So I’m recreating a large website (Project files lost) made up of Styled text pages with lots of images. With Chrome I’m right clicking, and that gets me all the resources, which I paste into each new page in the new Project folder. However, the images are tiny squares in Preview though these are full images in Publish mode. Obviously something is not quite right, but how fundamental is the ‘problem’? At the moment I have a perfect website hosted by my server but no Project files on my local computer. In a day or two I will have Project files with incomplete Preview mode but OK Publish mode and, I’m assuming, a a perfect replacement website at my server.
Can’t wait to get on and do this, but I should pause for advice!
The website is onkawara.co.uk
Did you have backups enabled in RapidWeaver’s publishing settings? If so you could save the headache of trying to rebuild your website in the way that you are currently doing it.
Last back-up was 29 May 2021. Which is why I’ve at least got some kind of framework to begin with. But most of the pages were created subsequent to that.
Ah that sucks, when you are finished rebuilding this project make sure the Backup Frequency is set to “Every Time I Publish” in RapidWeaver’s publishing settings so you won’t have to do this again.
Can you post a screenshot of what the images look like in both these modes? You say preview and publish modes, but I’m wondering if you mean Edit and Preview modes.
There are a few places in RapidWeaver where image sizes can be modified, but a couple screenshots would help us troubleshoot better.
Guide here on how to take screenshots on your Mac in case you need it.
Yes, dang, I mean Edit and Preview modes. Sorry for the confusion. Here is an example of screenshots of both modes from the website I’ve just ‘corrected’. This was an older site, and there was just one page I needed to grab from the live website and recreate in the Project folder. This is how it looks in my Rapidweaver Project file…
Edit mode:
Preview mode:
So if you look at the page itself on the live website, it’s fine: 2022: Of Experience | GEORGE SHAW'S TILE HILL
As I said in my first post about this topic, I’m considering taking this approach with a newer website where there are dozens of pages I’m thinking of recreating on my Mac from the website in the above-mentioned way. Am I likely to create a problem for myself or will this succeed? In other words, will I have a website that works and a local computer that has all the necessary back-up?
That is strange, I can’t reproduce it when pulling images from that page you linked to and dragging them into a styled text page in RW8. They are sized fine on my end. Maybe some of your paragraph formatting is getting in the way.
Can you send the project file and addons folder over to us so we can take a look? We have a guide here on how to do that.
I’ve sent you these files via WETRANSFER, Dan. I dare say some of the resources aren’t present, as I always get error messages when I open any Project I’m working on. However, I’m only interested in the big picture: that the website looks OK online and that I’ve got a good enough back-up of it in my Project file on my Mac so that I can add to the live website as and when. Thanks again for any advice you can give.
Received.
So I think you might be copy/pasting the content in a way that the styled text page does not like. This is what I see when I open your project file:
Not exactly the same as what you see, but you can see it’s still malformed.
Try copying things from that page that’s online one thing at a time. First, start with the first block of paragraphs. Copy them from your browser, then paste them into RapidWeaver using the Paste as Plain Text option:
Then format the paragraphs as you need (for example center the title). Then download the first image from your browser, and then drag and drop that downloaded image into the page below the text.
You can see it looks better. The image is showing properly (it’s just cut off in my screenshot because that’s the maximum size of the screen I can screenshot).
Then repeat the process for the rest of the page’s content.
It’s a long page so it will probably take a bit of time, but this will ensure all the content is copied over and formatted correctly.
Hope that helps.
Thanks, Dan. And I might do that for that particular website as it’s only one page. The trouble is, the website that I want to download from the live site, mentioned in my initial post, contains about 90 Styled Text pages with an average of 20 or 30 images per page. It could take me weeks to do that image by image, text by text. I can do it in one day if I simply right-click on the web pages and paste that, resources and all, into the newly made Project pages. Though I notice that I lose all italics and possibly a line of space every time there is an image. But that’s fairly easily dealt with manually. Though it leaves me with slightly problematic (effectively imageless) Edit mode pages. Though the problems are less if I keep switching to ‘Preview’ page in order to see the images.
If I can, I want to avoid doing masses of work, as long as I’ve got a good looking website and sufficient (if not ideal) back up on my Mac. Do you see what I mean?
@dang would it be possible to use the Develop tab in Safari and Show Resources to more quickly copy the images? I think it could be faster but I would have a difficult time explaining, so maybe it isn’t a good idea?
Hey Chuck,
Yeah that could work. Something like this and then you could just drag those images one by one over to RW’s styled text page.
Alternatively in Chrome (or Brave), you can do a command + S on the keyboard to save the page locally to your Mac. It will include a folder which includes all the image files
That folder would contain other stuff too though, like the css and js files, but you could probably filter the results. The images could be dragged to RW in this way too.
Both those options should make copying images across a bit faster (not sure how much though).
Yeah I see what you mean, I’m just not sure there is a way to copy in the way that you’re copying that results in a clean Preview mode view. Perhaps someone else knows a way to do a quick copy/paste job from the browser to the styled text page that doesn’t result in the Preview mode view being malformed in some way.
Thanks for the explanation, @dang.
Thanks Dan. Chuck also.
I think I’m going to do it the quickest way, as long as I can get the website looking as it should. With all the past pages I am unlikely to be working on them again so the Edit and Preview pages are not so important. And if they become important because I do want to work on a particular page, then I can always do what’s been suggested above. Of course, what might be bad is if I do a full reconstruction on the Project pages, all 90 of them, then make that live, if it doesn’t work pretty well then I will no longer have access to the website as it is now online. Hmmm…
Have just realised that you say that in Chrome I could do a command + S on the keyboard to save the page locally on my Mac. If I do that for all the pages then I’ll know I have the material (text and images) on my local computer in case I have to come back to that because my quick reconstruction of the Project files somehow doesn’t work. Does that make sense as the way forward that would be both safe (I need all the text and images either on the website or my Mac) and quick (I could maybe do all 90 pages in one day if things go smoothly)?
I’d recommend creating a staging website first, something like https://staging.example.com (replace example.com with your real domain), and then upload the project to that staging site. Most web hosts allow you to easily create subdomains in their control panel, and you can upload the site to that staging subdomain’s folder.
This way you can test things before uploading to your main site.
Also make a backup of your main site before you upload anything there anyway, so you have something you can restore from in case things go awry.
If you need any help with the above let us know.
If you are going for a full site backup, there are easier ways to get that locally on your Mac. We have a pretty good backup guide here you can look through.
Again if you need any help with anything listed just let us know. 