Hi All,

I'm opening this thread after reading a similar one from a few years ago that frankly didn't provide a detailed enough solution to help us.

Unfortunately, our "marketing" computer has gone haywire and we can't get it to boot. We've managed our company VSD website from this computer since launching our business two years ago. Now, we're in a panic over how to access/update the site.

Fortunately, we have been able to salvage all of the files from the broken computer's C drive and we have copied them to an external hard drive in a folder we named "Old C Drive."

We're trying to figure out what are next steps are. I assume we're going to have to first purchase the latest version of VSD and install it in a new place? Then what? I've read in numerous threads that unless the VSD files on the hard hard drive (2nd location, new computer, etc.) perfectly mirror the directory paths of all of our website's graphics and docs (pdf, excel downloads, etc.) that were on the broken computers VSD file, the files will essentially disappear. It's going to be virtually impossible for us to recreate these paths. I assume copying the files to the hard drive doesn't preserve the directory path?

Is there any easy way for us to simply edit text on the site without disturbing the graphics as already uploaded to our server and functioning on the current site? I've read a little bit in some threats about the distinctions between re-syncing a VSD site vs. only uploading changes. Is there any opportunity for us here?

We can't risk attempting some solution that will be anything less than 100% successful. We can't have visitors land on a messed-up site with no way for us to fix it.

We can probably get by for a few weeks without editing the site, but there's important time-sensitive info that we routinely update a couple of times per month. We'd love to keep working with CC, but we fear we're going to have to hire someone to build us a new WP site asap if we can't find a cost effective way to save the current site.

In a similar thread from 01/08, Henny van Leusden, shared the following email from CC representative Orlando Perez, but we still don't understand what we need to do. Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Tim

"Hello Henny,

The problem is not only that the images are on both computers, but that you are moving the project from one computer to another. You will need to keep the project on one computer, or you will receive that error. This is because the images have different file path locations on either computer. If you want to switch the same project from one computer to the other there is only solution that we have found that works so far. That would be to have an external hard drive, or usb drive with enough space to handle the amount of images/files for your website, rename the drive to an unordinary name such as drive R:, then place all of your files in a folder on that drive. This is so that it will not be able to change the file path when you move from one system to another."

Thank you,

-------------------------------------
Orlando Perez
CoffeeCup Software Inc.
An Internet 500 Company
http://www.coffeecup.com
Phone: 866-734-HTML (4865)"

Hi Timothy,
You wont need to repurchase the software. At the top of this page click on the triangle next to "Your Account". Now click on "Your Purchases" and download VSD from the list of apps you own. After you get it installed post back and we can give you some more instructions on how to get most if not all of your site back.
Take a look at this page before you post. It has a few options for you to try.
http://www.coffeecup.com/help/articles/ … bly-wrong/
If you have all the files you may be able to bring them back by copying the VSD mysitename_website folder back to the VSD folder and opening the vnu that VSD uses. Then when it opens an files it says are missing you can retrieve and put them in their proper place or re-add them using the "Add files" tool.
As far as making sure everything works correct on the server I would think about publishing the site to a subfolder for testing. If every thing looks good, you can change your ftp settings to the root of your site.

I had an identical problem. My laptop fried (but not the hard drive). I have re-installed VSD on the new laptop and connected the hard drive from the old laptop to the new one. It is now an F: drive instead of the C: drive. I am not sure which file I need to try and restore the data.

Read the article that Eric linked to. It explains it all.

http://www.coffeecup.com/help/articles/ … bly-wrong/

Eric,
Many thanks for your help. I checked out the link you provided, and despite SirAGE's opinion, I couldn't make any sense of the scenarios explained. When we download VSD again, should we save it to the hard-drive of the new computer, or save it on the external drive where we have all of our VSD program files stored from the old computer? I'm sorry for being so ignorant about all of this -- hence, my use of VSD I guess.
Thanks again,
Tim

From one VSD user to another !!!

Personally i would start from a new instal of the VSD program in your new pc installed as VSD does it as standard.

Then copy your VSD content from your external hard drive to a new desctop folder (preferably named as before) if not call it something like October 2012 from old pc

Then open the vnu file of the original website BUT FROM THE NEW FOLDER YOU CREATED ON YOUR NEW DESCTOP by double clicking it, and it should (PRAY NICELY) open up your website complete with the content, images files etc.

Now do a save as and re name it something like New install of name...website Oct 2012 and place it in an entirely new folder so you know this is what to use in future (IE) new website after crash Oct 2012

Once your up and running you could probably do a back up, and then either delete the old ones or do what i do, and rename the folders Xwebsite by putting an X infront easily removed if you need to re use them.

Bit amateurish, but its what this amateur would do

Thank you, Viv.

So, we purched both a new computer and a 1TB external hard-drive. We were able to copy the hard-drive (including all of our VSD projects and images) from our old broken computer to the external hard drive. We saved the entire old hard-drive in a folder on the external drive that we named "R". We then hooked the external drive up to our new computer and felt confident that all of our files were rescued. We then purchased the latest edition of VSD and saved the software program to the external drive in a "R" sub-folder that appeared to be relative all of the other VSD project files on the old computer. Fortunately, it appears when we open both VSD and our "project file" of our current site from the external drive, all of the files seem to be there!
While this is great news, we're still terrified over the thought of uploading project changes to our server out of fear that something will go wrong and our website will either appear messed up or dissapear. Part of this is due to the unfamiliar configuration of the latest version of VSD. Typically, we would just "re-sync the website" anytime we made changes. On the new interface, it appears "re-sync" is "grayed out", meaning we can't click on it. We're not sure how to configure our server settings and upload the site. Any help will be greatly appreciated!
Best,
Tim

The best way to make sure that you don't "lose" information is to back it up. That should be secondary to nothing when you're overwriting files and especially when you're concerned as you are on this. Back up all the files on your server and that way if something happens you can always put it back.

If you are a registered user there's no need to repurchase any version of CC software that you currently own. Just login to your CC account and download it from the list. https://www.coffeecup.com/help/myproducts/
If you have concerns about your site being messed up after a major file recovery the best thing to do is to change your ftp setting to publish to a sub-folder for testing. For example if your ftp setting for publishing to the root of your site use to be public_html/ then I would change it to public_html/test/. This way you can check your site for errors before overwriting all your current content.