Best way to start

[colinr]

I will be building (my first) Actinic v9 store with a custom design sometime soon. As far as I can tell, my options are:

• Start with a theme and work it into my design
• Start with a design in Dreamweaver and register it with Actinic

Ideally I don't want to do either of these - my preference would be to hand code the layouts and go from there, is that practical or is there a better approach for the hand coded option?

The design is going to be somewhere along the lines of www.johnlewis.co.uk, if I understand what I've read on this forum it should be possible to have top level categories at the top, then subcategories separate down the side (using blockifs). Is that right?

Finally, I get the impression that I can customise a lot. Assuming I'm not scared of HTML, CSS and Actinic's logic options, is there anything to watch for, or is anything possible as long as I can work out how?

Thanks,
Colin

[jont]

You can build the outer layout in Notepad. Build your design and simply add in the Actinic code - DW allows a direct integration of the Actinic code and registers the design but is not essential. Once you have added the Actinic stuff (check with an existing outer layout and you will see the code you need to install) simply copy and paste the notepad code into an unused outer layout and assign the site to use that layout.

You can hack v8 and v9 any which way you want

[colinr]

Great, thanks for the quick reply. Is there any way to remove preinstalled items from the design library? I'm sure I won't need loads of the stuff in there.

[jont]

Right click delete. Most tend to be harmless and do not add or detract from using Actinic so can be left alone.

Needless to say delete with care!!!

[jont]

Right click delete.

Actually you can't do that - just tried and no option which is probably a sensible thing on balance.

[colinr]

I'm sure it won't be a problem once I know what I'm doing... Just things like "works best with hotshot" in the Outer Layout library doesn't seem like the sort of thing I'd ever use. Cheers for the help.