RapidWeaver FAQ - Backup and retrieve
How can I make a backup of my RapidWeaver website? How can I retrieve my website?
Important warning:
It is strongly recommended to periodically make a backup of your RapidWeaver files. If you don’t do it you may lose hours and hours of work.
CHAPTER 1: How can I make a backup of my RapidWeaver created website?
1.1 Manually backup
1.2 Scheduled auto-backup (strongly recommended)
CHAPTER 2: I lost my website, it doesn’t show up in RapidWeaver anymore. How can I retrieve my website?
2.1 Using Time Machine
2.2 I have the html files of my website same as I see them when visiting my page on the internet with a browser. Is there any way I can get my webpage back to RapidWeaver?
CHAPTER 1: How can I make a backup of my RapidWeaver created website?
First of all you have to find the file where RapidWeaver stores its files. To find it search with Spotlight for “rwsw” (since the extension of the file is .rwsw). To know where it is located click the result while hitting Command(Apple). That’s the file you need to make a Backup for.
Once you made a backup and want to restore (get the pages from the backup file back to RapidWeaver), you just have to open the file by double clicking on it. Note that the location where the file is placed to doesn’t matter.
NOTE 1: Note that you have to change permissions of the file to be able to edit, save changes and publish a website from another user account and from another computer as well.
Select the file press Command(Apple)+i under Ownership & Permissions go to =>Details =>Everyone (or Others) and select Read & Write
You have to do that in the original user account and computer in which the file was created.
If your computer goes nuts and you didn’t change permissions you could find an error while publishing and saving.
NOTE 2: Beware of replacing the newer .rwsw file with the older when backing up to an external HD, USB Stick or other things like that
NOTE 3: About copying/moving:
..From Finder's Help viewer: "If you drag the files or folders to a different disk, or if you drag them from a locked folder or disk, they will be copied, not moved."
Since Apple's document recommends: "Some sort of external storage where you can access your file (a folder on your iDisk, your iPod or other external hard drive, etc)" ..."moving" to external storage implies "copying".
Now there are different ways to backup a Website created with RapidWeaver. Here are some of them:
1.1 Manually backup
Copy the above mentioned file to:
• An external HD
• Burn it on a CD/DVD
• Put it on a USB Stick
• Put it on your iDisk
1.2 Scheduled auto-backup (strongly recommended)
1.2 a) For non MobileMe users and MobileMe users (strongly recommended)
• Leopard does it all by itself if Time Machine is enabled
• The following one is strongly recommended to those people who don’t have MobileMe
A really good way to make a backup of the file is Mozy... 2GB of free online storage for backup.
I made a backup of my file through Mozy (without zipping and so on). The point is I saved 500MB of storage and got additional 1500MB and best part yet to come: when I modify the .rwsw in RapidWeaver and make it backing up again it turns out that Mozy is so intelligent that it finds the pages I modified and uploads only those to Mozy, I don't have to backup the whole 500Megs every time, isn't that great? It's fantastic! Oh yeah and you can tell Mozy to automatically backup every day or once a week or manually backup.
It will take some time if you have a huge site like mine (500MB) to restore the file when needed. But as that shouldn’t often be the case I’d say that it doesn’t matter.
You can also use Mozy to backup your contacts, e-mails and whatever you like.
Well... For people with MobileMe that's not quite a revolution, but for those whom, like me, don't have it it is... I think... Last but not least it is a revolution because it’s free.
1.2 b) For MobileMe users only (and strongly recommended for them, suggested by Roddy)
Use Backup. Backup is a very easy to use freeware application by Apple for MobileMe users. To download it go to your MobileMe account. On the left side, under the calendar, click on Backup.
As Apple says Backup is a "Smart, powerful backup software - Now with one-step iLife backups". It can be used to schedule automatic backups to MobileMe or an external harddrive either.
For more detailed information, please refer to this support article.
CHAPTER 2: I lost my website, it doesn’t show up in RapidWeaver anymore. How can I retrieve my website?
The only way to get pages back to RapidWeaver and edit those pages is to have the file where RapidWeaver stores its files. To find it search with Spotlight for “rwsw” (since the extension of the file is .rwsw). To know where it is located click the result while hitting Command(Apple).
To get the site showing up in RapidWeaver you just have to open the file by double clicking on it. Note that the location where the file is placed to doesn’t matter.
2.1 Using TimeMachine
If you have TimeMachine turned on then you will be able to retrieve the file going to the location on your computer where you used to keep the file where RapidWeaver stores all its data.
Go to your Dock and hit the TimeMachine icon. Search in your backup history for the .rwsw file.
When you found the file select it and hit “Restore”.
2.2 I have the html files of my website same as I see them when visiting my page on the internet with a browser. Is there any way I can get my webpage back to RapidWeaver?
RapidWeaver can't "import" html files.
If you don’t have the above mentioned .rwsw file anymore and did not make a Backup of it but the website is still online (on MobileMe or any other server) then that’s what you should do:
1. You have to rebuild the website from scratch in RapidWeaver re-creating each page
2. Use the published version on the server to copy&paste the content from it so you don’t have to re-type it in all over again. This makes the process of rebuilding the site from scratch really fast.
3. Images go by Drag&Drop. However the images on the published version aren’t full-resolution images. So if you still have the original image (full resolution) you better use this one. Especially if someday you want to increase the size of the image you will see that the one you took by Drag&Drop from the published site is poor quality.
4. Take advantage of the situation to re-organize your website and re-elaborate/modify it.
I'm sorry there is no better answer... But at least you don't have to type the text of your webpage all over again... And it's quite quick to do copy&paste (Believe me! I once did it for 300 pages!).
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