I want to start by wiping everything that is there currently. Sometimes when I remove a webpage on the site I have there currently the link to a deleted page doesn’t completely vanish. So it seems like to avoid problems like that I would need to wipe the whole site first.
My questions are, first of all, how to best do that. Is that something I log into my Chillidog account for? The FTP file browser on Rapidweaver doesn’t give me that option to delete what is on the server. And then do I just hit “publish site” after the old site is deleted?
I also have just used the File Manager in the CPanel app on Chillidog. Just delete the folder contents, not the folder itself. That folder is connected to your domain or subdomain settings in CPanel. I use Transmit for file transfers like images, PDF files, etc that i want hosted online.
You should get an FTP client and get used to using it. These things can be a bit daunting at first, as the potential for seriously messing up your site and server are great, but once you get the hang of things, and crucially take your time when using it, reading all warning messages (not just clicking “YES”), you should be fine.
For occasional use, Cyberduck is good, and free. Transmit is really popular, I use it, I bought it based on a lot of recommendations, but I’ve been deeply underwhelmed with it and certainly wouldn’t buy it again. I find it extremely slow to upload at times, refuses to upload certain files and the notification system for transfers in progress is very buggy. Whereas the times I’ve used Cyberduck I\ve experienced none of these issues.
On the subject of FTP and servers etc. If you are going to go down this path (anyone serious about making websites need to learn this stuff), now would also be a good time to put in place a solid server backup solution.
Some FTP clients have this facility, otherwise there are plenty of dedicated solutions out there. I use Syncovery.
In theory, most hosting services offer backups, but my experience of them is very poor. Often the very backup you need just so happens to be the only one that has (for reasons they can never explain) that has failed. Plus, if they do have the backups it can take days to get it.
Better to do your own.
With the right solution, you can set it up to log into your server at specified times of the day and take a complete backup. Then, if you accidentally overwrite or delete a file you have a backup on your local machine that you can “undelete” in seconds.
I used to use several FTP programs with previous websites but as I started using RW I just relied on it’s upload feature and how it updated sites that were previously written there. Like I said in the initial post I had issues like some pages I removed would stay on the site and occasionally would appear in the link bar depending on the page. I don’t know if that is a problem with how the program uploads files or if it was due to the sloppy way I mixed RW default themes with Foundry themes. I would bet that problem could have been resolved by just going into the ftp program and hitting delete on the pages I wanted to be gone.
Chillidog says it does backups but whether or not they are that great at doing that my Time Machine backups having been doing a good job so far. When “Clean My Mac” wiped out all my image files this month Time Machine did a great job of bringing everything back. One of the reasons I use Rapidweaver over other services is that it lets me use a local file that has multiple backups.
RW won’t delete old files or folders, only overwrite them. So, if you once had a page … /thispage/index.html, even if you rename this page inside RW to something else, or just remove it from the project, it will still exist on the server.
Your time machine will only backup the project, not the files RE creates upon export. And it’s always handy to have these files backed up too.
Not sure i understand your description there, so to try to explain it…
If you have a page with the folder name of oldpage that you add to your RW project menu, on your server RW will create the folder /oldpage/ and in it will be the files for that page, with either a file called index.html or index.php.
If someone navigates to this page, by typing the full URL into the browser bar or clicking the link in the menu they will go to: yourdomain/oldpage/index.php
Now let’s say you rename that page in the RW project to newpage. The folder that RW creates on your server will now be /newpage/ and when someone clicks the link to it in the menu (or types in the full URL) they will get yourdomain.com/newpage/index.php in the browser bar. Assuming you’ve removed the link in the menu to /oldpage/ no one will be able to access this page via the site navigation.
But, the page /oldpage/ will still exist on the server. RW didn’t rename it to /newpage/ it created a new page/folder called “newpage”.
I understand now, thanks. Chillidog just sent me an upload report that said I cut the number of files I had about in half from my old site so I can see why that is now. I kept adding files without taking anything out for a year.
