Creating themes/templates

[daharris_1984]

My first post this so hello all.

I'm struggling in actinic to figure out how best to turn my site designs into themes/templates in Actinic. I have come up with some really good designs using adobe photoshop but I don't really know how to bring these into actinic so that the website ends up looking like the design i've created.

Has anyone got any tips/advice?

[jont]

Welcome to the forum.

The short answer is to upgrade to v8 as this makes registering a design very simple. In v7 there are 3 main "outer layouts"

Act_Primary.html
Act_BrochurePrimary.html
Act_PrimaryCheckout.html

there are then a myriad of nested templates laying out everything else which slots into these outer templates. Finding them is one of the reasons for upgrading to v8 alone if you are a designer. In essence there is not overall complete answer in how to convert your layout.. other than start with the outers and drill down through the nested templates.

Leaving the compact html and cgi option unticked allows you to preview a page in an external browser, view the source code and the templates used are shown between html comment tags to help track down what is coming from where.

[daharris_1984]

Sounds like v8 it is then. I do have the v8 upgrade CD here but i've never been brave enough to install it in case it has an effect on anything i've done in v7.

But it's generally easier to import designs into v8 than it is in v7 then?

[los_design]

But it's generally easier to import designs into v8 than it is in v7 then?

Without doubt, the process is much more simplistic.

I would install V8 alongside V7, develop my 'new site' in V8 after importing (or use a clean theme etc) and go from there.

Only switch to upgraded production when all is well.

Enjoy the easy life with V8.5 (making sure you install 8.5 and not 8.04 of course)

HTH

[pinbrook]

It makes no sense to develop a new site in V7 if you have a copy of v8.

[los_design]

Indeed....that is what we think, build the site in v8 whilst keeping v7 in production until you are happy with the results then switch.

All will depend on the V7 customisation. If it is very light then the best approach IMHO would be to design from new in v8 and so on...