As I was updating an image in a “Left Floating Image” by Yourhead my image vanished as did all the images throughout my site. (Probably 10,000 images). I rebooted Rapidweaver 8.1.7 and this file would not open, presenting this message advising that the document could not be opened due to the fact the " . . . /Pages/Contents.plist file does not exist."
I restored previous versions from Time Machine with the same result.
My other websites are not experiencing this issue.
Has anyone encountered this issue before?
I don’t know if this is a cure…but this has happened to me…I closed Rw and cleared memory…and restarted RW…everything came back…maybe RW just ran out of ram?
First things first: if you have 10,000 images in your file, I’d strongly encourage you, whenever this current problem is resolved, to break this site into several pieces – or to warehouse these images. Storing that much data in a single monolithic file make RapidWeaver and Stacks very slow and prone to problems. You can find more details on both breaking up your file and warehousing by searching this forum – there is much more info available in a search than I can hope to type here. 
OK, about that file…
It sounds (almost!) like the file is corrupt – and normally I would recommend resurrecting a previously saved version from Time Machine.
However, I am not aware of anything that would cause older copies of file to be reach back into your time machine backup and also corrupt those things as well – it doesn’t seem very likely – and definitely bordering on the impossible.
If those files also seem corrupt, then I suspect it’s NOT really corruption or the file – but something else in your environment that is causing problems. Here is a quick list of things to try, the results of which can help guide our next steps:
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If you are using a “cleaning” utility (like Clean My Mac etc.) discontinue using it immediately – that is the source of the problem and it will continue to destroy your files as long as you use the utility.
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Reinstall both RapidWeaver and Stacks.
If no change comes from that… -
Try opening your file on a different user account. Create a brand new user on your machine and open a resurrected Time Machine copy from at least a week ago. Does it still have issues? This is obviously not a permanent solution, but should help us isolate the issue.
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Try opening your file on a different machine. If you can copy your file to a thumb drive and take it to a friends house and give it a try on that machine. Not as a permanent solution obviously – but just as a way to check to see if the problem isolated to your machine – or comes with you to another machine too.
Report back what you find from the experiments and we can go from there. If you’d like to contact me directly via support@yourhead.com please do. 
Isaiah
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Try everything else first…
Then if all fails.
Don’t just restore the previous version, restore the entire Hard Drive to restore the missing .plist file in your case from a time you are confident it was working.
Extreme yes but that should restore EVERYTHING. And hopefully it works.
Now that can cause a slight disruption but then you must decide on the seriousness of the situation and with some planning can even backup your current data should you wish to return to it.
I’ve only restored entire hard drives when there was a serious problem!
Losing or having a missing file could be a sign of a larger problem of course ;-(
Your hard drive isn’t too full, is it? I think 10% is the recommended free space.
Thank you Joe and Isaiah for your prompt comments. Of note is the fact I received a low memory warning while working on the file some time prior to the incident. I freed up memory but likely too late. I also use CleanmyMac app so I will follow up with your suggestions and report on my results. Also I searched my drives for the reported missing file and could not locate it ( ". . . /Pages/Contents.plist ) but did locate it on my site server. The file is 3.3 GB in size.
Glenn
the problem is definitely CleanMyMac. you cannot use that app with Stacks. it deletes the stacks cache files while stacks is running — which causes catastrophic corruption.
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Interesting (to me) as I am troubleshooting, I found the “missing” file on my computer by right-clicking the site-file in my directory and choosing the “Show Contents” option and through a series of sub-directories I found the missing file and all the images are there.
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if you send me a copy of a file that behaves this way i may be able to tell you a bit more detail about what is specifically wrong with the file.
If you open the folder where the missing .plist file was (preferences?) and then “Enter Time Machine”, you should be able to find the old .plist and restore. A simple Spotlight Search doesn’t always reveal those type of files 
All great suggestions, appreciate your time. I have recovered my site by downloading the file from my site server and re-installing Rapidweaver 8.1.7 as suggested and it is behaving fine at the moment. I am not going to modify the content until I break up the file into segments and carry on from there. If anymore issues arise that may be of interest I will pass it along. Thanks, again.
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Isaiah,
Are you advising that we all stop using CleanMyMac?
Any chance that you could contact them with advice.
Michael.
I’m pretty sure he’s said that on multiple posts. CleanMyMac (and utility’s like it) delete temporary cache files that the Stacks Plugin is still using.
I would suggest you stop using products like this. If you think you need to keep using this style of app, make sure you have a great backup strategy, and I would suggest that nothing including RapidWeaver is open while using it.
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CleanMyMac is scamware. It causes more problems than it solves.
I still see too many people come begging to me for help with restoring RapidWeaver built websites, which have been totally nuked and annihilated by these sorts of dodgy cleaning tools.
Modern Mac’s are more than capable of keeping themselves cleaned and operating in an optimised state. If Mac operating systems needed this amount of cleaning, then I suspect Apple would have given us their own tools before now…
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I second the suggestion to steer clear of CleanMy Mac. Having previously had it , it turned out to be the root cause for problems in a number of programmes. Not just Rapidweaver, it completely screwed with syncing on Dropbox as well.
Don’t use it!
Dave
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