There are 6 html pages in my site folder that don’t have corresponding pages in my Freeway document. They are old (2009, 2010, 2011). I have republished the site using ‘publish everything’ and they are still there. Does this mean somewhere in my Freeway document there could be hidden code that corresponds to these pages and that’s why it keeps publishing them? If so, how would I find where it is? Can I delete them from the site folder without causing any problems? These pages show up in the Google search results which I do not want to happen.
Why not just clear out the complete site folder before you ‘publish everything’? Why would they cause problems if those ‘old’ pages aren’t used (anymore) by your current site/project? Take the plunge … move to trash.
I thought with ‘publish everything’ Freeway completely replaced everything in the site folder with only the files it needed from my Freeway document which is why I thought there might be some random html on one of my pages that I was missing.
I will delete everything in the site folder and try publish everything again and see what happens. Thanks for the response.
It is true, that publish everything works this way. It cleans all project-related files and forces FW to re-publish everything (no matter if changes or not). It’s possible do delete everything within the site-folder without worrying - FW will re-create everything needed.
###External Files
Freeway leaves external files untouched. This is cool, cause it enables you to deal with external files within the SiteFolder and on host. So if you deal with external files and folders - be careful with deleting stuff
###The Caveat
People often enough are not aware what they are doing. So I’d never recommend to delete files without knowing a bit more about them. Whatever you do, make a back-up of the site-folder and host-content, just in order to have a chance to get files back.
###Assumption
So how got those html-files “external” ones?
There is a thinkable scenario, such as a duplicated site-folder, then deleted pages within Freeway and AFTER deleting them, re-connected to the duplicated site-folder. In this case, the deleted html-files are existing ones - and therefor external. Freeway leaves them untouched - as well local and of course remote.
OK I deleted the site folder and created a new one and published - that deleted the old pages and updated the _siteinfo file to today’s date. But when I search via Google there are still some problems. There is a page that is designated as a test page that is nowhere in my current document. Here is a link:
That page is not on the server any more - 1 get a 404 File Not Found error.
As far as pages appearing within a Google search - I am afraid that will happen until the GoogleBot comes round and re-indexes your site. That might be a while!
I just had my web hosting company delete the test folder that was on their server.
Google has updated the search results page with the changes I’ve made but a link for that bad page is still showing up (the one that takes you to the 404 page) which makes me think somehow it is somewhere in my document even though there is no page for it. Ugh this is frustrating.
a link for that bad page is still showing up (the one that takes you to the 404 page) which makes me think somehow it is somewhere in my document
No - If your hosting company have only just deleted the test folder then you will have to wait until the GoogleBot comes around again to update its search results. It can take a while.
