Basic Advice re Building Homepage

[TBird1]

As a non programmer I've got comfortable enough to use Dreamweaver to create some basic pages and to adjust the layout of some Actinic Templates following the advanced users guide.

However, I would like to have a homepage like this http://www.tmp.nectardirect.com (note, work in progress)

My question is . . .

1. Should I amend an Actinic template and keeps its original name to achieve this?
or
2. Copy an Actinic Template, save as index.html, save in my web root folder and disable the Actinic Homepage within Actinic?

You'll notice from the URL above that I have already gone down the road of No 2. However in doing this the 'Home' link in the Brochure pages insists on going to /actalog/index.html rather than ../index.html . The same link in the shopping pages works okay.

I'm using v 7.0.6 Business and have set Design|Options|Misc|Homepage Link to 'URL' and www.tmp.nectardirect.com. I have also unchecked 'use as website homepage' on Actinic Home.

I guess to cut my long story short, if we go back to which of 1. or 2. above is the 'best practise' recomendation to achive my requirements, I can then investigate and test further to flush out the problem I am experiencing.

Sorry for being a little long winded on this folks

Thanks

John

[Duncan Rounding]

My personal views (other's may think differently):
I would keep it all in Actinic making it all manageable from one place. If you wish to have a homepage at all I would use the standard Actinic brochure pages. Most people would probably enter your site directly via a product page anyway.

[TBird1]

If you wish to have a homepage at all I would use the standard Actinic brochure pages.

Is it possible to create a homepage similar to above (seee 1st post) using a standard Actinic brochure page ?

[Duncan Rounding]

Yes it should be, you could put the html in a fragment.

Just put something like this in your fragment:
!!<
My HTML goes here...
>!!

Also add the images to Actinic's Additional Files list and make references to them using the full domain URL such as:
(http://www.mydomain.co.uk/acatalog/myimage1.gif)

[TBird1]

Thanks - I'll have a futter around as you have suggested and see what I can do.

John

[jont]

Is it possible to create a homepage similar to above (seee 1st post) using a standard Actinic brochure page ?

From an SEO point of view may be worth using more natural text than image embedded text