Unknown site files that will not upload or upload very slow

RapidWeaver Classic General
1

I have sent a support ticket with all the files requested (log) two days ago but have not heard anything yet and I am in need of getting my site upload working again.

When uploading, whether it is an update or entire site again, I get to this point (about 123 files remaining) and it comes to a crawl and then usually times out.

EDIT: I should point out that the other 475± files upload just fine and the site for the most part is working OK, but these last files are the problem.

Screen Shot 2016-02-19 at 12.59.57 PM.png936×391 48.2 KB

I have tried using a copy of my site and deleting page by page while re-uploading and ended up with the entire page structure deleted and still there were these 123 files wanting to upload.

The log looks like this at the end of the process.

Screen Shot 2016-02-19 at 1.00.43 PM.png1422×877 220 KB

Any ideas would be appreciated as I am out of ideas myself!

Thanks folks,
Jake

2

Update.

I can delete the entire site from my server and go into Rapidweaver and start a republish of the entire site. The upload will move right along until there are 124 files remaining and then hang. It does this every time.

I can go to a different server (move from GoDaddy to iPage) and the same thing happens.

There seems to be something bad in the site files in RapidWeaver.

I have deleted each page one by one and reloaded to see if I can isolate the page with the issues.

I will end up with a blank (all pages deleted) project and still have 124 files that will not upload and hang the process.

Every time this happens (the hang on the last 124 files) I see this pop up in the console.

Does anyone have a clue as to what this means? Is this an FTP issue or an issue with corrupted data in the website project files within RapidWeaver?

I am absolutely out of ideas and just about ready to abandon this program and go somewhere else where I can get my work done.

Support through the Rapidweaver contact has been very slow and when they did respond once they asked me to do something very basic that was stated to try before contacting them. I told them that I did indeed try that and I have heard nothing since.

Screen Shot 2016-02-22 at 12.14.00 PM.png1818×600 106 KB

3

Via additional troubleshooting the project I have determined that it is an audio file or files that is hanging the process. But I cannot seem to isolate the culprit.

Any ideas?

Thanks

4

@JPShooter

Do you have any files or folders with spaces in them (including Resources) or other special characters?

Are all your source files (resources) for the audio files in MP3 format? Do they play through Quicktime OK?

Even though you delete all pages but one from the site, RW will still upload the theme, it’s assets (images, css, js, jQuery, etc) and resources.

Perhaps it is something in your Site Publishing Bookmark that you have misconfigured. Try reducing the number of concurrent connections to 2 or 3 as it is looking like RW FTP is timing out or has an issue with the bookmark file to me.

If none of that works, create a new project and start from square 1, add a page, upload it… success, good… add resources, publish… passed, good, repeat until you find the offending file.

Places to start looking…

HTH
Brad

5

Brad,

I will take a look at these in the morning, just saw your post but it’s late, but I do want to thank you for your input and effort!

I have though tried the connections changes and that was not the issue.

More tomorrow,
Jake

1 Like
6

Do you have any files or folders with spaces in them (including Resources) or other special characters?

Yes. All of my audio files for the past 12+ months have been labeled in the exact same way (i.e. Class 2-16-16.mp3 ). I have never had an issue until about 10 days ago.

Is it possible that the naming convention that I am using could be OK for a year and then suddenly cause problems?

Are all your source files (resources) for the audio files in MP3 format? Do they play through Quicktime OK?

All source files are mp3. All are loaded and working properly from the site.

Even though you delete all pages but one from the site, RW will still upload the theme, it’s assets (images, css, js, jQuery, etc) and resources.

I have determined that it is not an issue with any page by the process of elimination. I created a new project and copied all pages from original to new and uploaded without issue. But if I add just a single resource file the problem returns.

Perhaps it is something in your Site Publishing Bookmark that you have misconfigured. Try reducing the number of concurrent connections to 2 or 3 as it is looking like RW FTP is timing out or has an issue with the bookmark file to me.

I have tried reducing connections, and it makes no difference.

