Editing index.html

[palex]

Hello,
While it seems rather simple to change the layout of product pages from within Shopsite, how does one change the layout of their main index page in the same environment without having to hard code it?

Thanks!

[ShopSite Lauren]

What is the URL to your website and what layout changes would you like to make?

[Jim]

It depends on what your index.html page is going to look like. I think most merchants just create it as a page in ShopSite. If it needs to look drastically different from other pages they may create a special template for it. However, generally it could use the same template as other store pages, only it would have different content in the text fields that display on the page. You can include html in the text fields of a page so you can have practically any content you want to display on the page in a text field.

Having the index.html page as a ShopSite generated page makes it much simpler to add links to your other store pages to the index page. You just assign the pages to the index page and publish and the links will be updated to reflect any changes you made, without having to hand edit the page.

[palex]

I am using the "Swish on Black" theme. My current index page shows the bare skeleton of the theme, but it is missing the menu options at the top of the screen, as well as menu options below the search box. It also has no sample products in the main frame. I was hoping to perhaps see the index page of the original them and modify it accordingly, or in a manner that minimizes having to manually alter the html.

Thanks... the store is at http://palexbooks.com/store/index.html

[ShopSite Lauren]

You can add a main menu (top navigation) and left navigation menu under Preferences > Navigation. A video tutorial on setting up these menus can be found at the following URL. Note, these menus will appear globally on all your store pages.
http://www.shopsite.com/tutorial/preferences-navigation.html

For the main body, you can assign products to be listed on your home page the same way that you assign products to other pages. Many merchants will also create a banner image to display on the home page which highlights a specific product or current promotion. If you want to modify the product layout of a single product on the home page, what I would suggest is to first add the product to the home page, then highlight all the product information and right click in your browser (should work in most browsers other than IE) and select "View Selection Source." You can then copy the source code for that product, paste it into your text 1 field on your home page, then click on the [Editor] link above the text 1 box. This will turn that field into an HTML Editor where you can modify the product information/layout.

[palex]

Thanks... this will be useful. One issue I have been having is the location of my index.html file. I do have this as a page, and it is located in

All Files / www / htdocs / store

However, when I list all pages from within Shopsite, only some pages appear, and the index.html is not one of them. Also, if I delete all pages from within Shopsite, they still appear in the the above directory. This is very strange and highly confusing. Might I be overlooking something?

Thanks again.

[Jim]

If they appear in the output directory and not in your ShopSite back office then ShopSite does not know about those pages. Either they weren't created by ShopSite in the first place or if they were, the filename of the page was changed for the page in ShopSite and the old filename file didn't get deleted. Some versions of ShopSite did not delete a page if the file name was changed. This was fixed a couple of releases ago but it wouldn't fix any previous problems.

You mention that only some of the pages display in ShopSite, do you perhaps have the "Remember Search" checkbox on the Pages screen checked so it is only listing pages that match the search term?

[palex]

No, that box is not checked.

Also, if I delete all pages through
Utilities --> Database --> Empty
or
Pages --> (select all pages) --> Delete Pages

then the index.html page, which is in the same directory, is NOT deleted. This is good, but I also need it to appear so I can modify it though the means by which you both have suggested.

Any other thoughts?

Thanks so much!

[Jim]

You can't have it both ways, either ShopSite creates and can delete the page or it is created outside of ShopSite so it has to be deleted outside of ShopSite.

Are you planning on selecting all pages in ShopSite and deleting the all at once? If not then just create the page in ShopSite.
If you will frequently be deleting all your pages in ShopSite and want to keep a separate index.html at all times then you should make the page outside of ShopSite.

[palex]

Ok, I understand this setup. What I am noticing is that I do the following:

1) Make a change to index.html through Shopsite (Pages --> Edit Page Content)
2) Publish
3) My Store

My Store opens in a new tab *without* reflecting the change that was just made. Reloading the page does not work.

Any thoughts?

[Jim]

Is the url for the My Store under Preferences > Hosting Services the same as the url of the Index.html page you are looking at?

Try looking at it in a different browser, Firefox instead of IE or the opposite depending on what you normally use. The browser may be caching it and just a reload isn't reloading the page.

Are there any errors on the Publish screen? Maybe the page isn't actually being overwritten because of permissions problems.

[palex]

Yes, the URLs under Hosting Services and that in the URL field in the browser are identical.
Using two different browsers still shows the older version without changes (Safari and Google Chrome).
The changes are published without errors.

[Jim]

Do you happen to have 2 pages in your backoffice that both have the filename set to index.html? You might be changing one but the other one is getting published after the one you changed. If you have ShopSite Pro you can search for the filename of the page. If you have manager you could do it with Power Edit and just choose Page name and File name.

Another possibility (although probably not too likely) is that you have a "Custom Page" that has the name index.html that is being generated when the stores are published.

Another thing to check is on the Utilities > Publish page make sure the Generate Html is checked, otherwise no code is produced during the publish.

[Jim]

I still had your login that you sent in a PM so I went to the backoffice. There is no page that has the filename of index.html. What page are you changing in the backoffice? There is a page with the "Page Name" of index.html but it does not have a "File name" assigned to it, so it will be generated as pagex.html where the x is the record number of the page in the database. Since it it the 20th record in the database if you go to page20.html instead of index.html you should see your changes.

[palex]

Assigning the file name... that was the critical detail I was missing. Thanks so much for checking!