Designing a site from scratch DWCS4 & ACT8...purlease help!

[Suze]

Hi there people of massive brainage,

I would be really grateful if someone could help me. Apologies if this has already been posted but I have had a quick look and not come up with the goods so far.

I am starting a new site from scratch and designing it in DW CS4 (the actinic menu bar is there) and using actinic 8. I am fairly competent with DW but not really used actinic much - just teaching myself but need some experts to grill!

Couple of questions...

1) Is it best to create site template in DW (I guess I need one for homepage, main sections and prod pages and also checkout type pages) so x3 designs, and then drop actinic stuff in and register design with act?

2) What happens with css created with dreamweaver - do these go into a sub folder called css in site 1 folder?

3) I have created a spry menu bar in DW which when user hovers over a submenu pops up - I have adjusted the styling so it looks good but appears different in actinic - also how to link these - do I need to get actinic live and then put absolute link into dreamweaver? I.e http://www.thispage.co.uk

4) Images - are these best stored in a sep images folder and then sub images folder as the site will expand in future to include more prods

I know this is a lot of questions but any feedback would be welcome. Thanks a lot.

Suze

[Duncan Rounding]

Welcome Susie.

I will try to answer some of your questions, although some of the answers will differ depending on personal preferences.

1. You should be able to get away with just one page designed in DW and then use BlockIfs in Actinic to vary the layout to suit differing pages that you need. You then only have one layout to maintain. Create the page then register it in Actinic. Set your DW site to be Site1.

2. I keep css in the Site1 folder but a subfolder of Site1 should be fine too.

3. I would hard code this if it isn't going to change very much.

4. You can place your images in a subfolder or subfolders of Site1 but don't place them outside of Site1.

HTH

[Suze]

stress fest part deux

Thanks for the feedback much appreciated...

Well I registered the design in actinic but it keeps coming up with the following error message:

c:\program files\actinic8\sites\TEST_HWW2\previewHTML\SpryAssets/SpryMenuBarVertical.css contains an invalid path

and then the whole background disappears and I am left with 'web page cannot be displayed' white page.

Very odd! If anyone knows what I am wittering on about please help!

[leehack]

Your SpryAssets need to be in the site1 folder maybe? How did they get mixed up with the preview folder? Unless of course it is really confused and you need to copy the spry assets into the preview folder also.

Why not take the simple root and register a design without spry so you get used to doing that and how that works, then introduce your spry.

[jont]

With Actinic it is always the safest option to keep all elements needed for the outer layout in the root of the site folder. Only place product and section images into subfolders... everything thing else is safest in the root (layout images, css, javascript)

[Suze]

the saga continues

Hello there

Thanks for the tip - I moved my spry into the preview html folder and it seems to work now

However my background is white when it should be purple as it appears in DW and the links on the spry menu - the font is okay but the colour is all meant to be white which is the case for some but for those menu items with sub menus they are appearing as red, and also my text links at the bottom are this same red colour.

Could actinic be overwriting with its on css styles? Can you please tell me how to access the background colour and also the link colours? I have adjusted a few things but still the same Should I use an external css file sheet and attach it that way?

The page design is sorted except for the font colour and bkgd colour - my menu is working and also the flash so I must be doing something right. Next stage is to try and upload it...hmmm error messages will be occurring again methinks......

Thanks for all my advice so far!

[leehack]

Declare your stylesheet after the actinic one so nothing gets overwritten. I'd also advise taking 30 minutes out and studying site options, advanced theme configuration and the design tab, it will help you tenfold and answer most of your design questions/woes.

[Suze]

Continued grief

Hi there

Thanks for all the advice so far, I have been racking my brain on my current problem. We have a design issue in which the main bulk of the actinic content is pushed far down the page, see link below to see what I mean:

http://www.healthwithoutwealth.co.uk..._Products.html

It looks as if it is building the site from the bottom up as opposed to downwards.

If you click through the content is pushed down - does this change if products are entered - we are looking at 10 products in each section to start with with 3 going across. On tight schedule here and not really got time to read through loads of info...help!!

[peblaco]

The table rows - one with Flash, one with content, are part of the same table that makes up the whole layout. That's not a good idea as the outer table can force sizes in the middle area. Better to have one table for the central area then add Flash and content as tables or div for inner areas.

[Suze]

Thank you peblaco you are a complete STAR!! That sorted that problem cheers

[Suze]

hello there
well it WAS working fine just with internet explorer (version 6) it was working but now keeps reverting back to the previous problem - firefox is fine

Any thoughts anyone?

[Suze]

Hi

Thanks the tables are working cross platform now.
Another issue (!) I have is the fragment text on the prod info pages:

http://www.healthwithoutwealth.co.uk...ioBalance.html

How can I adjust the width of the text on the right? I have tried to access it from the design view and also library but have only succeeded in changing font appearence....? Any ideas?

[Rich Brady]

Suze, please don't ask the same questions in different threads. You're diluting the forum from a search perspective and likely to upset forum regulars ;-)

[Suze]

First of all many thanks for the help I have had on here.

I now have a new headache - I have changed the product layout by putting two spaces between the prod title, description and price but I am now getting an error msg I previously didn't have;

'Parse error: parse error in main on line 1'

http://www.healthwithoutwealth.co.uk...ioBalance.html

I searched the community and found this as a likely solution:
http://community.actinic.com/showthread.php?t=35114

I have amended the main_actinic file as suggested and restarted actinic with no change. The first bit about 'push button layout' is confusing - I have looked in design view but cannot find this? Can I access this in the design library?

I also tried removing the spaces and still get the same message. I am using actinic version 8.

Any help appreciated thank you!

[leehack]

You would just use margins to force gaps in between elements, what did you do to create parsing errors, probably tried to do something far more intricate than you needed i expect. Tracing errors and trying to reverse them can be quite difficult, so i'd suggest reverting back to your last working snapshot and redoing your changes again. This time just use top and borrom margins on the relevant css classes, far simpler and easier to do and you can't really break things that way.