Shop.html as home page

[supermaximus]

Hi there,

I know you are looking forward for a nice pint at your local pub, but before enjoing the week-end please give me a quick help.

How do I make the shop.html (catalog home page), the home page of the site

so that when customer visit www.mydomain.com they go directly to the shop.html catalog page.

Many many thanks

Max

[jont]

This has been covered many times but a precis :

1. in the content tree utick "use as home page" on the house icon

2. Design | Options | Misc set the new homepage link

3. set up a .htaccess redirect for people landing on index.html to transfer to catalog/shop.html

[supermaximus]

redirect the page

Hi Jont,

that sounds ok, but I will still need to browse the index.html page, but not as home page, so if I create a .htaccess the index.html page will divert customers back to the shop.html page.

I went to design options | miscellaneous | Home page link and I put a URL. than I have uploaded the site but the home page is still the index.html page.

Am I doing something wrong?

Best Regards

Max

[jont]

did you untick "use as homepage" against the house icon at the top of the content tree?

[wjcampbe]

Once you decide that the HOME page is no longer your home page, Actinic stops loading it into the root of the site, and loads it in the /acatalog/ folder = the same level as the shop.html.

BUT

Most people just put the www part of the address into their browser - so Jont's suggestion is that if you do not have an independent index.html file IN the root, that has navigation connections to your shop, you add an .htaccess file in the root to point people into the /acatalog/ folder.

Now, if you keep the name index.html and put the file in /acatalog/ then anyone who does type www.whatever/acatalog/ will get served the index.html file by default - that's how browsers work. So you must rename index.html to something else - maybe index1.html - and add an .htaccess file in the /acatalog/ folder to direct people to the shop.html page.

It is actually easier to remname the original index.html home page to index1.html, then rename the shop page to index.html - then put just one .htaccess in the root to direct traffic to the /acatalog/ folder. Anyone arriving directly at the acatalog folder without a page name will be served your (was called shop) new index.html page.

[supermaximus]

Make sense now

Hi wjcampbe,

it make sense now. So instead of renaming the shop.html page to index.html, can I go in Design Option and change the shop.html default page name to index.html, than I will place a .htaccess file in the root of the website that points customers directly to the /acatalog/ folder. At that point I can call the home page of the overall site like homepage.html and place a link inside the website.

I am currently testing a trial version of Actinic Developer V7 and I don't actually see any /acatalog/ folder when browsing the uploaded site. Is this normal? Is it because I am testing a trial version?

I have also noticed that I can not add any SMTP server details so I can not properly test a form mail page. I guess it's because I am using a trial version too.

Many thanks for your help.

Max

[wjcampbe]

Para 1 - yes, any renaming has to be done inside Actinic so that the next time the pages are generated and uploaded, the whole thing is not torn apart.

Para 2 - did you configure website settings and allow Actinic to upload the site - or have you done some hack with Dreamweaver or whatever? During the initial upload, Actinic creates the /acatalog/ folder, loads the perl scripts into the cgi-bin (once you get the relative location sorted - that's almost always a pain for new users), and uploads the search data index etc.

Para 3 - Yes and No. Without an SMTP server there is nothing for a Contact Us page (form mail) to do, and no variables to build it with. Bu also, yes, if you are using Actinic trial space, there are some restrictions.

[supermaximus]

Actinic Web Settings

Hi wjcampbe,

I didn't configure Acitinic when I have installed. But I use Actinic to upload the files, I am not doing it manually. The thing is that I am using a http://trials.actinic.com/traials/... hosting so I am not sure about how Actinic deals with trials softwares.

I know that in Advanced | Netword Setup I can setup the

Catalog URL,
CGI-BIN URL,
Codebase,
Path From CGI-BIN to acatalog Directory (which is set to <path>/acatalog/ - and I can not change this option)

Many thanks for your help and have a great week-end

Max

[wjcampbe]

Yes - its as I said in the last sentence - you are using Actinic Trial space. I have responded to your other thread on the Convert question.