Rapidweaver 5 site staying alive!

Website originally created with RW5 on a 2011 Mac. I now have upgraded to a 2019 Mac and RW 8. Can’t transfer my RW5 site into RW8 so downloaded the final RW5 version (as advised) and that does almost work on the new Mac but seems unstable. The website is, I suppose, quite large at 1.94 GB. It consists of 120 pages, typically each of 20,000 words and 40 images. No stacks.

At the moment. when I put on a new page using RW5 on the new Mac, I’m being told that the document can’t be saved. Sometimes it seems to save, but then when I try and publish the changes, at that stage it says that the document has unsaved changes and that they can’t be saved. Once today I did get through to the publishing, but when I checked on the browser the changes had not actually gone through.

Hate to think that I have to go back to my 2011 computer in order to update this website with the work I’m currently doing. (What a short-term solution that would be!) Can anyone suggest what might help?

Thanks.
Duncan

That’s the nature of all software - you need to keep things reasonably up to date because they WILL become obsolete at some stage.

One solution would be to get a copy RW6 on your 2011 computer and upgrade your project from 5 to 6. You can then open it in RW8. There may still be issues depending on what old Plugins you may be using.

You can download older versions here: https://www.realmacsoftware.com/rapidweaver/releasenotes/

Thanks. I will get RW6.

But should I put it on my 2011 Mac (10.6.8)? As Rapidweaver 6.4 requires OS X 10.9?

Or should I put it on my 2019 Mac. Given that this does not support Rapidweaver 5 and I’m not sure how stable it will be with RW6?

I know that each RW can go on five Macs, but it is the progressive upgrade that concerns me. I want to do the upgrade in away that maximises the chances of no glitches.

Not sure if I understand what you’re saying.

Have you looked at this kB article?
https://help.realmacsoftware.com/rapidweaver-8/welcome-to-rapidweaver/upgrading-from-rapidweaver-7-or-earlier

Start with the section

Upgrading from RapidWeaver 5 (.rwsw)

I think you might be better off updating to 5.4.1 on the old Mac. make sure you have backed up everything.

According to the official upgrade article there doesn’t appear need any rw6 or RW7 stops along the way.

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Teefers, I’ve tried what you suggest and it doesn’t work. In other words, on my 10.6.8 Mac I migrated the RW 5.2.2 project to 5.4.1. Then, with a stick, transferred this to the 10.14.4 Mac on which I have RW 8 and have also downloaded 5.4.1. RW8 opens the various pages in my theme (all are styled text pages: words and photos) but they are blank and I would have to load them all up again with the images and text which would take forever. Trying to open on RW5 on the 10.14.4 is better, all the material is there, but I have come across 2 problems with this. First, the file is big and often tells me that the changes I’m making can’t be saved. Though I have battled through (quitting RW and restarting the Mac) and succeeded in updating the site with a new essay which is now online. Second, in working on a second new essay, using a smaller working project RW file to get the piece finalised, the new photos I put into the styled text pages go from portrait format to Landscape when I switch from edit to view mode. And the page starts blinking at that point as well. Which is something I’ve never come across before on RW.

So I’m thinking I need to use RW6 to migrate. But, as I said in my previous post, do I put that on the old Mac (probably not as RW6.4 requires OS X 10.9). Or do I put that on the new Mac? I’m thinking the latter, but could do with some advice before I bite the bullet. manofdogz what do you think?

Maybe I should buy a third Mac, one from about 2016, but there is no room on the desk. Ha-ha.

By the way, the website is www.evelynwaugh.org.uk

Grateful to any help that the RW Community can give me so that I can get back to doing my thing.

Lot of work gone into that site! How about upgrading your 2011 Mac OS to say elCapitan which I think is OK for RW5 & 6 (you’ll need to check). I’m pretty sure 2011 macs will go up to Sierra or High Sierra.

What theme did you use? Would be worth checking it is still on RW8.

Having said that, personally I would absolutely bite the bullet and make it mobile friendly using a more recent theme. You could do that just by cutting and pasting from the live site. You should also give the pages proper names and tidy them up rather than the default /styled-119.index.html type URLs you have currently. Search engines will prefer it. It’s a bit of work but would be well worth it in the long run.

