FTP built into Blocs 3

“no real point” to add built in FTP when FTP clients are available? Ludicrous! The entire point is so you do NOT have to flip to another app. Clearly, you have not used SoftPress Freeway to understand the benefits of a built-in FTP solution. It’s a huge boon, let me tell you.

Sadly, in this day and age we have the “there’s an app for that” mentality. So instead of a few select apps that our limited human brains can easily manage, we now have to juggle dozens upon dozens of apps to accomplish our aims. Our productivity suffers in the end, relative to the scenario where we have fewer but more powerful apps.

Trust me. Having FTP built-in is NOT something Blocs users will complain about! This is a fact that holds true even if Norm lacks time to implement it. It will be a very worth addition to Blocs, should Norm ever find the time some day.

Agreed…a nice plus. I hear how time is money all the time from website builders comp,aiming about how thier clients take up thier time…anything that helps speed up building and publishing a website is good.
Perhaps the FTP will come later…SFTP…some of those “free”…apps embed a lot of junk on your site. It’s rare anything is really free.
Can’t wait to see a Blocs 3 with Bootstrap 4…

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You have to use a graphics app to create graphics. Use an image optimisation app to optimise images. Use a vector app to create SVG, etc… One size never fits all and you end up compromising the whole product and introducing too much support.

I am speaking from years of experience using such products and years of problems and bug chasing from one with built in FTP.

You should read the RapidWeaver forum and see the fall out from the built in FTP. A lot of it is user error or host setup problems but also just a difficult thing to get right in this modern age of changing protocols. believe me, leave FTP to the experts.

I think that is rather unfair. Firstly I believe @webdeersign is a former Freeway user and secondly you cannot compare the very limited FTP features found in Freeway to what can be done in an app like Yummy FTP Pro. Features that many of us want and need.

Freeway had some good points and some bad points, but has seen no updates in years and had code from the early 1990s that predates Mac OS X. Like many others I moved on years ago.

You do NOT have to use a “graphics app” to create graphics in SoftPress Freeway, depending on what kind of graphics you require.

I don’t care about RapidWeaver.

One size fits all is irrelevant. We are asking for ONE FEATURE, not the world. Adding FTP won’t trigger the end of the universe.

And as to Flashman, there is nothing “unfair” about my comment at all, since I’ve been using Freeway since 1999 and still use it, in fact. No need to compare with FTP clients (I use Transmit and have for YEARS) because you don’t need all those features. Freeway’s FTP is very basic because that’s all you need. And the lack of updates to Freeway is a totally separate issue that has nothing to do with the merits of a built-in FTP upload feature in Blocs. Indeed, why do you folks think I even lurk in these forums? If I didn’t have my eye on Blocs, I wouldn’t care enough to spend my time commenting here.

With all of that said, I won’t change the minds of some of you. And that’s ok. But you aren’t going to change my mind either. And since Norm lacks the time to add FTP anyway, the entire discussion is moot. The need is there, I would say, but again, it doesn’t look like it will happen in Blocs.

And there you have it.

THE END.

FTP will happen, its just not a priority right now. Blocs after all, is only a few years old.

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You’re doing a great job, Norm!

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OK so Freeway can take an existing tiff file and convert it to Jpeg. Big deal. Can it take that Tiff and quickly optimise it to produce separate versions for retina and non retina displays? Like most things in Freeway it falls apart under closer examination in a modern context.

I started using Freeway at version 3.5 following the advice of Paul Bradforth, who was pretty well known in the Freeway community and I stuck with it reluctantly until late 2014, buying every upgrade along the way. All of this is irrelevant though, because Freeway itself is irrelevant in 2018 when compared against more modern alternatives.

Nobody is saying that adding FTP would be the end of the universe, but it would be a distraction to more important development work currently being done with Blocs and Norm has already stated it is not a priority right now. If FTP comes to Blocs I’m fine with that, but equally I may never use it. After all I use an app called Scrutiny for sitemaps, since it does so much else besides.