If none of that works, create a new project and start from square 1, add a page, upload it… success, good… add resources, publish… passed, good, repeat until you find the offending file.

As I stated I have tried this and when I get to adding resources the problem returns. I will have to go through this again and try some changes to the resource file naming convention to see if that’s it. Seems odd though as nothing has changed therein for over a year.

Thanks again for the input. I will update soon.

Jake

7

I know you may not want to do this, but I NEVER use the resources feature of RW. For several reasons (and not all of those have to do with RW being “bad”). I find it simpler, more reliable, and I keep my project files much smaller if I FTP my media files (e.g. MP3s) to a folder at my hosting company server area. Then I copy the URL link to that resource. Depending on how many MP3 files you have this might be a good time to transition over to “warehousing”.

How are you playing the MP3s at your website? A particular stack?

8

Mathew,

Interesting idea.

I am unsure though as to some specifics.

If I upload my files with a separate FTP program, would I not loose all my links? I have well over a hundred files now linked from within my site. Would I have to re-establish all those?

And how do you link to a file within RapidWeaver that was not created from within the program?

As to your question regarding the playing of the mp3’s, I’m using HTML5 Audio stack. It’s the same I’ve been using from the beginning over a year ago, all files now loaded have been and are working fine with this stack.

This is so perplexing, this problem just coming up in the last 10 days or so.

I could see if the upload were hanging on a couple of files, and my site had issues with those recent uploads not playing correctly.

But the site is fully functional again (since doing a re-publish of all files) with all links working, however the upload will start with about 600 files to publish, fly right through the first 475ish and then come to a crawl with about 125 files to go.

Thinking about this as I type, is the entire list of resources is trying to reload when “Re-Publish All Files” is chosen? Would this command attempt to re-upload all resources as well as all pages?

Thanks so much for your time,
Jake

9

UPDATE

So here is something I’ve found.

I noticed in the file structure of my site (using the file manager at GoDaddy within my account) that there were new files (audio resources) that were being uploaded into the root of the resources folder and not to the folder within the resources folder that I had titled “Audio Files”.

I thought that perhaps this had to do with what Mathew asked regarding spaces or special characters.

So I changed the file in resources from “Audio Files” to “Audio_Files” and started the upload again.

At this time it appears that the entire library is indeed uploading without issue. This process will take many hours with my connection (I only have 2 meg upload) but I will update here as soon as I can see if this has solved the problem.

Thanks for the assist guys! I surely hope this issue is behind me as I have been at this for so many day’s I’ve lost count :frowning:

Jake

1 Like
10

Another glitch.

I thought I was on to something in my last post, but maybe not.

I let the upload process run from a starting point of 115 files to upload until it had about 55 remaining. Needed the connection for other uses and hit the Cancel button.

When I came back later to resume the upload it started back again at the beginning with 115 files to upload again.

What’s up? All 115 of the files are already on the server, but it wants to upload them all again, even the ones that re-uploaded earlier today. Do I need to let them all upload in one continuous run? I can’t see how that would make any difference.

I’m afraid that I will spend 15 hours uploading all these files again only to find that the next time I make a change to my site it will want to upload all 115 mp3 files again.

Thoughts?
Thanks,
Jake

11

Jake: Put simply you’ve discovered one of the disadvantages of using RW Resources, especially with bigger files. There will be a tendency to reupload everything again. (BTW this is expected behavior if you do something like change a page name). RW uses a kind of “dumb” uploading approach (or, more kindly, better to be safe-than-sorry by uploading everything) rather than a more nuanced approach you could get using a dedicated FTP app like Transmit. Overall RW is doing the right thing but the downside of this approach really hits home when some has lots of resources, or a fairly big number of large sized resources.

Yes, if you upload your files yourself to a folder (e.g. audio-warehouse) at your server then you will have to re-do all your links. That’s the downside. But you don’t need to do them all at once. Instead you could re-do 10 a day (to maintain your sanity). So now you have to consider: better to leave with the fairly funky system you have with RW (and its handling of resources) or better to just truly fix the situation. Up to you.

