I do most of my websites on my MacMini, with a large monitor, but I am due to go abroad for several weeks in the new year and will want to work from my 2015 MacBook. I remember seeing someone else pose the question on the old Forum (needless to say, I can’t find it now!), to be told that this wasn’t possible at the moment.
I don’t really understand why, as if the instances of Rapidweaver are the same, with the same plug-ins, stacks, etc. and the website data files are on Dropbox, or Copy, what would stop you doing this?
If it is something that you are actively working on, then January, or earlier would be a nice time to implement it.
This works for me. So long as you keep the plugins/stacks up to date on both macs it works ok. (Just a pain when you buy a new plugin and forget to install on second Mac)
I have used Dropbox for over 5 years and it has only failed me once and this was with sharing with a colleague. (We compress and upload now)
There’s no problem at all having RW on multiple macs: I have it on 2 (big iMac and laptop) and it works just fine. Having the plugins/stacks on both machines up-to-date is the key. I don’t use DropBox for syncing anything. Others have done it, but I can easily see myself doing something to screw that process up. But via a USB drive or AirDrop is easy to transfer project files from one machine to the other.
I think that if I continue to use Dropbox, then regular backups are key. At the moment I have my working files on Dropbox and backup to Copy (with Clear to remind me!). A USB drive while travelling is just something else to lose.
The only I do is to copy stacks folder across to each machine so that any custom stacks work properly. I use Chronosync and a USB stick because that way I have to actually think about doing it.
I use DropBox to sync RapidWeaver project files between computers. For me, its as good as keeping project files stored on a USB flash drive, with the added bonus of off-site backups.
However a word or warning if you do decide to go for the Dropbox method. Make double-sure you are copying the project file onto your Desktop or Documents folder and not opening it directly from Dropbox. Otherwise there is a real danger changes you save from RapidWeaver to Dropbox may get partly overwritten by an older version of the project file still syncing back to your computer. Especially true if auto-save is enabled and there is a backlog of syncs or Dropbox is running slow. Very quickly you might end up with a corrupt project file.
So make sure you are moving the project file between your computer and Dropbox, each time you work on it. When done, put the project file back in Dropbox and wait for the sync to complete before switching off. Better still .zip each version (compress it) and give each ‘build’ of your website a unique date or number, so you never overwrite the previous.
I have always opened form dropbox directly but not anymore! I think your method is better as i gives some versioning as well. Why do you zip it? Just for compression?
Compressing as a .zip will shrink the files sizes down a little. But I mostly do it so that if i need to access a project file from the Dropbox website, it will download nicely. Otherwise Dropbox just sees RapidWeaver files as a folder containing various bits of data / content / images.
I wish RW had the same backup options as Scrivener (my favorite writing app). See attached image. Scrivener automates what Will is talking about. (Scrivener has a similar problem to RW if you put in Dropbox without zipping first.)
This is something we’re gradually working towards. I can’t give you a date, but we know this is a popular request. One thing I would warn against is trying to manually force this with RW6. Previous symlink-style workarounds may not work with RW6 due to the adoption of the sandbox.
If the date is after January next year, then I will have no alternative other than to try to make it work somehow.
I am clearly being a bit dense, but how will downloading the file from, say Dropbox, and working on another computer be a problem? As long as I am not using the two different computers on the same day (something I want to be able to do eventually), as said earlier in the thread, all I have to do is to make sure I have the same plug-ins and Stacks on both computers. The other dangers are clearly to not use the Dropbox file as the working file, for the reasons in this thread.
The project file should, in theory, be OK. We’ve made some improvements to make sure things like Resources can resolve in the majority of cases - but this relies on the resources being in the same relative location to the project file.
Our main focus for this feature is a sync-able Addons folder.
If you are going to work on the same project file from multiple macs I would really recommend warehousing your images. You can do with the standard styled text pages or if using stacks then more and more of the image stacks support image warehousing. Keeps the project file small too.
-Bikeman
