Local publish of entire site leaves items from previous publish

[levendel]

When I publish locally an entire site (not only the pages that have changed) after making some changes, I find in the html folder traces of the previous version before the changes. Should a local publish of the entire site not wipe the contents of the local publish folder? Am I the only one with this problem?

[1FugleyKiwi]

Not a problem at all. NoF is unable to mind read, therefore it does what it is told. You say "publish", it publishes. If you want to delete files, then YOU must delete them, same for on a server. I assume you can use an FTP prog to do that?

[levendel]

I was just trying to confirm that I am not dreaming when I found the residue of a previous iteration. You seem to implicitly confirm that.

However, I deeply disagree with your interpretation of "publish entire site" as opposed to "publish only changed pages". In both cases, I expect the newly published material to get rid of what is no more relevant and replace it by the new stuff. I agree that this is not that simple to do in the case of a "partial publish". This is why I do not trust a partial publish and I always do a "publish entire site". In addition, I always do a local publish because of the suspicion above, and I use my own site management.

BUT when I ask for "local publish of the entire site" I expect to find nothing from a previous publish.Why should anything from a prior publish remain? This is a bug and should be recognized as such. When I ask a professional to repaint the entire room with a different color, I do not expect to find any paint from the previous color; that would be messy work. Elementary, Watson!

By the way, I use SyncBackPro, an incremental backup program. In the "Mirroring" mode, it adds new files, replaces modified files, and eliminate files that are no more relevant. This does not require an advanced degree. Very easy to do in a "full site local publish": wipe everything before creating the new publish.

[RayC]

However, if you had created part of your site separately from your NOF project, say a photo gallery using a third-party tool, you wouldn't want that blindly erased by NOF, would you?

Similarly, some folks with large sites will break up their project into several smaller NOF projects that mesh together when published. Similarly, you wouldn't want NOF to wipe that out either.

Or, if you had created a robots.txt or php.ini or htaccess file, you wouldn't want that erased either. Nor would you want NOF to erase other server configuration files. I know these last are not likely to appear in your "local publish" folder, but the point is local publish is, by design, exactly the same as publish to server; only the destination folder is different.

Re-think your premise, Sherlock.

[gotFusion]

Go over this gotFusion tutorial.......

http://www.gotfusion.com/tutorials/tut.cfm?itemID=4029

[1FugleyKiwi]

BUT when I ask for "local publish of the entire site" I expect to find nothing from a previous publish.Why should anything from a prior publish remain? This is a bug and should be recognized as such.

No, when software does what it is designed to do, that is not a bug.

When software doesn't work the way you expect it should, that is not a bug.

I am quite happy with the way NoF does its local publish, for the reasons Ray gives above, and more.

Is it really that hard to delete the local publish folder contents yourself, if that is what you want?

[levendel]

Hello Watson,

First, I am using the site definition of NOF, namely that which corresponds to one .nod file.
I am not using the term to mean all the sites that I have glued together to produce my final product (which you may call "site" also)
If I created a part of my site outside NOF (like a Jalbum gallery), I do not keep it in the "local publish" folder. I manage it outside NOF.
So tell me again: why would I want to keep in the "local publish" folder (created and managed by NOF) a page which I dropped from my NOF design? Would you?
Everyone (even you) should expect to find in the "local publish" folder the exact compilation of the current site (that which corresponds to one .nod file), no less, no more.
NOF is a very good tool, but your eagerness to defend everything in it is blinding you.

PS With respect to NOF publishing remotely, read my post again: I do not use it because I do not believe it can handle complex situations. But I do expect a "local publish" folder not to have in it lint from a previous publish, especially when I choose to publish the entire site (according to the NOF terminology of "entire site" = one .nod file).

[levendel]

Hello,
You can see my previous post above where I addressed the full site publish. Of course, it is not that complicated to wipe the folder contents by myself prior to a next publish, although I had to discover the problem because of a malfunction of a site.

I am aware of the need to manipulate a server site. This is why I do not allow third party software to generate pages into it. I will just use good FTP software.

However, with that state of affairs, things are much more complicated, when one uses the publishing of only the pages that have changed. This is a much stickier issue because I can set up a situation when I make a change in two steps so that the residue of a previous publish will remain, given that NOF does not (and probably cannot) check that situation. As I mentioned a few lines above, I discovered the problem because of a malfunction. After a day of work with partial publishes, you will not be sure of your final situation. But if you love that, who am I to tell you otherwise?

Bottom line: when a feature is offered by a software product, it should work correctly or not be offered at all. Having developed software for many years, I have not yet seen a commercial compiler of quality which leaves behind code from a previous compile. But I am now learning that in the land of Internet, everything goes.

[1FugleyKiwi]

Some people just don't get it, do you, levendel?

NoF is NOT a compiler. It is a code Generator.

NOF is a very good tool, but your eagerness to defend everything in it is blinding you.

Not sure who this is aimed at, but if you look around you will see that I criticise NoF when criticism is due. However, in this case you are simply being too obtuse to use a tool the way it was designed to be used. Then you complain when it does exactly what it has been designed to do.

How about you explain for us exactly how you think NoF could be tuned to know which files to delete, which to keep and which to over write.

Bottom line: when a feature is offered by a software product, it should work correctly or not be offered at all.

Bottom line, that is what NoF's local publish does. Publishes locally.

It doesn't delete anything.

It doesn't make coffee.

It doesn't wipe your arse.

It simply publishes the generated HTML for your pages and neatly packages all the required assets.

You say you use "good FTP software. So do I. Does yours automatically delete everything on the server before uploading the new files? No, I didn't think so.

A suggestion for you - email NO, ask for a refund, you're just far too smart for this software.

[gotFusion]

Read the tutorial.

Problem solved.

Move on........