Updating Templates

[somestrangeflea]

indextemplate.html is in my workspace folder. Every time my comic updates, this file is checked for any changes, and, if there are any, AutoKeen parses the KeenTags and saves the new homepage as index.html in the public_html folder.

dailytemplate.html is essentially the same as the above, except it is for my individual comic pages, as opposed to my homepage. Changes to this file will result in all previously-existing comic pages to be changed.

If the above is all true (which I'm currently unsure about, hence why I posted it), then I have a problem.
Changes to my dailytemplate.html aren't being reflected in my comic pages, even after running regular and full manual updates.

[Dr Neo Lao]

Both your first statements are correct - that's how the system works.

If you are running updates and you don't see any changes, check to make sure that your browser is looking at the latest version on the server and not the cached version on your computer. The simplest way to do this is to refresh the page or look at the site from another computer.

[somestrangeflea]

If you are running updates and you don't see any changes, check to make sure that your browser is looking at the latest version on the server and not the cached version on your computer. The simplest way to do this is to refresh the page or look at the site from another computer.

Yup, I've been refreshing and hard refreshing, and nothing new's appearing.

[Dr Neo Lao]

It is possible, though unlikely, that there is something wrong with your dailytemplate.html file. We used to get a lot of people accidentally naming them .htm or .HTML - neither of which will work.

For the time being, I'd advise just uploading your comics as normal and see if the problem persists.

[Samuli]

Just wanted to let you know I have a similar problem - manual updating of my site doesn't work. I have tried many times with all types of updates but mainly full update. This is because I had to erase my whole comic (as described in The Step-By-Step-Guide "the unwanted first page"). All files in the "workspace/comics" folder and "public_html/images" should be in order as well as my templates.

When I try to initiate the manual update I get into the update queue and siteadmin shows the pending update. However, when I look back after a while the queue has gone to 0, there are no pending updates but nothing has changed in the "public_html/comics/" or "public_html/d". I am a newbie though, so I might have misunderstood something but I did follow the tutorials as well as I could.

Right now I am waiting for the daily update to see if that works.

EDIT: No, the automatic daily update does not work either. I've made a lot of changes to the templates and pages in a short time. Could this have locked the system somehow?

[Aerones]

I am also having an updating problem with my html pages. It appears to be similar to what was described above. I can run a full update once per day and no other updates seem to trigger after the first update. This wouldn't be a problem, but fixing a quick typo in the html takes a full day to correct this way (I'm still in the process of setting up my site). I've done the whole hard refresh thing, but more importantly, after the update says it's gone through in siteadmin, I'll log in via ftp and look at the html files in public_html themselves. They are unchanged.

As a side note, running an update also does not remove files from public_html that I've deleted from my workspace (and I lack permissions to edit/delete files in public_html manually). So, for example, I accidentally uploaded my html files as .htm instead of .html when I first uploaded the files. I renamed them in the workspace to .html to conform with the indextemplate needing to be .html, and now I have two copies of all of these files in public_html (so, example, characters.htm and characters.html, as well as email.htm and email.html...) It's been this way for about a week now, so I am relatively certain the autokeen script isn't checking for deleted files.

Yesterday, after fixing a bug in my dailytemplate.html file, I ran an update and nothing happened. I wound up editing the html files in /public_html/d/ manually to correct these mistakes. I won't know until tomorrow if the dailytemplate works on new comics (it should update on Monday here).

In all, the problem is more inconvenient than critical, but I've been reading a lot of posts of this type here and there over the last week or so, and I wanted to add my experiences to the list.

EDIT:
Ok, the next comic cycled in properly, so that's not a problem... Although this was the automated part. I can't vouch for if it would have properly applied edits to all of the /public_html/d/ files or not since I fixed them manually yesterday when the full update didn't fix them.

[Samuli]

I managed to get one manual update through today as well. At first, the manual update did not work. Then I added a page to the comic and tried to do a full update. That worked. Of course, I had a typo in one of the templates so I wanted to do the same again. No luck, and even adding another page to the comic didn't make it work.

Is there some kind of memory-effect in the Autokeen system so that it refuses to process pages it has processed before? That would account for why I couldn't do a full update into an emptied (of comics and archive .html's) public_html. And if there are restrictions on the number of manual updates per day, that would explain why only one will work.

[Dr Neo Lao]

There's none of that which I'm aware of...

However, if you are going to trigger an update, then you have to have something new in the workspace side. So, for example, if you have uploaded a comic and a text file for today, realise that the text file had a typo then you would re-upload both the image and the text file to the workspace side and then trigger an update.

If you upload to the public_html side or don't have anything new in the workspace side then when the server looks at your account, it'll see nothing new, say "nothing to update" and then proceed to the next update. Nothing changed, but the server did "update" in the sense that it looked at the account.

[Samuli]

However, if you are going to trigger an update, then you have to have something new in the workspace side. So, for example, if you have uploaded a comic and a text file for today, realise that the text file had a typo then you would re-upload both the image and the text file to the workspace side and then trigger an update.

I understand. My situation is this: I wanted a new first page (to the comic - not index.html) so I:

1. cleared the public_html/comics section of .gif's and the d-folder of archive .html's. (I left the .htaccess file in place because I don't know what that does.)
2. I uploaded all my comic pages to workspace/comics.
3. I also made big changes to the html-templates.

However, the update came and went and still there was nothing on the public_html.

Then, because I didn't want my page to show missing links, I uploaded the old .gif's and .html's to public_html. Now, I've given up on trying to get a clean update and a different first page, but what is bothering me is that even the manual index update does nothing (I have refreshed). What I do is:

A. Edit the templates (indextemplate.html, dailytemplate.html) in Dreamweaver CS4
B. Replace the templates in "workspace" with my edited templates
C. Trigger an update (index or regular depending on what I edited)
D. Wait until the update has disappeared from Siteadmin
E. Refresh the browser repeatedly and if I don't see the changes I made:
F. Check if the index.html has changed on the public_html side

The public_html side does not change regardless of what files I put on the workspace side. Except the once today, of course.

EDIT: At the moment regular update seems to work a few times a day IF I put an opened and resaved comic into the workspace/comics folder. Merely editing the templates does not seem to register as a change to Autokeen. Because results for the same actions are not consistent, it seems to me there is something glitching in the system but it's not broken down altogether.