Nav bar for home & catalogue

[paulie555]

Hi, we've been working entirely on getting our products done and not really looked into the navigation too much. Basically want the nav bar to be the same on the home page as the catalogue page. Looked through a few threads and still scratching our heads. What's the best way to do this?

Also, when we go into the design tab - select page type - site map (or contact us or terms) it only appears in the design tab, not the content or preview.

Any help greatly appreciated.

http://trials.actinic.com/trials/trial44266/

[leehack]

The best way is to have a universal template for both product pages and brochure pages. If you can do this, i would, it means that you have one central template to manage and design then.

[paulie555]

Hi Lee

Not sure I get you. Do you mean the theme when you say template?

[leehack]

Sorry i should have said layout not template. The actinic themes have one overall page layout for brochure pages and one for product pages. Majority of us when creating an external design, use one layout for both as there is often little reason to split them. You can still do this with the standard actinic themes also. Take a look in the layout tabs on the various areas and also in site options, you will see a multitude of options and layouts, you can control so much of your site this way.

If you have no issue with one overall layout for both types of pages, then i would suggest doing it.

[paulie555]

Hi Lee, I see what you're saying, but that doesn't seem to change the nav bar. If you go to http://trials.actinic.com/trials/trial44266/ and click products I want the buttons the same as on the home page.

[leehack]

Select a brochure page and then go to the design tab and click on the area in question. Then do the same on a product page and see if you can see a difference. If you want all pages the same everything needs to be the same across all pages in the layouts assigned.

I don't use actinic themes but is there a brochure navbar and a products page navbar or is there conditions running within the one navbar deciding what to show and on what pages?

In short Paul you are touching on the most controversial, problematic and poorly documented areas there is with actinic. Personally i would suggest totally scrapping anything actinic currently offers and doing your own, it is just not worth the hassle in this area to use what they give you. Create your own and it can be all done in ten minutes - so much easier - just depends on your skill levels really, you need a bit of html and css experience to do it properly.

[paulie555]

Cheers for the quick replies Lee. Got it sorted now, but will probably add my own later.

On the other subject of adding a site map (or contact us or terms) to the relevant page am I missing something?
I go to design tab - select page type - site map - click apply, but it does not appear in the offline preview.

[wjcampbe]

There is nothing to add, just tick the appropriate settings boxes.

You can use Web | Generate Web Site to simulate an upload (that's when these pages are created) and then use File | Open in your browser to find the pages in your SiteHTML folder. (You won't see images or CSS here, but just the basic HTML data).

To see the finished page(s) you will have to upload and view online.