re-designing my site

[lois]

Calling all Catalog teccies!!!

I already have a web site running using Microsoft Frontpage and Actinic 6.(www.wayof-life.co.uk) which I designed myself. I now want to expand the number of products I offer on the site and reorganise it.

I have 3 questions!

1. I want to have images to represent Vitamins, Herbs, Aromatherapy, Slimming, Homoeopathy, and Books across the top of each page.

How do I arrange for image links to my 6 main sections to appear at the top of every page?

2. I want to have a list of health concerns to appear on every page which will link to the appropriate section. How do I replace the menu bar on the left hand side of the page with a menu list of sections?

(I will have products appearing in different places on the site, for instance Vitamin E may appear under Vitamins and also womens health concerns.)

3. I have a lot of products and descriptions in each sub-section, which means that browsers have to scroll down long lists. How do I set up short lists with basic details and "click here for more information" buttons to link to a pop up giving a bigger picture, description and "add to cart" button?

Help would be much appreciated! BTW is there an idiots guide to designing with actinic catolog 6? The advanced user guide went straight over my head, tho it was 10pm at night when I was reading it?

Are there any other health store owners out there who have built their own sites?

Lois

[cdicken]

1. I want to have images to represent Vitamins, Herbs, Aromatherapy, Slimming, Homoeopathy, and Books across the top of each page.

How do I arrange for image links to my 6 main sections to appear at the top of every page?

Change to using one of the 'Clean Layouts'. As this will give you the main section links down the left hand side. If you then change the 'Top Level Section Link Layout' field in 'Design | Options | Layouts' to use 'Image Only - no text shown' then you will have the section images instead of the text.

Next go to 'Design | Options | Sections' and in the 'Location and Arrangement of Top Level Section List' area set the 'First Row Column Count' and the 'Subsequent Row Column Count' both to '6'.

Finally, go back to 'Design | Options | Layouts' and click the 'Edit' button next to the 'Default Overall Layout' field. Find 'NETQUOTEVAR:TOPLEVELSECTIONSTOP' and move it to just after where it says '<!-- NETQUOTEVAR:HEADER -->'. Save your changes.

I want to have a list of health concerns to appear on every page which will link to the appropriate section. How do I replace the menu bar on the left hand side of the page with a menu list of sections?

I'm guessing these 'Health Concerns' are different from your main sections. There is no way to really do what you want. You just need to edit the overall layout template again and where NETQUOTEVAR:TOPLEVELSECTIONSTOP' was, manually enter some HTML for links to your pages.

I have a lot of products and descriptions in each sub-section, which means that browsers have to scroll down long lists. How do I set up short lists with basic details and "click here for more information" buttons to link to a pop up giving a bigger picture, description and "add to cart" button?

Well, I assume you know how to do pop-up windows ('Extended Information' tab in a product). There is a patch for putting Add to Cart buttons in these windows towards the bottom of THIS PAGE.

There is some example code to use for compact product rows in the Designing With Actinic Developer Guide, which is also a pretty good introduction to designing with Actinic.