Am a new webmaster at a company. They had a VSD site already up but the manager rebuilt the website to make it look like the original and I am not sure how it was done. Maybe the .vnu left with the previous webmaster? The previous .vnu is gone but I have all the pages and img's, they were all on the server. Everything except the .vnu! It is not stored on the server, only new ones created since.

Is there anyway that I can recreate it using the old files? Please, Please say YES!

If not, is there some way that I can copy the old page files into a new website so that I don't have to recreate EVERYTHING? Have tried to do it but not having a lot of luck.

TIA,

Mike

Sorry 'bout the double post.

Hiya Mike,

I'm afraid you're out of luck on that issue. The .vnu file cannot be "re-created" at all other than to copy one to make another copy. It can only be created via VSD and files cannot be imported back into it or added to one once they are outside the file. If you don't have the .vnu file that goes with that site you have only 2 options. Find the guy that was doing it and ask him where the file is, redo it again to regain the .vnu file, or edit the files using other programs and editing the code rather than visual (unless you have some other editor that will do visual editing of html files of course).

Sorry to be the barer of bad news, hopefully you'll be able to find that file and continue on instead of starting over or editing code if you aren't a coder.

Do you have a link to the site? If so we might have a better idea on if your site can be copied to another place. I'm guessing if it was done in VSD that the answer is definitely yes, just have to make sure you get all the files that are needed. Can be a heavy job depending on the structure of the site, but doable in most cases.

Ouch!!!

Ok, the site is www.winewaywines.com

My host is Startlogic and I was checking site stats as we run a weekly "Happy Hour" wine tasting with appetizers and I was trying to get a feel for how many hits we had against our happy hour page when I noticed some other pages had been hit that were not among the pages that I was familiar with, as in not ones that I had worked on. When I clicked on one in the stats page, it came up and was a page that I had on my list to re-create. I then started going thru the navigation that was present on the "new" (actually "old") page and here was the complete website with all of the pages that I had yet to recreate.

I am thinking that the other person who had "re-created" the website had somehow blown away the .vnu on the local computer AND ON the server.

Can I create a new webpage in VSD with the name of an "old" webpage, save the files and close VSD, then replace the webpage in the website directory with the actual "old" webpage? .

Wish me luck!

Mike

Well that didn't seem to work out to well.

Guess I will try to figure out how to replicate the 60 some pages with over 300 images of the old site. Or just pitch VSD as a very poorly designed and implemented product

I have done some coding in HTML. I have retired after almost 40 years in IT and this reminds me of going back to the days of programming in Assembler because we had very few compilers back in the "good ole days". Having in many cases to "reverse engineer" programs when we didn't have the original code because the "Source Code Tape" (anyone remember that stuff? ) had a read-error on it.

Really wish that there was some way to bring old web page files into VSD so that the site could be recompiled. That would be one heck of a good feature. In the "good ole days" we would not have purchased a compiler or assembler package that did not have that capability. We always tried to avoid applications that had a "single point of failure" aspect to them. Guess the standards are not the same today.

Sorta tough on a guy who has been a project manager for 20 years and when his computer breaks now has to say "hey, you, 17 yr old kid, come here and fix my computer! " That is one of the prices that you pay when you get out of the tech end and get into management!

Thanks anyway, guess I am just screwed. Still can't imagine an application being designed in such a way that even though you have the entire, complete source code, you cannot recompile the application. That would have been totally unacceptable in the past, Had I known that, I would not have invested in this app to begin with and would have done a total re-write in something else where you could do such activities. That would actually have been easier.

Mike

But you don't have the source code so your analogy is flawed. VSD is a visual editor that stores your design in its own format. When you are done, it EXPORTS the HTML code for display. The HTML is the end product, not the source.

No WYSIWYG editor can take existing HTML and use it to build an internal graphically-based editing environment, the variables and branches would be impossible.

This is why it is important to BACK THINGS UP! As Spinny said, the output is already there. If you have the HTML pages and images, you are all set. Just use our HTML Editor or whatever and you can continue to modify your Website. This is not a FLAW in Visual Site Designer. If someone deletes a project file that contains all references to something a particular program needs; ours or some other program, that is problem the user created not the software.

If the Website was uploaded with version 6.06, then a copy of the VNU file is on your server in a folder called "Backups". If it was created with an older version, well you are pretty much SOL

Ok guys, let's not get our knickers in a knot.

Please don't scream at me, I didn't forget to back it up. I am just the guy who has to try to put someone else's screw up back together. The previous version was pre 6.x. Therefore, nothing in the sever backup directory except the new ones that have been partially restored.

I am not new to visual/gui programming. When I was in the development area, two other guys and I started the Advanced Technology Group at an international consulting firm when the first 4GL languages came out. I wrote courses on Object oriented analysis and design for internal use and initiated an internal program to promote the use of 4GL's. Brought in Powerbuilder, SQLWindows (later became Centura) and Smalltalk, Smalltalk with Frames, and the original C. These were the leading edge technologies at the time and required a huge paradigm shift to understand. You guys may have never even heard of them because some of them were probably being used before you were born but are the building blocks of today's technology that you are so proficient in .

So, what you are telling me is that the "Files" or the pages that are stored are OUTPUT rather than INPUT. Ok, I can be one with that. So basically the "Source" file is essentially embedded in the .vnu file, if I understand you correctly. And the "Files" are the html code that is loaded to the host for use. Please excuse my use of the archaic term of Source files but I beg your indulgence here.

So, since the previous OUTPUT files are still there, you are saying that I can pop into them and modify the HTML to update the links and to modivy it, but would have to do all maintenance from this point on with plain, old fashioned HTML. They cannot be reversed into a .vnu and must be maintained manually.

Ok, fair enough. As I said earlier, I am up the proverbial creek without the necessary paddle. My source is gone, for all intents and purposes. Now that you have given me an insight into the architecture of your product I have a better understanding of the manner in which it performs.

Is there somewhere that I can go to understand this a little more? I really can't find where the architecture is explained except for one brief reference in the help pdf where it says that the website is saved in the .vnu file. That really doesn't tell me much but thanks to Scott's message, I think that I have a better understanding. I retract my comment about the lack of standards since it was made because I was ignorant of the architecture.

So, I guess that my choices are to totally start over from scratch or to go the HTML route which means that the VSD product is now totally unusable from this point on for this particular website, if I understand the architecture properly. At least that is what I infer from my flawed and incomplete comprehension.

Thanks for the info. I really do appreciate the increase in my knowledge and the decrease in my ignorance.

Mike

Yes, you have that all correct. Since you have no VNU file, there really isn't anything you can do now unless you find a copy of the VNU file someplace. If you look in that files folder, your entire Website is located there. Basically in Visual Site Designer when you click "Save", you writes out a VNU file that is used by the program itself and all the output files that would be uploaded to your Website. Since you have the output, you can make any changes you like to those files.

I would still check on our server to see if there is a Backups folder. You maybe able to find a copy of the VNU file there.

Sorry if I sounded abrupt, but the topic of whether one can reverse-import raw HTML into the VSD environment comes up often enough to make it a candidate for #1 FAQ item, and sometimes it seems people misapprehend the magnitude of what that sort of operation would entail.

I'm a senior software engineer in my day job and I learned FORTRAN IV on punch cards, so I can relate to your feelings about needing a 17-year-old to configure a PC these days.