Frustrating problem

[Firecom]

I seem to be having no end of problems with my external design. I have now deleted the lot and re-installed actinic from scratch.

Designed the external site again from within the site1 folder so no elemenst indexing externally.

Now when I register my design which is a 3 column centred design, the formatting goes to hell. The page now loads on the left hand side of the screen and the masthead no longer floats left.

Any ideas why this is happenening? Would the actinic stylesheet be messing it up somehow?

Very very confused

[gabrielcrowe]

before you jump in and change the whole show, try editing an existing template, one of the default ones, to see how the whole show works.

there is only 1 site i have ever done from empty templates and thats interact-studio. and it was a pig.

[Firecom]

This is what now appears at the top of the page when I preview it

"> ">

Then the web page

[leehack]

The code in the underlying template has to be borked. Upload it to a test site without any actinic intervention and run it through a code checker.

[webteam]

Are you using dreamweaver for your external design? If so, I wouldn't bother as I tried that several times but it kept crashing my actinic and I had to reinstall it about 6 times!!!
So now I just edit the page within the design view in actinic and add the divs etc that i need in there as well as edit the actinic stylesheet within actinic. It hasn't caused me any issues.

[leehack]

What versions of DW are you guys and gals using. I've been using the DW interface for at least 2 years now and never had a problem in that area at all. I take it you are heeding the warning just before it goes to register, quite a few do not and don't bother to read it. It is a very key part though.

[Firecom]

Just tried that, uploaded and it passed.

Guess its time to start from scratch...again

[Firecom]

using dw8. read the warning and followed it exactly.

[leehack]

Strange then, i must say. I create a site in DW, register the site1 folder as the dw site folder, put my external html and css file in that folder. Open up the template, insert actinic content and then register it. Works first time every time.

[webteam]

I am using cs3. So i have the latest dreamweaver.

I built the basic structure template in html first, then registered it with actinic in dreamweaver and then added the actinic bits through the dreamweaver options, such as the innerlayout etc.

Then opened up actinic and it looked fine. The template and stylesheet clearly took, but then when i go to close it, it kept coming up with an error, and then it wouldn't let me reopen it! So i had to reinstall it.

I tried it without registering the template in dreamweaver and it worked fine. So tried it again in dreamweaver and my actinic crashed again. And it was only when i go to close it that it would crash, so the first time it crashed, i had spent a whole day working on it and adding products etc and lost the lot!

So after about 5 attempts with registering it with dreamweaver and having to reinstall my actinic I gave up and am now just working directly in actinic.

So if you have any ideas why that would have happened then do let me know, as registering a design in dreamweaver (a programe i use daily anyway) seemed ideal and so easy!

[leehack]

I can only comment on how i do things which is a little different, i set up the site in DW (use the site1 folder) as the site folder. Have both your html and css file in that folder, open up the html file, add the actinic content you want in the places you want it, then register it. Once i have done that, i can either adjust the design in actinic or in DW, they both work fine. I tend to do html changes within actinic and css ones within DW, because once the actinic variables are in your design, it borks in DW as the names are often very long and trash sidebars etc. It also looks much better in actinic once registered.

[Firecom]

Done a frsh install and will try again. I did a design earlier this week that transferred fine, except for loads of stuff indexing outside the site. think that was because I have a local-sites folder on my desktop.

Doing it all in the site1 folder. Can only presume I messed up some code somewhere as Lee suggested.

Fingers crossed this time.

Cheers for all the advice, its much appreciated. Its good to know there is a strong community for actinic and I hope I can repay the favour in the future when i get to grips with it all.

[Firecom]

Oh well, e it again

Worked ok at 1st, but as soon as i added actinic content it fell over. Even the design in dreamweaver has fallen to the left of the screen and become uncentred.

[leehack]

It often does look junk in DW once you add the content, for the reasons I have already outlined. Once content has been added, register it and then work on it in actinic instead.

[Firecom]

one thing when i register it, it says it changes it from xhtml to html for actinic. would this effect it?

All the positioning seems to fail. the masthead falls over and things no longer float as intended. Its as if actinic strips out the css