Hi folks… i am brandnew here and directly coming with an issue.Probably simple for you guys. Upfront: Running the latest RW version on a Mac with High Sierra. All Stacks updated. Now the issue: To promote my band, i created a website with content, which should run on a USB Stick (no online connection). The site is small using Nick´s Reason Theme and contains 2 media players (audio and video) playing content stored under resources.Plus a page showing some pictures using Nicks Photo Stack. Now … on RW and in Preview Mode all works fine. If i store the site on a stick (or any local drive) by export or publish, the players don´t work and the pictures don´t zoom. Plus on click on the Home button in the Navigation, the browser exits the page. It sounds like a problem with the links to content. May be. I tried all link options in RW … but it gets worse … the DOCROOT and WEBSITE option does not even displays the theme correctly… it looks crappy. With Relative to Page at least the theme works.
I am running out of idea. A cry for help…
// Tom
It is likely that some of the items in your site are relying on some external libraries – and they’re loading them from the 'net (or trying) rather than just loading them from the site’s resources.
This could be almost any of the stacks or themes you’re using.
You can tell Stacks to never use online content by disabling the CDNs (Content Delivery Networks):
- Show the Info Sidebar inside Stacks
- At the bottom click the “Prefs” button to bring up the Stack Preferences.
- Choose the HTML tab.
- Make sure all of the checkboxes in the CDNs section are UNchecked.
This will ensure that these four libraries are stored inside your site (if they are needed) instead of loading them from the 'net. This is the default for Stacks – but hasn’t always been. So it’s good to check.
But… that’s only half way. There’s still more work to do…
Even if all those checkboxes are unchecked some stacks may still load other libraries from the 'net. And your theme is going to do it’s own thing – many themes load things like jQuery from the Google CDN. (however this is changing a lot now due to changing laws in the EU
NOTE TO OTHER FORUM FOLKS: PLEASE PLEASE DO NOT TURN THIS INTO ANOTHER GDPR THREAD, THX
To find out which thing is causing the problem, I’d make a new page (even in a new dummy site) and add your theme, then ONE AT A TIME add your stacks. Unplug your ethernet and disable your wifi and see what works and what breaks.
If you come to some essential item that is breaking without a network connection try contacting the developer of that stack/theme. They may already be working on a version that works off the net.
Oh, and one last thing: just leave the URLs on relative. It shouldn’t make a different from the USB stick – but it will probably make the URLs a lot more sane – and break fewer delicate stacks/themes.
Isaiah
Hi Isaiah, thanks for the swift response. I checked all of the player stacks and already all CDN items are unselected. This btw also would not explain why the nav link to the home button does not work at all. The site is currently 250 Mb. Would you like me to send the RW file as attachment or WeTransfer Link ??
cheers
TOm
Here is the link to RW File.
So, here is what I did and what I found.
- I downloaded this file.
- I installed about 1000 stacks from all over hoping that happened to have the same ones that you were using. Good news! I have them all!
- I opened your file.
- Bad news – I don’t have your theme. So I will not see exactly what you do.
- The file opened just fine. I can see all your resources and your pages look great.
- I Previewed your pages and they generated as expected. The mp3 audio player and the video player worked fine.
- I Published to a folder
- I opened the index.html in a browser (I tried both Safari and Chrome with no obvious differences).
- I used the developer inspector to view each page and look at all network connections.
- Good news! Every single thing was loaded from the local machine – so there are no extra URLs.
- I tried all the media and all the pages and clicked on as many links as I could find. Some links from one page to another did not work as expected. (see below how to fix)
- I disabled my network and opened the files in a browser that had never seen opened them before – to ensure there was nothing cached.
- All worked great. The images are visible and the media played as expected. I could find no discernible difference with network on vs. network off.
- Also: The site really looks great. Nice work!
OK, how to fix those broken internal links. The default way to link to the homepage will look something like:
file:///folder/where/files/are/
but what you really want is something like:
file:///folder/where/files/are/index.html
To get links like that:
- Click on
Settingsin the left sidebar to show the settings section. - Click on
Generalto go to the main settings. - Scroll all the way to the bottom and and look at the very last thing – there should be a couple buttons down there, one is labeled
Advanced. Click it. - UN-check the option:
Tidy Website Links - Now click on the dropdown arrow next to the Publish button and choose
Re-Publish All Files– this will ensure that every linked thing in the site gets the new-style un-tidied links.
OK… so with that change, the entire site is viewable and looks great, works great, and I can click on all the links and get what I think are the expected behaviors. That only leaves one remaining thing: The theme. I couldn’t check it because I don’t have it.
Hi Isaiah, many thanks for your time and effort. Great stuff. I made some changes and deactivating the “tiny links” made a real difference. Now … the “Home Button” works, the Audio player works, the theme is correctly displayed etc. Good progress.
But there are still a couple of - lets say - incompatibilities.
e.g.
- video player works with Chrome, but not with IE 11
- behavior / look and feel of the picture libraries (Pics and Poster) very different depending on browser.
Is this an RW coding setting thing or a theme probleme ? Or generally something which cannot be solved ?
cheers
Tom
I’m afraid those are specific to the stacks that you’re using. I don’t think anyone will be able to fix those things except the developers that created those stacks.
But I can offer a couple general comments…
not with IE 11
IE breaks things. This is the rule, not the exception. It has also not been the default browser since 2015 and usage has fallen well below my own 5% cutoff rule (2.8% currently). At usage that low and IE’s longstanding challenges with compatibility most IE users will be very very comfortable with things failing. 
very different depending on browser
Browsers are different. That is a good thing. 
Keep in mind that there are many different sorts of devices that people use as their primary web browsing: phones, tablets, laptops, desktops, etc., many different browsers, and many different locales. Your website will look vastly different in each one. And it should!
The web works best when our websites bend and adapt to the devices and needs of the user.
That said, I suspect you could have used “look and feel very different” as a nice way of saying “looks broken”. If that is the case, then let the developer of that stack know. It may be that the developer is unaware of that incompatibility. And include a screenshot and as much details as possible so the developer can see exactly what you’re seeing and understand the problem quickly.
Isaiah
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