A Couple of Questions

[ricinport (Ric)]

Hi

We are about to shut our business for the annual 2 weeks holiday.

I was thinking of playing around with the Elements demo during our break (exciting life eh?) and finally make a decision on where we go from RW8.

A coupe of quick questions.

• I’ve just opened the Baguettes project. Clicking on the image element of Artisanal Bread how would I change that to a ‘warehoused’ image. It’s not immediately obvious.

Should we consider Elements as our next website builder we would need 3 potential users to be able to work on the file using 3 different Macs. Is this possible and what version would that be price wise?

Thanks

Rick

[dan]

@ricinport

I was thinking of playing around with the Elements demo during our break (exciting life eh?) and finally make a decision on where we go from RW8.

That’s great to hear, and sounds like a nice break to me, haha!

@ricinport

I’ve just opened the Baguettes project. Clicking on the image element of Artisanal Bread how would I change that to a ‘warehoused’ image. It’s not immediately obvious.

Right-click on the “Resources” name and choose “Add Remote Resource”.

@ricinport

Should we consider Elements as our next website builder we would need 3 potential users to be able to work on the file using 3 different Macs. Is this possible and what version would that be price wise?

You can install Elements on up to three separate machines using the same license. Ideally, each person in your business would have their own license, as Elements is sold on a per-user basis. That said, we don’t have a way to strictly enforce this. Just keep it sensible and fair.

Hope that helps

[WOS (robert)]

[ricinport (Ric)]

Thanks for the speedy and very well displayed answers.

A couple more questions if I may.

Where is the main project file stored by default? I see the pricing includes cloud storage, is this just as back up or designed to hold the project file? Can Elements be used ‘off-line’?

My experience of using RW and storing a large project file remotely was poor. Years back I tried using DropBox for a while so I could update the project file at home on a laptop and at work on an iMac. Our sites’ project file is quite big and over 1 GB (even with all images ‘warehoused) this became a problem syncing changes to Dropbox so I gave up and resorted to a Macbook that I carried home daily.

Is it intended that a project file could be stored and accessed to work on via the cloud storage alone?

We are in the process of making a client consultation area with a large screen where we show them their furniture project design and proposal.

Likely I’ll get a new Mac mini as a main machine dedicated to this area and I’d stick Elements on that machine. If I can teach two of the staff how to use Elements the three of us could use that one machine to update the site. One of us would make major changes and the other two just make incremental changes like changing prices, adding promotions etc. This would guarantee that corruption couldn’t occur with two people working on the file at the same time.

So the scenario would be a single user licence on one Mac but maybe with a couple of people able to access that Mac and make changes.

In case it’s of interest this is the site I intend to port to Elements https://casaejardim.pt

Rick

[dan]

@ricinport

Where is the main project file stored by default? I see the pricing includes cloud storage, is this just as back up or designed to hold the project file? Can Elements be used ‘off-line’?

Projects are stored locally. The free cloud storage is for sharing and backup.

Elements can be used offline

@ricinport

Our sites’ project file is quite big and over 1 GB (even with all images ‘warehoused) this became a problem syncing changes to Dropbox so I gave up and resorted to a Macbook that I carried home daily.

Is it intended that a project file could be stored and accessed to work on via the cloud storage alone?

If you need to edit a project on multiple machines, I’d recommend using iCloud.

@ricinport

If I can teach two of the staff how to use Elements the three of us could use that one machine to update the site. One of us would make major changes and the other two just make incremental changes like changing prices, adding promotions etc. This would guarantee that corruption couldn’t occur with two people working on the file at the same time.

So the scenario would be a single user licence on one Mac but maybe with a couple of people able to access that Mac and make changes.

Sounds like a solid plan, and yes a single license would be fine for this!

@ricinport

In case it’s of interest this is the site I intend to port to Elements https://casaejardim.pt

Wow, that’s a big site. Nice work!

I think our (in-development) Markdown CMS could be helpful on this type of site, but one step at a time, first you need to get up and running with Elements

We’re here to help whenever you need it!

[ricinport (Ric)]

Thanks Dan for the comprehensive answers.

Sorry but I’ve still a couple of queries. I’ve have checked out your YouTube videos which are very helpful indeed, well produced and informative, almost entertainment to watch.

I am about to click the purchase button on this but there’s just one doubt I still have over our businesses requirement for a large site and in particular the so called warehousing of images.

As mentioned our site is fairly hefty in RW/Stacks at just over 1GB. Presumably that’s bloated somewhat by the way I built it using stacks. So likely its size would come down if reproduced in Elements. In the actual project there are are only a dozen or so images taking space.

I’ve always used remote images. It has many advantages not least that I can just replace an image on the server (keeping the exact same file name) and it changes on the site without even opening RW. But most importantly whilst each image is very well optimised it’s a large image bank at over 1.5GB, and most are in day to day use on the site so it works well keeping it separate to the project file.

Most of the more recent Stacks image stacks from all the major developers allowed the simple use of warehoused images by simply adding the url in the stack image settings.

Now to Elements:

In my trial Elements site I’ve added some images to a page using; Resources - Add Remote Resource - Enter Remote Resource Name….

This adds a small thumb nail with its base file name listed under Resources. Great.

I assumed this was the resources for the particular page I was working on, but I can see that changing between the three pages (trial limitation) the list remains the same. So this Resource list is site wide.

Our site remote images folder has over 20k images. As I build the site and add remote images am I going to end up with thousands listed under Remote ?

I can see that there is the possibility of trying to do some organisation by folder so maybe with some imaginative ‘filing’, plus some housekeeping (which is probably overdue) I can get it just manageable but it still raises the question - Is Elements suitable for very large sites with myriad resources?

I was always surprised with RW that it could finally handle such a large site. In the early days users would even talk about splitting sites! Back around RW5 it started to take an age to load (literally minutes), and I thought I was pushing my luck but things improved on RW6 (64 bits maybe) and by RW8 (which I’m currently using even though I own Classic) it opens in seconds.

Is there a ‘top end’ at which Elements will struggle?

Thanks

Rick

[dan]

@ricinport

Is there a ‘top end’ at which Elements will struggle?

We’ve not found it yet, but I’m confident we’ll be able to ensure Elements works for your site, if you hit any snags with image handling along the way we’ll be sure to get them fixed up

I do wonder if the new CMS we’re building could also help with image management…