not too techy. i'll knock some frags up later if you like