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Ah, Paul Bradforth! My, but did he and I spare quite intensely at times on the Freeway Beta List in years gone by! He was invited to join the list in 2002 and called it quits in early 2011.

Freeway is indeed less relevant today (not totally “irrelevant” to me seeing I still use Freeway Pro 7), and I would agree that Blocs is vastly superior in many areas, which again is why I keep my eye on Blocs development.

Agreed that FTP would be a distraction to Norm, as has already been said. But I am pleased to see that you would be fine with FTP built-in, even though you feel you’d never use it. There are features of other apps I don’t use either, but I realize some people do so I don’t mind their existence or continued development.

More power to Norm as Blocs development presses forward!

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Exactly…just another viewpoint…ideas should be welcomed…not squashed…:grinning:

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I think it’s cool that Norm does not completely rule it out. Do not underestimate the amount of time you can save if you only have to press the refresh button for a short time and all ftp accounts of your various projects are already stored. I’ve been working with webacapella before … there was an art control center for each project where you could map ftp data, images and files and create project backups. This kind of function I found very helpful - even if I do not want to create more websites with any other program than blocs :wink:

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Actually, what I would like to see is that only pages/files that have had physical changes to them be exported.

I am not sure how much trouble it would be to have a dirty flag set for each file Blocs exports, and to set it when a file has been updated after the last export, with only files with the flag set exported.

This would make managing site files (especially for those that have made changes to files post export) a lot less work.

What might be simpler is to have a checkbox for html and php files you do not want exported/overwritten every time an export is done.

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With the launch of blocs hosting this totally bridges the gap for users.

Let me run you through the new features of why blocs hosting is the best hosting company for blocs sites.

  • First All of our servers are run on super fast SSD servers which delivers incredible load times for your sites anywhere around the world.
  • All of our sites come free with an SSL certificate so that visitors to the site know that your site is secure and since June this now has a huge effect on search engine performance.
  • Free login and control panel for users to access to add new domains to their package or edit existing ones. This gives you total control over your hosting environment as well as being free to leave any time.
  • Free uptime monitoring so if anything were to happen with our hosting we are aware straight away and can get to fixing the issue to minimise any disruption.
  • Legendary worldwide customer support. This means any issue you’re having with uploading your blocs site to our servers we can handle.
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And the main feature is an exclusive site uploader. Have you ever struggled with FTP then this is the tool for you. Let us do all of the hard work for making your site live on our servers. Our exclusive upload tool makes it easy to upload a site to our servers hassle free. Simply download the tool which comes free with every blocs hosting package, export your site from blocs. Compress your export into a zip folder. Then open up the upload tool and your good to go.

Experience the future of blocs app hosting at blocshosting.com

Use code launch at checkout for £2 of each hosting package

“Our servers”? Correct me if I am wrong, but aren’t you just reselling Ionos.com hosting services?

Hi Scott, we use another company and pay for private vps servers.

To my surprise in Germany “1&1” web hosting is now ionos.

take a look here:

I stand corrected then. I looked up the registrar of your domain and found 1and1 (ionos), but looking a little deeper I see you’re hosted via Unlimited Web Hosting Uk Ltd.

Why not tell people that? That would at least give them the opportunity to seek out reviews on the hosting service you are reselling. Not trying to be a d**k here, but I came away from your web site thinking you were actual hosting infrastructure… yet found no evidence of this on the net.

Don’t get me wrong… there is nothing wrong with reselling hosting (especially if there are value added services available), but IMHO you should be more upfront about it.

Hi @ScottinPollock ,

These things were mentioned previously as well during the first launch of the hosting.

I agree people need / require various information when choosing hosting, I too mentioned it previously.

Fair enough, We just offer a lot of extra value such as the upload tool, incredible support and great value

I would like a built in FTP also, not an urugent issue though. Cyberduck is buggy, been using Transmit for years, very nice, but not free. But it would be nice to be able to export just one page for upload, not the whole site with everything on every little change. I have a site that is huge, my updates are weekly, but mostly just text on one newspage.

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