Per my response in a different thread, I warehouse any/all assets that I’m able to - images, PDFs, Office documents, fonts (if I’m not pulling from Typekit, which I usually am) and, in the past even CDNs (because a specific client demanded it).
First, I only use absolute links because RapidWeaver does not seem to support relative links (using the “link button”). You can try it, but don’t be surprised if your first “slash” is stripped from the code (screenshot below). There are exceptions, such as @willwood fantastic Pro Gallery (but, the directory path is not set using a link button)
An absolute link means you’ll be typing in http(s)://xxxxxxxx Keep in mind that if your sites are http today, and you’ll be moving to https down the road, every link will need to be edited. But, if you’re already using https, then you’ll be golden.
First, you’ll need an FTP client. There are a couple of free ones available; I’ve long used Fetch (as in 30 years), but it seems very antiquated now. I also own and use Yummy FTP and Transmit (both are excellent). The basics are all the same - the ability to manually place assets on your web server. Some, like Transmit, also synch between your computer and the web host.
It’s really quite easy to do.
- Simply open your FTP client and enter the same credentials you use to publish your RW site
- Upon doing so (and clicking Go or Enter), you’ll see something like the “root” screenshot below BOTTOM IMAGE
- It’s basically the root of your website
- At this point, I create a new folder labeled “docs” (all lower case - I use lower case for all of my URLs)
- Within this folder, I create a series of folders that mimic my website (screenshot “first-level”) MIDDLE IMAGE
- Within those folders go my assets (images, PDFs, etc.) - how do they get there, you might ask?
•• Simply drag them from your desktop into the folder within the FTP client. It couldn’t be easier
The URL for any of the assets will now be http(s)://domain.com/docs/folder/image.jpg (with the domain, folder and image.jpg being the actual names)
Most (all?) FTP clients will also allow you to right click an asset to determine the URL. Just be sure to select WEB URL, otherwise, you might end up getting the name of the server, etc.
I’m so used to having a “docs” folder at the root of my site, that’s it first nature to never delete it (if I did, ALL of my warehoused documents would be gone). Some people use “zdocs” instead, since this places the folder at the very bottom of the list of files and folders. But, you can name it anything you want to - just not resources since RW produces a folder with that name.
Lastly, many (all?) web hosts allow you to easily create a backup of your site (all files, databases, etc.). I do this from time to time just to be sure that if the host had a catastrophic failure, I’m still protected.
For those of you who haven’t tried warehousing images, etc., I hope this helps. It’s really very, very easy to do.
Cheers,
Dave
