Buttons become inactive after minor edits to page text

[mmayhle]

I am a brand new Snippetmaster Pro user-- our developer just finished our website a couple days ago and uploaded it to our host, and I had the host install SMPro for me.  I know essentially no HTML, but have made minor text edits on a couple pages from the site and now the buttons across the top of those pages (Home, Rooms, Tour etc) no longer highlight or provide links.  The affected pages are:

http://sbmansion.com/ (the home page)
http://sbmansion.com/seattle-reservations.htm

See this page to see how the buttons are supposed to function:

http://sbmansion.com/tour-the-inn.htm

I have the cleanup set to allow anything.

Does Snippetmaster make backups of pages it edits?  I haven't discovered them if so.  I do not have a backup until I get one from the developer (won't make that mistake again!!) but am trying to get this fixed as fast as I can and I don't know if they'll respond over the weekend.

Thanks,

Mark Mayhle

[admin]

At the moment, snippetmaster does not make backups.  This is a feature that will be added eventually.  You should always get a backup of your design from the developer..  and also regularily from your web hosting provider.  Your hosting control panel should have a "backup" button somewhere... if not, then find a better hosting provider. 

With regard to the button functionality.. Snippetmaster is designed to be an HTML editor, and not a javascript editor.

Whomever set up snippetmaster for you should have set it up to use the "Snippet Tag" functionality, so that only the main content portion of your website is editable.  (Instead of the "WHOLE FILE" method.)

This way, you could edit just the specific portions of the page that are needed, and it will not effect the menu or the header or footer, anything else.... only the main text area on each page.

I hope that makes sense.

I see that your web designer used Dreamweaver to create your website, so that should be very simple to add the Snippet Tags to the design.  Your web designer should be able to do this in about 2 minutes for you.

If you prefer (ie: If your designer will charge a lot to do this), then let me know and perhaps I can help you out.

Cheers!

[mmayhle]

There are 3 parties involved-- me, my developer, and my hosting company.  My developer is a fan of SMPro (they include it with the hosting accounts they resell) so I got my hosting company to install it on my account.  For whatever reason, the developer likes to make the entire code available to edit by SMPro, even though that obviously turns out not to be such a good idea.  I take it it's not possible for SMPro just to leave javascript etc alone?  Is it obvious to you what happened to render the buttons nonfunctional?

Thanks,

Mark Mayhle

[admin]

Hi Mark,

Yes, the problem is that SnippetMaster is not a javascript editor, and when you try to edit a "whole file" that includes javascript (or PHP code, etc..) then it can cause problems.

The solution is to use "Snippet Tags" to specifically mark portions of your web pages that should be editable.

I've looked at one of your pages, and this should not be difficult at all.  Perhaps about 1 minute per page. 

Let me know when you have everything restored to working order, and I can add the snippet tags for you on your pages. 

Once that's done, then you'll be able to edit your page content without any problems.

[mmayhle]

Thanks Henri.  The developer has things working again so let me know what you need to add the snippet tags-- ftp access, Snippetmaster login or whatever.  I really appreciate it!  Will this leave me able to edit text only, or also to replace photos?

Thanks again,

Mark Mayhle

[mmayhle]

One other thing-- my site developer tells me I wouldn't have had a problem, even doing whole-page editing, if I had used Firefox instead of IE.  Is this correct?

Mark Mayhle

[admin]

One other thing-- my site developer tells me I wouldn't have had a problem, even doing whole-page editing, if I had used Firefox instead of IE.  Is this correct?

Mark Mayhle

Not really -- you would have less problems, for sure (since firefox works better then IE), but you could probably still end up with problems.  The issue is that the editor is just not designed for javascript, and so there's no guarantee it will work properly when editing javascript, regardless of what browser you use. 

OK.. I'm happy to add the Snippet Tags for you.  Can you send me an email to henri @ www.snippetmaster.com with your FTP un/pw and a link to this thread (so I know what the email is about), and I'll take care of this asap? 

Cheers!