Upgrading Stacks v2 to v4

I am upgrading a static site that hasn’t been touched in over 5 years. When I developed it I used Stacks v2 (but can’t remember the RW version, possibly 4 then 6). Yesterday I upgraded to RW8 and discovered that Stacks v2 no longer works with Catalina and RW8. So I bought Stacks v4 and installed it.

Now that I can see the details of my project I’ve discovered a bunch of stack’s objects that have a diagonal red striped background and a warning message of

This stack is not currently installed. You need to reinstall it to use it

Given what is missing and looking at the v4 library (and a line of text I saw on a Yourhead page) , I’m guessing that there was a major renaming/functionality effort and that the stack objects I was using have morphed into new forms.

So I am looking for confirmation as to what replaced what:

 v2                       v4?
"repsonsive"   => "1 column"
"responsive3  => "3 columns"
"responsive4" => "4 columns"

And is there an easy way to replace these objects, or do I have to insert the new object and drag the content from the old object?

A missing stack isn’t something that changed inside of Stacks – it’s something that changed on the outside. In particular, it’s some 3rd party stack that you downloaded (and potentially paid for). One that used to be installed in your Stacks 2 environment but is no longer installed in your Stacks 4 environment.

You may want to see if you can dig up your old RapidWeaver addons folder. If you find it, then you should move your old stacks over to your new installation.

All the stacks are contained in the folder called Stacks within your RapidWeaver addons folder.

RapidWeaver/Stacks/<your stacks will be here>

Simply dragging the contents of this folder to the same place in your new environment does the trick.

Most should be compatible – although nearly every stack has had its own upgrades in that time too.

Finding your RW Addons Folder

The real challenge in doing this is always finding your RapidWeaver addons folders – both new and old. It can be a bit tricky.

New

Finding the new one is not too bad. Open RapidWeaver and choose Reveal Addons Folder from the View menu. Now your addons folder is open and the Stacks folder should be right there.

Old

Find the old addons folder is tricky as it depends a bit on which version of RapidWeaver you were using.

  • If you have that old version of RapidWeaver you can try opening firing it up and using the same menu – however you’ll need to hold down the Option key to get that menu to appear in older versions.

  • If you don’t have that old version of RapidWeaver or it’s too old to run in Catalina, then try these possible locations:

    • ~/Library/Application Support/RapidWeaver
    • ~/Library/Containers/com.realmacsoftware.rapidweaver
    • ~/Library/Containers/com.realmacsoftware.rapidweaver6
    • ~/Library/Containers/com.realmacsoftware.rapidweaver7
    • ~/Library/Containers/com.realmacsoftware.rapidweaver8

If you can’t locate your old stacks, then it gets a bit more tricky. We’ll have to try to do a bit of research on the project file and/or published site to determine which stacks you were using and see if they are still available somewhere for download (there’s a good chance – but not 100%). If you point me to the original site and/or share a copy of the project file with our support team we can help you sleuth it out. However this process is not easy when working with an old file – it’s really best to try to find that old installation if at all possible.

Let me know if you run into any difficulties.

Hi Isaiah

Picture me face palming. I realized that I was conflating Rapid Weaver stacks functionality with the Joe Workman Stacks product, and that I didn’t make myself clear about it (and the product name doesn’t help). It may also be that this conflation caused me to post this in the wrong category.

The website was developed using the JW Stacks v2. When I upgraded to the latest RW under Cataline, the JW v2 would not install (and from what I understand rightly so). So I upgraded to JW v4. I believe that between v2 and v4 JW modified the names and functionality of objects internal to that product. But because the website’s project never went through any sort of upgrade between v2 and v4, it still contains the names of the v2 objects. This was the basis of my original post - to try and reconcile what objects to use in the v4 JW stacks product.

@joeworkman has quite a large number(hundreds) of stack addons. Could you give us the name of stack(s) that you are having questions about?

In looking for the stack I was having issues with I realized that I had overlooked it when I upgraded RW. So there is no problem to solve and I will am thinking about deleting this topic. (however some forums discourage deleting topics even if they are no longer relevant)

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.