Design Launch Overview

What is Designer Launch?

Designer Launch is a set of authoring tools that make it possible for developers and designers with knowledge of coding html and css to launch custom sites. The benefits of Designer Launch include control over final design, timelines, and client relationships.

To use the Designer Launch tools one should have a strong background in authoring HTML and CSS. There is also an added benefit if you have experience with Javascript.

For any designer launch assistance, Vin65 will bill $100 per hour. If you are a first time user of the Designer Launch tools you may want to consider getting a support package.

How do I get started?

Before you get started you need:

  1. To have a site setup on Vin65. This can either be a live site or a site that that is brand new.
  2. You should then be given a developer account to the site by the site owner if that isn't you. A developer account gives you access to some unique tools in our admin panel that you need to update layouts.
  3. You will need to setup an FTP account from the admin panel so you can transfer template files up and down.

Site Directory Structure

Once you have your account set up you will have access to everything you need to launch a site. We highly recommend cutting and producing your graphics, html, and css before integrating your site with our platform. This allows you to solve all of your display issues before introducing the added complexity of the Vin65 data points.

To the right is what the default directory structure of your site will look like. Items in bold (2, 5, 6, 9, 10) fall into your responsibility:

  1. /admin - system use only
  2. /assets - keep your template images, css, js etc here
  3. /emailTracking - system use only
  4. /layouts - system use only, this where your parsed templates are kept
  5. /v65html - this is where your templates are stored
  6. apple-touch-icon.png - 114 x 114 pixel graphic
  7. Application.cfc - system use only
  8. circuit.xml.cfm - system use only
  9. error.htm - error page for system errors
  10. favicon.ico - 16 x 16 pixel graphic
  11. index.cfm - system use only
  12. robots.txt - system generated automatically

Note:
When calling assets into your templates use a relative path, 

do this: ../assets/images/logo.png

not this: 

http://mysite.com.uswest.vin65dev.com/assets/images/logo.png

Otherwise when your site goes live your images will break.

/v65html - template folder

The Designer Launch tools are built around layouts. Layouts are stored in the /v65html folder. You can download and upload them via ftp.

There are 12 different layouts on every given site and you can assign a template to each of them.

  1. Homepage
  2. Main - the default layout for most of the pages in your site.
  3. Cart - this layout should be wide in nature and not have a left or secondary nav, generally the same layout is used on the Club and Checkout as well.
  4. Checkout - this layout should be wide in nature and not recommended to have a left or secondary nav.
  5. Member - this layout must include a submenu for navigating between member tools.
  6. Club - this layout should be wide in nature and not recommended to have a left or secondary nav.
  7. Blog
  8. Product
  9. Product Drilldown - generally wide in nature
  10. Print - layout for product receipt at end of check out. 

Find out more about Email Templates and Mobile sites.

Often times you will use the same layout for the Checkout, Cart, and Club as show below. In addition you can create additional custom layouts if you want. In the case of the example below there is one custom layout called "Wide Page", but you may want different layouts for sub page other than the Main content page.

Once you have created your templates and uploaded them to the /v65html folder you will to need to parse them. To this you will go to Settings and then Designer Launch. If you don't see the Designer Launch option you may need update your login account to be a Developer account.