Sorting Stacks and recovering from messed up App Support folder

Classic Stacks
1

I’ve had issues with the organization of my stacks in RW6 for some time… updates don’t replace existing stacks, multiple versions of the stacks stay with a bracketed release number (or ?) behind the stack in the app support folder… but things don’t seem to be where they belong…

Not sure how it started, but I cam across it when updates notices wouldn’t go away after installing update… then they started to collect in the update window… i.e. 4, 5 12 instances of “Stack X has an update”. At some point in the past year or two, something wasn’t updating or showing up… so I think I moved things from the “proper” folder that wasn’t working to the “improper one” that did work. More on that below.

But… the program and all the stacks worked. so I left it.

Now… am trying to upgrade to 7… stacks did not import at all… only “system” stacks came across. All other plugins/themes came across fine.

Pretty sure this is because original stacks were in wrong place in RW6 application support folders…

They are not in
com.realmacsoftware.rapidweaver6>data>library>applicationsupport>Rapidweaver>stacks

which is where I think they are supposed to be… rather they are in…

com.realmacsoftware.rapidweaver6>data>library>applicationsupport>Rapidweaver>.updatechecker>"big long string of numbers and letters>stacks.

As noted… they work… if I put them back in the other folder… no work…

Anyway… that was then… trying to get to now.

Stacks didn’t import when i was setting up RW7, so have located all the stacks in folder, open RW7 and then double-click stacks to install them… is working great… figure I’m effectively cleaning up the app support process as they seem to be in a cleaner location than they were.

But… some stacks not organizing properly by developer.

For example, FormSnap… lots of stacks… all version 2.x… but some go in Yabdab section, others go in Unknown section.

Next, not a glitch, but something I would like to manage if possible, some freestack stacks are listed under “Blueball Design”, some under “Charlie Lockhart, Blueball Desgin” and some under another developer string.

Is there any way to manage the “Developer tab” or whatever it is that is controlling this?

Or is it something related to the confusing bunch of hoohaa referenced at the top of this opus?

Seems like things are working ok… but I’d just like to get it all cleaned up and coordinated.

Thanks for any comments/advice… hope I didn’t keep anyone up late with the word count!

darren

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It sounds like things were pretty crazy. I think I’d recommend starting fresh and only installing a few stacks at a time as they are needed. Just to try to keep things simple for a bit.

Isaiah

3

As for the developer sorting – it relies on the developer actually setting that property in the stack – which sadly not all developers do. You should contact the developer of that stack and let them know that you would appreciate it if they did this. I have, of course, asked – but it always means more coming from a customer. :slight_smile:

If there are developers out there having trouble doing this, please just let me know. I’d be happy to help and point to examples.

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Isaiah - thanks for the quick resopnse… yeah… i figured that mess was just too messy… but figured one time i should rant it al out and see if it made any sense to anyone… and I am installing things slowly as you said.

RE the developer sorting… the odd thing I’m seeing is stacks that I’m pretty sure were grouping properly in RW6… but also some that are from a group from the same developer (i.e. Form Snap) where some are “recognizing” the developer and others aren’t.

I just realized this is all moot… was going to ask about naming of groups… realized you can… that kinda lets us bypass any issue with the Developer names… Not sure that’s RW7 but is excellent… solves my issue.

cheers
d

5

These things have nothing to do with RapidWeaver 6 or 7. These are all features of Stacks.

In Stacks 2 there was only one way to group the items in your library and it was developer controlled. Some developers chose to create single group for their company, others grouped things by task, and others did a little of each – it was kind of a mess.

So in Stacks 3 we let the developers add quite a bit more meta-data to each stack: the developer name, some tags to improve search, a subtitle. You can choose to sort things how you like: by author, tags, or just by title. (you can find this setting in the gear menu at the bottom of the library). Of course these things rely on the developer adding that meta-data. Most have done so – but there are a few stragglers too.

Of course we also let you create your own library groups that contain anything you like – even mixing and matching images and partials and stacks.

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Hi Isaiah,

I came here looking to for an answer to the same problem - I have a ton of stacks and using the library is a chore - mostly because of the poor and inconsistent tagging done by the developers. While I appreciate being able to create my own libraries, I’ll have way too many unlabelled folder icons in the sidebar to manage.

Is it possible to let us override the tags and come up with our own? I would like to be able to group by function - sometimes different developers will tag similar stacks differently though I may lump them together under the same category. I’m currently putting together a database just so I can see what I have. With 700 stacks (some very old) it’s going to take 6 months :frowning:

Thanks for your time!

Robert

7

This is not possible today but it’s something that’s definitely being considered for Stacks 4.

But what I tell most folks I see with tons and tons of addons: maybe instead of sorting them all – better to triage. Remove them all temporarily. Add back only what you need for the next project.

This will not only eliminate a lot of headaches in sorting, but will also make RapidWeaver run a lot faster too.

Isaiah

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That’s great news! :slight_smile: I’m currently doing the triage - started with Rapidweaver 3 I believe - my first site was a blocks page (!) I’ve always planned on doing more with Rapidweaver - I’ve been getting stacks that are interesting for quite a while… Now I need to see what I have, get rid of duplicates and old stuff (SymfoniP, anyone?) and organize them. The hard part is wading through what I have with the way the tagging is set up. Again, I’m making an external database of stacks to help me do this.

Since the developer community can’t / won’t be on the same page about either keeping up with or defining their wares consistently, letting us do our own tagging would give us control in a way that would make sense to us. The best possible choice :slight_smile:

I know in my case, I have two distinct but overlapping problems - too many stacks, and constraints as to how I’m able to organize them. The latter isn’t your fault (it’s the developers) but only you can provide one complete solution. Thanks for considering this for Stacks 4!

Best,

Robert

9

I just (5 minutes ago) sent Real Mac an email about this as well. I have tried re-publishing and starting from scratch and it seems it’s not putting the stacks where they should be. It can’t find js, css, font awesome, etc.

error.png1920×1080 1.48 MB

Help!!!

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@LSPhoto - i’m not sure if you posted this to the right thread. this doesn’t seem to have much to tagging/sorting of stacks or the orginization of the addons folder.

To me this problem looks like the upload got interrupted. I would recommend a Re-Publish All Files to try to get things back in sync. However I think (just to keep the forum a tad sane) you should probably move this post to its own thread or to one that’s more related.

Isaiah

1 Like
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@isaiah I will do that, but I’ve republished a gazillion times and it’s not finding things. I sent an email.

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