Hi guys Im just about to update a site from Freeway 5 to Freeway 7. Before I do this is there anything to watch out for or is it just seamless. The site isnt too big page wise but does connect to an EE driven back end for data. The site is digital-watch.com. Thank you for any advice. regards Adam
Hi Adam,
Something that might be relevant is whether you are updating from Freeway 5 or Freeway 5.5. Personally, I don’t think you should have many problems, especially if you are currently using 5.5. It’s worth checking that text hasn’t overflowed (in case there are layout differences). I think Freeway 7 indicates overflowed text by putting a cross in the box icon in the Site panel.
Thanks Jeremy. My site is on 5.4.2 at the moment running on an old G5. Should I download the Freeway 5.5 and update the site with that before moving to 7? Again will there be any issues. Thank you for your time.
regards Adam
I don’t think you will gain anything by updating in two stages, although you could try this if you actually do run into problems. Keep a copy of your original document until you are sure that the transition has gone smoothly, and test everything in a browser.
That did go well Jeremy. Got everything into freeway 7 fine. It all looked as it should but when I uploaded I got this message on the front page
Exception Caught
There was a database connection error or a problem with a query. Log in as a super admin or enable debugging for more information.
mysqli_connection.php:117
Any ideas?
regards Adam
I’ve gone back to the G5 and uploaded again using 5.5 its all fine now. If I cant get it working with 7 how do I get a copy of 5.5 Jeremy. My serial number didnt work so Im only on a 30 day trial.
regards
Adam
It’s unlikely that Freeway did anything to do with MySQL. Do you have any Actions installed in Freeway 5.x that are not installed in Freeway 7? You may need to go over the instructions to install those specific Actions.
Freeway bends over backward to ensure that if you don’t have an Action installed in the application bundle, or Actions folder, and it is used in a document, that you can still use that Action through the document’s cached copy. But this does not always work as expected, owing to the wide variety of ways that Actions can interact with external files.
Some Actions require a very specific installation path, with sidecar files available at a specific directory offset (relative path) from the parent Action file. The cached version will not have all of that detail exactly equivalent. Your Action’s installation instructions will be able to help further in that case.
Walter
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Id forgotten about actions Walter. It does use some. The main one is probably the EE resources action that I can see and EE url fix. Do these actions need to be updated or can they still be used? Apologies for my rustiness its been a while.
Adam
Hi Adam,
See if you can get Freeway 7 working, following Walter’s helpful suggestions.
Finding a Freeway 5.5 serial number might be tricky. We haven’t sold Freeway 5.5 for a long time now, but if you get stuck, I’ll see what we can do.
Do other Freeway users use Freeway and Expression Engine together Jeremy? Im not sure EE resources has been updated for a long time I found it on Action Forge and looks like it only covers up to 2014 and Freeway 6.
regards
Adam
I don’t have any direct experience with EE, so I would say contact the developer directly. There was very little difference in how Actions were installed from about Freeway 4 onward. It had mostly settled down after the Mac OS X migration in 3.5. The Actions API (the commands exposed to Action developers) was similarly fairly stable. There were additions related to responsive design, but since your site would not have that, I imagine you should be fine following the original install directions.
Walter
As far as the version listed on ActionForge, that number is selected by the developer when they upload an Action. And so whenever the last upload happened, that developer would hopefully have tested on a number of versions and marked it appropriately. But they would never be able to add a Freeway version that wasn’t released at that point in time. They could come back later and mark an existing Action version as compatible with a newer version of Freeway if they wanted to, but in practice, most devs upload a new version and mark it up with the later version rather than editing past versions’ metadata.
Walter
In Freeway 7, in the actions section are the actions in bold missing?
I think bold means that an Action is used within the document. There should be a number saying how many times it has been used.
The first section in the Edit Actions dialog lists “Actions in Document”. These are Actions that are used within the document, but are not available outside it. If the EE Actions are listed here, this means that they haven’t been installed by Freeway, and (as Walter says) they might not work properly in some cases.
Generally, you should be able to install an Action by dragging it onto Freeway’s application icon (in the Finder). Freeway should then copy it to the Actions folder.
You could also try searching this forum for other posts about EE Actions, e.g. click on the Search icon at the top right of this window and search for “Expression Engine” or “EE Action”. I didn’t find anything very recent, but there were some discussions that might still be relevant.
Im struggling at the moment Jeremy. I’ll have a look again tomorrow as some things are working and others not. Is there any way to turn my original file back to 5.4 if I cant get a working version of 5.5. It said there was a back up created when I opened it but I cant find it. thank you again for your help.
regards
Adam
You can copy all the installed Actions from the G5 to your newer machine which will solve any potential issues with Actions not being fully installed.
On the G5, switch to Finder and open the Go menu, hold Option and choose Library. In the folder that opens, enter Application Support and find the Freeway folder in there. Inside that will be an Actions folder containing all the installed Actions.
Copy this Actions folder to the new machine, repeat opening Library and finding the Freeway folder, (I think it’s called “Freeway Pro” for Freeway 7) then move the old Actions folder into here. If the Actions folder already exists here, move the contents of the old Actions folder into the Actions folder here instead.
If everything else was fine uploading your site with Freeway 7, it’s likely this will solve the database error you were seeing before, probably caused by a missing PHP file the Action would normally upload.
Im struggling to find the Freeway Pro actions folder on my new machine. I’ve looked in Application support in my username but it only shows Freeway 5 and Freeway 4. Should Freeway 7 have made its own folder?
thank you Adam
I think i’ve worked out the action folder, if Im correct there isnt one in Freeway 7 you just drag the icon over the Freeway 7 app.
Anyway it looks like Expression Engine suite not longer works with Freeway 7. This is going to kill my site. Is there any way to add the code manually at the begining and end of an html box as the action would have done?
thank you
Adam
Hi Adam,
There is an Actions folder.
When you drag an Action onto Freeway in the Finder, it puts the Action in this folder.
I think the backup file that Freeway creates when it opens an old document has “[Saved]” in the title (I’ll check this when I have a moment - Freeway doesn’t run on my normal work machine). But it’s a good idea to make a copy first, as I suggested earlier.
[Actually, it appends “[FW6]” to the title - see below.]
One problem with Freeway 5.4 on newer versions of macOS is that upload won’t work. Apple removed the API that Freeway uses, and we rewrote the upload code for Freeway 5.5. You can get around this by using a third-party FTP app.
Jeremy
I created a Test document in Freeway 5.5 and opened it in Freeway 7. When I saved it in Freeway 7, the backup file was named “Test[FW6].freeway”