Move an entire blocs project to another drive - NIGHTMARE!

General Discussion
1

Please excuse me while I rant … am really ticked off right now. I need to work on a project for a customer while on the road. So I copied the entire project fold to an external drive.

I should add that I created the project from the beginning so that all blocs files, all assets, all local fonts js. files .css files - really everything was located in one folder. No assets were “scattered about” on the drive.

So I thought I was safe. How wrong could I be.

I copied said folder with all assets to an external drive, and went on my merry way.

I just opened my blocs file. I have to rebuild everything from scratch. The project has 27 pages. I have to add every single graphic to every page, reassign all the fonts (which still isn’t working quite right). When opening the file, blocs asked me for the location of .js and .css files for extensions that aren’t even being used in the project.

In other words, things are a mess.

This is unacceptable to me. Although I love working with Blocs and will probably continue to do so for projects that I’ve already created, I am going to have to think long and hard about using Blocs when starting my next project.

In todays world this is simply a “no go” as far as I’m concerned.

And what makes matters even worse, I’m sure I will have to go through the same process when copying the folder back to hard drive at the office

I hope and pray that the powers to be will take a look at this (and other) issues that in my opinion belong to the basic things that a software should do and fix them, before adding new features. What good are new features when I cant trust the software?

Now if I’m just stupid and missed something when setting up, creating and copying the project, please excuse me.

Gary

2

Blocs has problems with projects on external drives I seem to recall. If you move the project to the main drive on the other computer it should be fine, as long as you copy across the original project folder without moving stuff around. It worked for me the last time I tried.

3

Hi @gary,

I’m not sure what is the cause of this problem. Are there some previous posts that explains the problem in more detail? I think I remember some people saying they had problems opening projects from an iCloud account.

As a test, I copied 2 of my projects to another external drive on my main desktop computer. The projects were originally on my internal boot drive in the Documents folder. I then tried to open up both projects from the external drive and they both opened up with no problems with all image assets showing in Asset Manager window.

As a 2nd test, I copied the same 2 projects to a portable hard drive I had and then connected this to an old laptop with the trial Blocs installed (3.3). Again, when I started up the 2 projects in the trial Blocs they came up normally.

Note that I have all my original image assets in an images folder next to the .bloc file and I added them to the Asset Manager window from that.

I’m not saying there isn’t a problem with moving a blocs project to another drive, but I’m not sure why your projects didn’t come up and mine did. Maybe someone else has an idea of what the problem is.

Good Luck in resolving this. :slight_smile:

Thx.

Paul

1 Like
4

This is the most important thing to do with Blocs.
Most problems occur when people add images from different folders to the Asset Manager and then move the original images to another place.

5

This is an issue that simply needs the application of “Best Practice” in web design. Whenever you start a new website project (regardless of the application you use), you should start by creating a project folder (the desktop is the best place to create it during development - it can always be moved later). Within the project folder create an “assets” folder. Next, move or copy any image or video assets you may wish to use into the assets folder.

When you start your new Blocs project, save it to the project folder. When you add assets to the blocs project via the asset manager, ONLY take assets from the assets folder. If you wish to use an asset that hasn’t been moved or copied to the assets folder, ALWAYS move or copy them into the assets folder before importing them into Blocs.

When you’ve completed your project, you can move the whole project folder anywhere you like on your computer, to another computer or to an external drive. The assets required for the project will simply go along for the ride and will always be available when the project file is opened again.

If you think about it, this is the logical thing to do. If you simply start a project and then start plucking assets from different locations on your computer system, you effectively create a path to each individual asset within the project file so that Blocs knows where to find the asset. Clearly, if you subsequently move, or delete a particular asset, blocs won’t be able to find it. It’s like saving a word processing document to a specific location on your computer. If you subsequently move the file and then use the WordProcessor’s recent file list to open the project, it will fail because it’s no longer in the original location. So, good practice is the way to go - its been around virtually since web development began - even in the earliest versions of DreamWeaver.

Of course, there have been some WYSIWYG web development tools where you had the option of embedding assets into the project file itself. However, this became unpopular because project files grew so large they became extremely slow to load and cumbersome to use. Such options are very rarely seen in today’s world of web development applications.

3 Likes
6

Thanks everybody for all your feedback!

Yes, this problem has been addressed in the past. To the best of my knowledge the problem was also verified by Norm and supposedly addressed in a previous update. (At least that’s my recollection)

Best practice: I have been using the suggested “Best Practice” for many years before Blocs, and continue to do so with Blocs. The fact is, this did not work in this case. For those of you that have not had any problems I’m happy that you don’t have the stress I had yesterday.

To show how I set up folders when I build a site, please take a look at this screenshot:

blocs-0
blocs-0.png1000×557 63.7 KB

All assets are in the assets folder. JS & CSS in their appropriate folders. The Blocs file is in the same parent folder as the assets sub-directory.

