Need help on rebuilding a website

[VThayer (Vicki Thayer)]

I have a Rapid Weaver built website since 2012. I used it primarily as a blog posting photos and interesting topics/articles to me.

I live in the countryside and internet is not fast as in the city. In 2018 or 2019 on, my Rapid Weaver version would publish all my files, not just an update, so uploading would take hours, often stop and I’d have to force quit the application without publishing the site. This was discouraging and I stopped making entries in 2020.

This past June, the desktop computer I had RW and the resources (photos) crashed along with the backup drive and so the resources are scattered on other computers and drives. I enjoyed doing my site and would like to again. RW is wanting to relink resources and I think it will take doing adding back the resources one at a time into a post.

This will take time and effort. I don’t want to do so if it won’t work or I continue to have publishing problems.

Can one rebuild/relink their resources and website and suggestions how to do so? Can the publishing the site problem be improved and how? Can RW just publish new posts and not the whole number of files?

I do this on Macs, usually use Safari though can use Chrome or Firefox. I have the latest version now of RW.

[Fuellemann (Jan Fuellemann)]

Hi, in this case it might be easier to rebuilt your site then relinking all resources. Make sure you checked this optionin the Advanced settings:

So the resources are kept within the project file. For the photos, you can store them on your webserver, so the project file will not get too large. Then you use a gallery or image stack wich can display these photos on your webserver.

[Rovertek (Rob D)]

If I may, I would like to suggest using Poster2 stack for your blog. It is possible to use a template with the markup text files as your blog posts. Of course, to be able to use Poster2, you need to also use Stacks plugin.

Once you have such a template designed and published, you don’t even need to open Rapid Weaver for updating and/or editing your posts. You just upload markup files directly to your server. Hence, there is no pain associated with republishing your site, slow connections, etc.

The added benefit of using Poster2 stack is the fact that it is not just for blogs, but can serve as a multi-purpose layout stack.

[VThayer (Vicki Thayer)]

Thank you for your response. Since I will need to copy or relink the photo resources in the old posts, would it be best to use Poster 2 for this or use it for future posts?

[VThayer (Vicki Thayer)]

Thank you for your response and will look to do this.

[Rovertek (Rob D)]

Hi, Vicki,

I don’t know whether you’re familiar with the markdown, but even if you’re not, you can learn it in less than 1 hour.

Linking images is a bit more complicated in markdown than otherwise. Nothing too difficult, though.

I have one more (related) suggestion for you. It may turn out to be a big headache-saver in the long run. Do not put images in Resources. Instead, upload them to your server (it is called ‘warehousing’) and point to them over there. That way—again—you will avoid problems with updating your RW project and with slow connections.

So, once you have all your images on the server instead of the Resources, relink them all in your posts.

BTW, if you are not familiar with ‘warehousing’, here is a very useful guide:

rapidweaver-file-warehousing.pdf