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I took a very quick look at your website, couldn’t find any pages that had near 20,000 or 40 images. As I said it was a very quick look, just bouncing around the large navigation running down the left side of the entire page.

I think you might better spend the time converting the website to a more modern theme and even reconsider how you have the content organized in the process.

At least after my initial look wouldn’t be that difficult to copy and paste(as plain text) the content from the current website into a new project in the latest version of RapidWeaver.

I would definitely suggest getting away from the styled text pages and consider purchasing the stacks plugin and a few stacks might help organize the content in a easier to use format.

You could spend a lot of time trying to convert a project file from RW5.2 (8+ years old) running on an 10.6 OS X (10 years old) and you might get it to convert. That’s assuming the theme you used is still available and works with the latest version of RapidWeaver. What you would end up with is a non responsive not mobile friendly difficult to navigate site.

I think your time would probably be better spent modernizing the site rather than trying to download multiple versions of RapidWeaver to convert the old project file.

As far as I know you can run as many versions of RapidWeaver on the same Mac as you want and it only counts as a “single Mac” license, so you could make as many “steps” converting as want to try.

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Doug. Thanks for the reply. You’re right I exaggerated the size of the site. There are 120 pages. Most of the first 20 pages are relatively small: 1000 words or so and just a few images. However, there are at least 60 pages with 5,000-10,000 words and 20-30 images each.

I do want to take the opportunity now I’m set up with a new Mac and RW8 to start a new Evelyn Waugh site using stacks rather than styled text pages. Though I may transfer several of the pages from the old site where the section is incomplete. But I feel I should archive the old site as it is, more or less. Though it would be handy if I could add one final essay to it.

The theme of the site is Bravo, which I see on the pulldown menu on RW8 is a ‘classic’ theme, though not specifically listed under Rapidweaver 7 or Rapidweaver 8 themes.

I suppose I’m hoping to maintain the old site by transferring it into the new Mac using Rapidweaver 6, possibly as manofdogz has suggested. That is, by putting Mac OS 10.11 (El Capitan) on the 2011 Mac. That will be fine with RW6 though I haven’t yet established that RW5 will be OK with El Capitan.

Then going on into the future I’d maintain the old site (if all went well) using RW6 and a new site using RW8. The new RW8 site would take into account the advice of manofdogz re using a recent theme, being mobile friendly and utilising name URLs.

Still mulling over my options, so do please keep your valuable suggestions coming. Thanks a lot.

As was suggested (thanks to manofdogz and teefer), it was quite easy to cut and paste the 120 pages into the empty structure that RW8 had set up for me in the ‘classic’ Bravo theme on the basis of the RW5 project. RW8 seems to be handling the size of the site better, not taking long to open the site or to save changes, so I may carry on with it rather than archiving and setting up an additional new site.

Since I now seem to be up and running in RW8 I suppose I ought to take advantage of stacks, even in just a simple way. What are the first few stacks one might usefully employ? Is social media links covered by buying Stacks or is that something else that has to be bought separately? The fact that my Evelyn Waugh site is all styled pages, with text and images, seems suitable for what is essentially a literary subject. Each essay has to be scrolled through as if it was a roll of parchment. Think biblical times! Are we not monks?!

manofdogz - I will investigate the possibility of giving names to the generic URLs. (How do I start?) A consideration is that other websites and reference books use the existing URLs. But that is in only a few cases so maybe I can change the vast majority.

Stacks is a plugin(type of page) that comes with a limited group of stacks add-ons.
Since it’s a different type of page you could rework the site a page at a time. That might also be a good way to approach the renaming of the folders used that would change the URL to a non-generic meaningful name.

I’m on my iPad right now, but have you tried any of the newer non-classic themes I’m not familiar with bravo but if it’s one listed under “classic” then it’s non-responsive and not mobile friendly.

I would still suggest you look into reorganization of the site. Having one hundred plus pages in a single navigation makes it difficult to find anything and would be almost impossible to navigate on a phone.

I would (and did) bite the bullet and move to responsive theme and everything over to stacks. Not as hard as I anticipated with copy/paste, and you can reorganize. two or three stack add-ons, some free, and you can really improve it.

I also like the sitemap plus lets you put things in some kind of logical order without regard to the menu.

And finally, if you want existing links to work, add 301 redirect instructions to your htaccess file.

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