Not sure this seems reasonable when going to a cms homepage. It seems to me that Elements should work this out by itself and remove (?) the unnecessary .html file?
Dan talked about that the other day. Elements is not going to remove files from your server (for now).
I personally don’t see a problem with deleting the not needed index.html manually.
There is no real problem logging into my site with ssh and removing the file. But it seems such a crude solution to an otherwise elegant tool and user experience?
unused files sitting on your server dont bother anything…. as they are not referenced by the menu structure of your most recent upload/publish.
If the files bother you, then just to wipe your server occasionally and then republish - total time just a few minutes for most sites of a few dozen pages.
The solution is actually very simple.
If you have both an index.html and an index.php file on your server, you just need to set the priority using an .htaccess directive to decide which one is loaded first.
In your case, it would look like this:
# Prioritize index.php before index.html
DirectoryIndex index.php index.html
This ensures that the server will load index.php instead of index.html if both files exist in the same folder.
Principally, I think Realmac’s decision not to delete files is absolutely right and understandable. Just imagine the support nightmare they’d have if users were constantly “accidentally” deleting something—no team could keep up with that!
That’s just one of several reasons why it makes complete sense and why things work the way they do now.
I agree. Your .htaccess solution is a very good one and should be there anyway. But that takes the average non-technical user out of a very nice user experience and into a more “techie” one, requiring other tools and competencies. Some non-tech users may even view that as an unnecessary speed bump on the overall user experience of Elements.
But from a principle perspective: By using Elements, I grant Elements permission to both establish files, and deleted unused ones, when I remove a file from my hierarchy of files. I do not see the problem of Elements removing unnecessary files that I have stated by my actions I don’t want any more.
Best,
Kjell Are
Please don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re contradicting yourself a bit here.
By choosing to use the current Elements Beta-CMS, you’re deciding to move from being a non-technical user to a more “technical” one.
In the relevant videos, Ben repeatedly mentions that using the CMS requires PHP. That’s always been necessary—just as it was with RW Classic when using Alloy or other CMS systems.
But here’s the real issue:
Elements technically has permission to delete files that are no longer needed, but… they doesn’t do it!
And there’s a pretty simple reason for that. If Realmac did automatically delete files, they’d have to make absolutely sure not to remove anything your website still needs to run. The problem is, Realmac can’t reliably know if you (or some third-party plugin or integration) still need that file or not. It’s totally possible that a “leftover” file might be required by another system or plugin.
And honestly, the amount of user complaints and support headaches that would cause… let’s just say, no one wants that.
So, if you want to delete files, it’s YOUR responsibility to do so—using an additional tool (which, honestly, anyone building websites should have handy anyway).
I can see that my comments may appear contradicting. I have personally fully accepted that I am running a beta software, and have no problem logging into my site using ssh and manipulating the files on my site manually.
What I am saying is that there may be people in the future that finds it incongruent that 90% of the web dev process using Elements happens in this super user friendly environment, an that for some reason, the remaining 10% needs to take place with other and more “techie” tools.
An example of this is what we discussed last week when it comes to the CMS function: You need to remember to rename your index from .html to .php in order to get CMS to work. I expect the tool to do these housekeeping tasks for me, or at least - notify me that they need to be done manually. Neither happens today.
For me on a principle, trusting Elements to create a file, is no different from telling it to delete an unused one if I delete a page in the client. I fully respect others to have other opinions on this matter.
I have an expectation that my website is reflecting what is in the editor, and as soon as that does not happen and a manual cleanup is needed form time to time, I believe that Elements could be facing some pushback from some users.
The creation of a website from scratch will be creating, moving and deleting stuff before the site finds it final form. If all the cruft left from that process is left on the server in the fear of deleting something important, I think at a minimum it is Elements obligation to tell me about that and how to go about fixing it. This may be far into the future, but one way of solving this, may be with a version control system that will let me roll back to a previous version and files.
Sorry … but you’re contradicting yourself again … first you accept it … then, just a few sentences later, you expect something different …
Once again: it’s a BETA! – I’m out …
And I think before this “feature” gets added, there will be many others that are much more useful for building websites.
I don’t think there’s anything which needs to be ‘fixed’. If Elements uploaded the file it will also have the capacity to remove it. If not, how are RealSoftware supposed to know if it’s surplus or was placed there intentionally for some sort of testing (or other) purpose.
It’s not hurting anything, it appears to just be a dialog explaining the situation, so you can choose to clean it up or leave it.