Today I’m pleased to announce that there’s more news on that front: a first beta of FAQMaker. There are no significant changes, just small tweaks and improvements for upcoming RapidWeaver changes, etc.
I know other plugins were quite a bit more popular, but FAQMaker was a nice simple plugin to help us get acquainted to the new plugin code before we take the plunge into the deep end and tackle PlusKit and RapidBlog.
To get things rolling, we’ve posted a beta test and some info to this github page.
FAQMaker isn’t yet available for sale again. We’re still working on getting the registration system moved over to the YourHead store. But that should come very soon.
Dear @isaiah,
having issues with LockDown right now (where Lockdown does not only protect the page where it is installed and the subpages but all subsequent pages. Wanted to try the 3 beta but RW would not want to install with an error message. Any idea?
Thanks
We’ve posted an update to FAQMaker. It’s beta 2 and includes a few minor UI improvements and a new registration system. It should auto-update when your use it. You can also download it directly here:
Another new version of PlusKit is available. Fixed a crasher and brought FindPlus back to the living in RW7. I’ve also fixed a lot of tiny little things behind the scenes, mostly memory leaks and threading violations. I think PlusKit should already be working a better in RapidWeaver 7 than it ever was in RapidWeaver 6. Yeah! I think, unless there is a showstopper found, we’ll release this as PlusKit version 3.0 in a day or two.
@isaiah I was not able to publish my RW project file when I added the faqmaker beta. I do have a license and it was recognized just fine. I noticed everything (both RW and other apps) ran really slowly when working with FAQmaker. As in really-really-slow. Even typing this I see about 2 letters appear every 5 seconds. And, in the end, the RW project could never fully publish and it would be non-response. So I’d have to force quit. Removing FAQmaker for now.
I doubt anything in this description helps you to locate the bug. Sorry about that. But I’m glad to offer more description is there’s a good way to do it. I can add items in FAQmaker easily enough.
What version of Mac OS X, RapidWeaver, and FAQMaker are you using?
Does this happen even in a brand new file?
Even before you add a FAQMaker page?
If it only happens with a specific file, please send that file to support@yourhead.com and reference this forum post. Thx.
A few things that might help you:
Make sure that you only have a single copy of FAQMaker installed. (have a look through your Addons folder for anything odd/weird/named-wrong) I’ve noticed that some people have older copies of this plugin installed by various names: FaqMaker and Faqmaker – and RapidWeaver may try to load more than one of these plugins causing many problems.
Try on a brand new project just to see if this is something that’s associated with a single project.
Check the Console.app (in /Applications/Utilities) and see if RapidWeaver produces any errors while this problem is happening. If so, let me know what those errors are.
@isaiah I tried again this morning and all went fine. Who knows: maybe it’s how Jupiter was aligned with Mars.
I also tried FAQMaker on another project file and all crashed a couple of times. But, to be very fair, I added the plugin page then tried to tweak things (beyond adding items). If I remember correctly I’ve pretty much always had problems with plugins like FAQMaker if I did not save the project file right away after adding. (The one key exception for me seems to be Stacks.) Simple enough to do going forwards.
I know your priority is stability and registration and RW7 compatibility. I’m hoping sometime after all those issues are sorted that FAQMaker can become Markdown savvy: especially for the Long Question fields. Any possibility down the line? (i.e. in the next 3 to 9 months)
FAQMaker is Markdown savvy if you have a PlusKit page on the site… as the content areas of FAQMaker are styled content areas, they will accept the PlusKit “<markdown> & </markdown>” tags and Markdown content in between, already tested and verified.
@isaiah I don’t think more support is needed at this time. I just need to remember to save a project file right away after adding a plugin page. I remember having problems with this before (except for Stacks) so it really may have something to do with RW. I don’t know how to replicate this particular issue because once I’ve save the project file the issue does not appear again. All fair enough.
@mathew - this report: behavior is slow and/or crashing after adding a FAQMaker page until it is save – is very odd. i definitely have not heard of this or similar from others. my guess is that FAQMaker or installing any plugin – is just a catalyst to the real problem – which is likely something else either with the file in question or with your RW setup as a whole.
my recommendation would be to see if you could isolate the problem: perhaps try removing all plugins and see if the problem still occurs. then add FAQMaker. then see again. and then each additional.
my strongest advice: if something is behaving badly do not simply ignore it or work around it. it will likely only get worse until the problem becomes serious or causes loss of data. best to nip these things in the bud.
@isaiah Thanks for the tips. Unfortunately web design stuff is less than 5% of what I do, and the other 95% is screaming for about 200% of my time right now. Doing a more thorough check will have to wait. However, there have been oddities about RW that have been around for years, and reported by several people on the forums (these are not FAQMaker specific issues) that include:
not fully, or consistently, publishing
generally hanging up/crashing
And, over the years, there seem to be two conditions that fairly reliably cause these kind of behaviors:
not saving one’s work consistently (there have been several who have noted the need to save more often than with other apps, and my experience is the same). By consistent I mean every 10 minutes at the outside. I probably save every 5 minutes.
asking RW to publish then going to visit another app. It seems RW is a jealous mistress and really does not enjoy people leaving it while involved in the publishing process. Most other apps are fine under this condition. This means it’s not surprising if I don’t return (from email, web surfing, etc.) before it starts actually publishing then it hangs.
I’ve reported these situations so much over the years. I simply don’t send them in any more. Why fight city hall on this one? So I don’t think my experience, upon reflection, with FAQMaker initially was all that surprising given that I probably did not save right away, and I probably was looking at email while I asked RW to publish.
Don’t believe me? Just use “transmit” as a search term and you’ll find several folks have switched to Transmit or Yummy or other app to publish reliably because of the unreliable publishing behavior of RW (sometimes fine, sometimes not so much). I think RW has gotten better on both these fronts over the years, but are still weak spots.
@Mathew
I appreciate you are having difficulties, but sadly, like most casuall users of Rapidweaver things are going wrong for you. There were problems with each major RW upgrade over the years, but they were quickly sorted by Realmac and reports of publishing problems these days seem to be host related. Now I’m not saying that Publishing is always perfect except when users lack of knowledge gets in the way. The most typical problem is trying to upload Pictures that are 5 Mb and have not been optimised for the Web. The last site I looked at a user was attempting to publish over 2,000 pictures, each at the highest resolution possible. Bugs, per se, are very rare with RW and its eco-system, although there may be some design limitations. I can’t recall the last time somebody got FAQMaker wrong - its pretty simple code really. You should wherever possible supply the project file i.e .rw6, because its pretty easy then to find the problems.
Its a sad fact, that 99% of the problems reported with a stable version of RW (as Version 6 is now), are usually user created.
@matthew - :hug: sorry that it’s been rough for you. it doesn’t sound like those have much to do with the recent release of FAQMaker. so i’ll just stop there.
if you do need help from us about our products, sent Christi an email at support@yourhead.com. she’s happy to help.
