I created my first page and it took quite some time and effort. I published it to a folder, and then took the page, images folder, and commons folder, to their final resting place as part of my software’s online help system.
I then threw away the folder on my desktop which is where I published to, for I had harvested, so I thought, the goods out of there… I had put them elsewhere…
Today I checked my online help system only to find that page’s pictures were missing. I looked in my online help folder and they weren’t in the images folder. They were gone. I turned red as I realized I had emptied the trash. My god I have to retake the images, and remake the page, which wasn’t easy.
I am seldom upset. Now I am upset. I don’t blame anyone, for I don’t get what happened still. I moved the folders. They should not be connected to the original publishing folder. I don’t get what happened, but I am SURE going to save the one I have to re create. All went well, until this happened.
I just had to come write this here, maybe someone will tell me what happened, what assumption I made that was wrong. I assume that html files that are published and in a folder with their supporting folders are now free to go somewhere… either uploaded to a site, or moved as I did. I didn’t, don’t, think that are connected to a particular folder. I don’t think they are connected to a project stored in the program as … whatever. I think they are free to move. If that’s not true please tell me.
I’m not sure what could have happened. Nothing you did should have caused you to lose the original photos or the RW file.
The most important file for a RW website is the “project” file. This is the file that has all the layout and other settings for your website. You can’t make changes to your website without this file. Depending on the settings, it will usually also contain any images used in the website.
Publishing takes all the settings and layouts in the project file and generates the HTML, CSS and image files needed for your website to be servered by a web server. You can either publish directly to a website or to a local folder and then copy/move the generated files to your web server.
It sounds like you did the second option, publish to a folder. Those files are easily recreated from your project file, by re-publishing. Did you publish to a new, empty folder? If so, nothing in that folder should matter. It can be re-created.
Do you still have the project file on your computer? It will have an “.rw8” extension. You can search for it with spotlight.
Do you run any type of backup? If not, you really should. If you were running Time Machine, any of these missing files (RW8 project file, original images, etc.) would be trivial to restore. If you do not have one, learn form this and be grateful that you only lost the images and the website layout. You could have had your computer stolen or a hard drive die and lost everything on it. You likely have a lot of things on it which you could never recreate.
Thank you Don, I appreciate it. Everything makes sense except how the files disappeared, but no matter, I recreated the page swifter than the first time through. I do run Time Machine but I don’t keep it connected, so these weren’t backed up. I connect it every couple days. I work off my desktop and have iCloud for that, but it doesn’t help if you throw things away and empty the trash. My bad. Good lesson though. Now I only wish I knew RW better because basics are a struggle though I’ve watched many videos. Need to watch and really pay attention to what is clicked. I’m SO glad RW exists, it’s amazing the support it has from 3rd party developers. That’s what sold me. If that’s there, then it’s a respected program. I’m about to begin a long journey of remaking my website for Mobile First in RW, with Foundry, Stacks, and others… Thanks. DasGoravani
It sounds like you have Stacks… if so make sure you understand Partials and Site images vs “regular” images. Those things can save you tons of time and make your site much easier to maintain.
Same thing about images. There are different methods. You can use them locally in your project, you can upload them to your web server and refer to them there, and there are some other options. (search the forums for “image warehousing”
It’s important to understand these things before you get lots of pages made.
Force yourself to read this forum every day… not just when your need help. I’ve learned many very important things just from reading here…
Make sure you always have good backups of your project files and Addons folder… I keep a daily rotation in a Dropbox folder for 7 days on an external pocket drive in addition to my Time Machine backups. Also, when you obtain addons (stacks, plugins, etc) be sure to record that along and their registration info all in one convenient place.
I do have Stacks, and Foundry, and some other more minor stacks that these folks sell. I do not yet know about Site images vs regular, will pay attention to that, will try to find out about them. Feel free to tell. Image warehousing, ditto, not known, want to know. “Before lots of pages made”, ok, warned. I like reading forums, will read every day. Backups, will do. I do record serial numbers of add ons. Partials I get, used to use Adobe and they had similar. (GoLive that is). I’m a programmer, understand things a bit easier therefore. “Enjoy making websites with Rapidweaver”, well not until I get these things.
And one thing I feel privy to ask now as I’ve tried and tried: How do you get a blank page to start with. All I can get now is Theme heavy pages, they are forced on you, that’s how pages start out, and can’t get rid of the margins, images, constrained space, easily… uncheck “Use master” and it’s margins stay anyway, border color stays it seems… can’t get to blank page. In videos on Foundry and Stacks I see they have blank pages somehow. How do you do that?
Wanna re make my website which is currently still iWeb on Mojave, not upgrading to Catalina just because of iWeb. Time to make my website over again in RW with Foundry and Stacks. Gonna watch videos to learn as I have started watching many already but it’s not sinking in darn it. Do get some things now from them. Blank page is elusive. Haven’t seen “RapidWeaver without Stacks” videos, only with… so I got. Watching Foundry videos make sense, very object oriented, I like it. Things like “Animagic” are nice, have that. Seems like all cool things come as stacks. Interesting the competition between Foundry and Foundations. I get confused and watch wrong videos…I have Foundry not Foundations.
I plan on really learning and spending a long time into the future making my website good and cool. I only have time on my hands, a powerful MacBookPro and all the software mentioned. Plan on delving in. -DasGoravani, “Shaky now, but Persistent"
Any pages you use Foundry stacks on need to use the Foundry theme. A lot of the code used by it’s stacks are contained in it’s theme.
I would click on the themes button in the toolbar, find the Foundry theme, right-click on it and Make Default. Any new pages will then use the Foundry theme.
I filtered to Elixir themes to make it easier to find for the screenshot below.
