Does anyone know the best way to swap your bloc website to another computer? I am trying and every time I do it, the layout works fine but no images. I point them to the asset but I am confronted with a statement that says they are in my assets etc and can not be added again. Although they are not there, but yet in a folder, I can’t get this to work. Bloc will also announce that I can’t import them as they are the same name as image files already?
I basically just want to copy everything and place it on another machine to work from there and upload from either one?
Can someone point me in the right place, i have never had this problem before…
Incidentally, I created the website again on the new machine, and then tried to open it all on the old one and even though I copied the files, and a separate folder of the images, I was again greeted with the same texts and errors.
Perhaps the easiest trick to this is hosting images remotely on the server. That way they won’t move no matter where you access them from. At the moment your path to local images is changing because you are on a different machine. Another alternative I suppose might be to save your projects and images inside iCloud, but I’ve not tried that.
N.B if you want to maintain them locally as at present you would need to remove them and add them again manually one by one in the asset manager.
Ahhh, nightmare…So I now have two versions of one site, on two different machines. That seems really crazy. So no matter what I do, at this moment, unless I have them cloud related, I have no way of doing this.
I wonder why in Bloc we can’t export to a new machine? As this is really difficult otherwise in my opinion. I don’t have loads of photographs etc, but the problem occurs when it explains that they can’t be copied in due to being already in the system, although I can’t see them in assets and I can see them in a separate folder. For some reason this also affects some of the layouts in the blocs, which becomes a further problem.
It would be great if we could somehow just use the asset and save as assets section, and export that when we need, and somehow then bloc could see it, and although on a different machine, import the files via name on a virtual update option, so that bloc could see everything and we could get back on with designing.
I’ve no idea but this does seem a little overly complex, but I imagine their is deep reasons why this can’t be done.
I did try the images folder that I saw Norman suggest but when I did that, I lost the images, and again when trying to install them in asset I was told that copies could not be entered as the files were there.
I don’t know how many images you have to deal with but the easiest solution right now would be to open a project and remove all of them from the asset manager. Now go to the exported image folder on the server and copy the the web address urls, then bulk import them to Blocs if your FTP client allows this. I know I can select a group of files with Yummy FTP Pro and do this in one step.
After importing you will have to select them one by one inside Blocs to make the connection again and when done you can save the project. Now transfer the project file to your other Mac and it should just work when you open it. Usual caveats of making backups apply, but this shouldn’t be complicated or overly time consuming unless you have hundreds of images to organise.
The problem you are facing isn’t down to Blocs as such. It’s more about Mac OS and file paths in relation to specific users.
N.B if you want ensure that projects are always up to date across more than one computer you could store them in Dropbox or iCloud for example, so if you make changes they are automatically made available to the other computer when next started. I would avoid storing images this way though, because it would make page loading on the website slower in theory.
This is all about good organisation. When you create a new blocs project, save it to a project specific folder. In that same folder, create another folder of assets (name it assets or images) Copy all the images you intend using in the project into that folder. Now create your website as normal. If you need to add further assets as the project proceeds, add them to the assets or image folder before adding them to the Blocs Asset manager. When you move the site to a new computer, just copy the whole project folder. When you open the project on the new computer, all the assets will be there because they will be stored in a location relative to the bloc project file. This is how Blocs templates are distributed which are, by their very nature, designed to be used on multiple computers.
I normally create a folder called resources next to the project file and place everything in there, but since I essentially do all my work on one computer I’ve not had to test if that works. It sounds like that would be OK if copied to another computer.
It’s not a bad idea to do it this way …”images” since it shows your intended folder “structure” as well. A separate “videos” folder for self hosted videos too.
I wonder how now without building it again new and doing it this way, I can work an easy solution. The ones suggested are I guess the best, and I am thankful for the help. It is a shame there isn’t a way way to export all the files and collect them into a folder system like said and then export; for those stupid people like me who didn’t create the images folder. I have seen here that creating the images folder, for some reason helps due to Bloc looking for an images folder as opposed to something else, which in my case, was Website Photos…
Blocs has already created an images folder for you automatically at time of export. If you export the project locally look inside for a folder called “img” and all your images should be in there.
You could copy paste that folder so it appears next to your project file, then delete all the images in the asset manager and import them again from the that “img” folder (rename it if you want) next to the project file.
You will have to select the images one by one inside your project, but all the dimensions are already set, so unless you have hundreds of images this is a ten minute job. At the end, just transfer a copy of the project file alongside the images folder to your other computer.
Thanks Flash, I think I will try that and let you know. I think this is where my problem came from. As i was aware that you can’t point to the images in the export folder, I put them in a folder on the desk top that was called Website Photos. So when I exported everything, I just added the folder to the usb and placed them all on the new machine. This is where it all went wrong.
A time of export Blocs has simply taken all your images from random locations and organised them into a single location, which is the “img” folder. In this case you can work backwards and use that exported folder as source of your images if you first delete the other ones in the asset manager and then re-import them.
The above method will work and it will get you out of a hole, but going forward, especially with future sites I would be inclined to host assets remotely on the server and then import them into the asset manager. Your project file can be stored in Dropbox or iCloud and automatically updated to the other computer, while all the image assets are automatically available via the server.
This is not really the fault of Blocs, anymore than it would be the fault of Photoshop or any other app. If you were writing a book in Scrivener or Pages, everything would all be accessible via those apps but it would be your responsibility to keep the resources in one location if you wanted to stay organised.
From a project management standpoint I think the best solution is to host original assets locally in a resources folder and then store the web ready images remotely on the server.
So in this case, I just place the new copied images folder on the desk top next to my project folder, or place it inside the folder? And copy them all to my usb and place them where I want on the new machine and I Should be good?
First of all I wouldn’t place projects on the desktop, which is inherently risky because there is constant movement there. Place them in the sites folder or perhaps your main documents folder instead.
In my case I have both personal and client websites, so my folder structure looks like this:
Sites > Blocs > Client Sites > Site Name.
Inside the project site name folder I have the project file and another folder called resources. It doesn’t matter where items are placed in the resources folder as long as they are not moved to another location and it makes sense to be as organised as possible.
For example, I would keep a folder for pdf files and if I had lots of images on several pages I might even have a folder for each page. To maintain organisation I will sometimes include a local folder for each web page that contains text files and images. The more you practice this, the more organised you will become.
Once you have everything relating to your project in one place just transfer the main project folder with all the contents to your other computer any way you like and it should just work, but try to maintain the same level of organisation there as well. That is why remote hosting on the server for images and shared cloud backups for project files makes this easier.
Just looking at this now.
I have InDesign files on Dropbox with all the various images and files organised in folders.
When I open an InDesign file on a different computer, all the files and images are still linked properly.
I don’t understand why Blocs is different. The folder system is the same. It is very frustrating.