When people are using a much smaller number of resources, and resources of smaller size, then there may not be a big practical reason to manually upload files to your server. In this way RW makes things easier and better for a novice user. But you’ve run into one of those situations where the way RW works is not really helpful for you.

12

Mathew,

Thanks again for your input. Much appreciated.

I let the program run the entire upload again yesterday. It started with 115 files and by bedtime it was at about 100 with 15 to go.

When I got up this morning it say’s it timed out! So why does it run for 8+ hours without an issue and then decide to time out with only a few files left?

To top it off, when I hit Publish again, it want’s to start at the very beginning! What a joke. I guess I’m not hearing anything from tech support because they know and wish not to acknowledge the limitations of the software?

I can see that you are right and I will have to make this transition, and a bit at a time as I have many resources.

I thank you Mathew for your input. A favor please, could you explain to me how it is that I have a folder on my server with resources and links within RapidWeaver to an outside of the program location?

Thanks,
Jake

13

Mathew,

I’ve been working on this issue and have come up with the following solution, your input would be appreciated as to whether this is an appropriate solution or perhaps I can improve upon it.

I bought Transmit.

Instead of relinking all resources I tried this:

Export site from RapidWeaver to my hard drive.

Use Transmit to upload the entire site to the server.

This seems to be working quite well. As the site was mostly uploaded already this took very little time as Transmit compared files from my HD to the server. All seems to be OK on the site when testing pages and links.

It appears to me, at least at this time, that I can continue to use RapidWeaver just as I had before (pacing resources in the program and linking directly) and then just exporting the entire site out to HD and then upload via Transmit and avoid RapidWeavers upload altogether.

Since almost all of my updates to the site involve adding new mp3 files I don’t see any advantage to using RapidWeaver for updates outside of resources and Transmit for uploading mp3’s, and therefore having to rebuild all of my current links.

Thoughts?
Jake

14

Jake,

Certainly you have found something that will work. Transmit is first rate. I would think most of the time you do not need to upload the entire site (unless you added a page, or changed a page name) but only upload those things that had changed. Of course this means being aware of that: which in some cases is a pain in the a##.

In the long run slowly moving files via transmit to a dedicated folder (e.g. zaudio, which can be easily found) and creating new links (Transmit will nicely give you the URL of the uploaded file) will make you even more efficient. But that’s a decision for you to make, and it need not be today.

Most of the “funk” I’ve seen with RW is in regards to resources: people putting to much stuff in their, RW having a hard time keeping track of it all, etc. But clearly there’s no huge rush in your case.

Happy transferring with Transmit! It’s a great app.

15

Mathew,

Thanks again for the input.

It seems to me that by having the entire site exported via RapidWeaver to my HD and then using Transmit to sync with my server, that Transmit is (as selected in settings) automatically only updating those files that have changed in my local files vs. the servers version based on timestamp. It does not appear to be re-loading the entire site each time.

So what might be an advantage then to delinking and re-linking all resources? I’m not catching on here to the benefits, I seem to be missing something. Of course it wouldn’t be the first time :slightly_smiling:

16

@JPShooter Yes, you are quite correct. Transmit sync will/should do a great job.

I’m mainly thinking about how some folks seem to have run into nightmare scenarios with huge RW project files. The result seems to be crashing often, or not saving, or other quirks. Not everyone with a huge project file runs into problems though. Really it’s up to you and you may never experience any problems approaching things the way you do (using internal resources). When I mean “huge” I think I mean anything over 100 Mb. And some folks have RW project files of 2 or more Gb.

17

So far my exported project folder totals a tad over 2.5 Gb, but the method I described of using Transmit is working just fine for the moment. We will see.

At least now I know how to go the next step and move the resources out of the project and just link to them should I find this current method begin to develop problems.

Thanks again for your assistance Mathew, I very much appreciate it!

Jake

18

Not a problem and glad to help a wee bit. 2.5 Gb is huge for a RW project file. But I think you’ve found a great solution with Transmit.