Here is a screenshot showing what I see when I open the blocks file:

blocs-1
blocs-1.png2077×1044 69.6 KB

Strange: I can see the image in the page thumbnail, but not on the page, nor in the Asset Manager:

blocs-2
blocs-2.png2077×1044 130 KB

this is a preview:

blocs-3
blocs-3.png2077×1044 42.5 KB

And another thing: I rebuilt the file by manually adding the background images and other missing items. Now when I preview a page, the same asset is listed twice in the CSS:

blocs-4
blocs-4.png2077×1044 476 KB

This also kind of sucks, because at some point, another developer will be also working on the code.

7

So sorry you’re having these problems. :frowning: When viewing the image assets in the Asset Manager, can you right click on an asset and see what it’s path is. Does it look right? Also, can you copy the project files from the external drive to the internal drive on the new computer (perhaps in the Documents folder) and run from there? Just wondered.

8

Thanks, Pruthe for taking the time to help! I will try that at a later date, thanks!

9

Also make sure Blocs is run from the applications folder on your Mac and that this (applications) folder resides on the same HD as the main OS.

MacOS becomes more and more strict with regards to loading resources externally, so it’s a battle to keep it working smoothly across various setups.

Coming soon
In the very near future I’ll be adding an option to embed images into Blocs projects, so they will become part of the project code, this has various pros and cons but if you don’t intent to update the images outside of Blocs it will address all of these issues and cause less problems when working between Macs. It’s a more (PowerPoint/ keynote) kind of workflow regarding image assets.

3 Likes
10

You’re welcome @gary. :slight_smile:

Btw, if you hadn’t yet seen, I did find the below post where @Norm discusses needing to create a temp working area when using project assets on external drives because of a quirk in MacOS.

I did verify that this temp area usage does occur when using my external drives with blocs project files. FWIW, I’m thinking it’s probably simpler/safer (using the current version of Blocs) to copy any external drive project files into an internal drive user area of the new computer, make the blocs edits, then copy them back to the external drive when done. That way the Blocs app is running more in it’s default way when using projects assets instead of needing the copy to the temp area.

Have a good day!

Paul

11

FYI: I copied the project folder including all assets from an internal hard drive on my iMac to an external Samsung SSD drive. Then copied the entire folder from my external drive onto the internal drive on my MacBookPro.

There may or may not be a workaround for this, but actually that’s not really the point. I *expect a software to be able to take care of the basics without me having to spend time researching and trying to find a workaround.

For example, if I copy a folder with an InDesign file and all it’s appropriate assets in the same way, this problem doesn’t occur.

@Norm: maybe one could think about a foolproof “Package and Export” feature similar to that found in InDesign where all assets are collected in a Folder, or even better, a ZIP file ??

1 Like
12

I find this problem strange, in particular I save all the projects I do with blocsapp inside a google drive folder (for desktop), this allows me to work on my macbookProo in my house, and save them, and the next day continue working on said project from my office in Imac, without any problem, without loss of files and etc, also on both computers I have installed the same brics and the same fonts, this ensures that the project works correctly, even with other projects that I have in my external hard drive, work correctly

This way works great for me!

Captura de Pantalla 2019-07-26 a la(s) 8.42.02 p. m..jpg1010×286 50.1 KB

1 Like
13

Hi @nelo!

This particular Google Drive feature appears to require a business G Suite (paid) account and usage of the Google Drive File Stream app. Is this correct? I currently have a Google Drive (paid) 100GB account, but not a G Suite account.

Thx.

14

hi, @pruthe

Not at all, google drive for desktop is for business account or personal account, just download google drive for desktop and go…

you can use both personal and business, nothing else is required, I’m glad you have a 100GB account!

using google drive for desktop is free of charge, no matter if you only have 15gb of space or 100gb, just download it, synchronize your google drive folder and you can work all on it, it’s like working on desktop, and when saving it is synchronized and lets you see the files on another computer! that is all!!

regards

15

Here’s a video to illustrate what is going on:

16

As promised Blocs v3.4 will allow you to embed assets into the actual Blocs project: https://twitter.com/blocsapp/status/1159114619279032321

3.4 Asset Embedding Features
• Embed individual assets.
• Embed all assets with bulk embed option.
• Enable embedding assets as default via project settings.

I think this will really help to cut down on the issues folks have with missing assets when working between Macs.

#BlocsRocks :sunglasses:

4 Likes
17

Also…

For anyone who likes to keep separate resources but needs a way to package everything up in a neat little bundle ready to move to another Mac, well, thats also taken care of in Blocs 3.4.

https://twitter.com/blocsapp/status/1159794189518954496

1 Like
18

As cool as that is dues to the brilliance of Norm it reeks that I will not be able to use it since Blocs 3.0.0 is as high as I can go, @Norm tell me it’s due to my OS X version (El Cap) and that with various problems.
I can’t even change a simple text element… it’s so frustrating!
The video show in order to make changes I must start the close project session and press cancel then go back and make the changes. :face_with_raised_eyebrow:
Video showing Problems with Blocs 3