Actinic v8 Beta Goes Live

[cdicken]

Hi Everyone,

We are very pleased to announce the much-anticipated Actinic v8 Beta release.

Version 8 sees the introduction of two distinct ranges of products - tailored specifically to the needs of merchants who want to build and manage their own ecommerce web sites; and web designers who want to build and deploy ecommerce sites for clients.

Actinic v8 For Web Designers

Based around a new and completely rebuilt, flexible architecture, Actinic v8 provides an object-oriented design view offering point-and-click access to the code. This will enable web designers to develop ecommerce sites easily, more economically and with few compromises.

For more information about the v8 product range for web designers go to: http://www.actinic.co.uk/v8/wd.htm

Actinic v8 for Merchants

Actinic v8 also provides a significant feature upgrade to Actinic Catalog and Actinic Business - the products for merchants who build and maintain their own sites. Actinic Catalog and Business benefit from new functionality in the areas of design flexibility, advanced marketing and merchandising, and catalogue and store management.

For more information about the v8 product range for merchants go to: http://www.actinic.co.uk/v8/diy.htm

Special Offers

We have some special offers available during the v8 beta period. Details will be included in our latest email newsletters, which are being sent out this week.

If you do not receive your email newsletter by Friday 7th July and would like to know more about our special offers, please contact the Actinic Sales Team on 0845 129 4800.

Support

Support queries and user feedback for the v8 beta will be by email, to v8beta@actinic.co.uk

[markact]

V8 and Part Numbers

Is it possible in v8 to now easily create different part numbers for different attributes for a product. for example a helmet that is available in 3 sizes & 3 colors has different part numbers for each variation. in the past this was a headache.

i have me fingers crossed for a positive reply

[Jan]

V8 does this in the same way that V7 does.

Regards,

[GAViN™©]

Can you load a modified site from v7 (templates, etc) into v8 without any problems?

[RuralWeb]

The 64$ question. It will depend on how the site has been modified. Templates no longer exist and the site will be converted to use outer and inner layouts. Most of my sites convert ok but some need modifications.

You best bet is to download the beta and try, it will not affect the live site or V7. Actinic are also offering help in converting sites to V8.

[jont]

Most of my sites converted OK except the FOOTERGUIDE template which was highly modified into CSS .. Actinic replaced these with the default and did make a note in the upgrade log to be fair

[pinbrook]

Ease of upgrade will probably depend on the amount of customisation, and the number of versions a site has been through.

I would expect issues with a site that has gone through the 4 to 5 to 6 to 7 procedure, I have managed to bring down my PC by trying to upgrade a 5 to 8.

A suggested workaround is to upgrade an early version to 7 and then upgrade to 8, or maybe go through the export/import csv route (the later of course does not bring order detail across).

Conclusion? There is no way of knowing if a site will upgrade without issues until you try.

[rookers]

We've only just bought Multiuser 7 - do we get the v8 upgrade at no extra cost ?

Jez

[cdicken]

Hi - the best thing to do would be to call Sales on 0845 129 4800 as they will be able to give you all the upgrade costs (if there are any).

[richmally]

Database / Product Housekeeping

Is it possible yet for more than 1 person to be able to update products in the catalog? This seems a major drawback in previous versons of the software and i presumed the next stage would have been to cater for this. I know the Multi User version gives you the ability to process orders from multiple PC's on a network but this is only half a piece of software. Existing Actinic customers are crying out for this. Most are getting impatient and migrating to other ASP/PHP based software.

Also does it still use an MS Access Database?

[cdicken]

Although there has been no change to this area in v8, it is possible to do this in Actinic Business as follows:

Open the 'ActinicCatalog.mdb' database file.

Open the 'Products' table.

Copy the contents of this table to the clipboard.

You can now paste this table into a new Excel spreadsheet or a new Access database.

Save this file anywhere on your PC.

Now delete any columns in this file that you don't want to use (there are 50 or so tax columns you might want to get rid of).

Now share this file on your network.

You can now use the 'External Linking' feature in Actinic Business to link to this spreadsheet/database. The externally linked file will be shared, and any changes will be updated straight into Actinic.