Remove old products from the website

[fgs]

Is it possible in v9 to completely remove the old products I've deleted from my webspace without having to do this via an ftp program? We've recently had a few orders come through for products people have found on our websites via google for products we discontinued a while ago.

[pinbrook]

The safest way to do this is to FTP to the site and delete all HTML pages, then reupload.

[grantglendinnin]

Is it just me, or when a product is deleted within Actinic, on the next upload, the cat file will be removed, the html page, however, will stay on the server.

If somebody navigates to that HTML page (via external search engines, external links, etc) - if they then click the Buy button, they get the 'Error: Input is null' message.

This definitely happened just before Christmas on our site anyway, I have since removed the html page and redirected the now-deleted page to a more appropriate location on our site, which is what you ideally should be doing

[Rich Brady]

That's how I thought it worked too.

If people are buying old products from your site, I would check to ensure they have definitely been deleted from Actinic and then Refresh the site.

[pinbrook]

Is it just me, or when a product is deleted within Actinic, on the next upload, the cat file will be removed, the html page, however, will stay on the server.

thats how i understand it too.

So the best reply for OP is no, you must use FTP to delete HTML pages and then follow by refresh/upload to delete cat too.

[grantglendinnin]

That's how I thought it worked too.

If people are buying old products from your site, I would check to ensure they have definitely been deleted from Actinic and then Refresh the site.

On a more extreme level, if this still doesn't fix the issue, and the html files are being re-uploaded to the server once you have deleted them, purge your content, remove the files from C:/Program Files/Actinic v9/Site1/SiteHTML and refresh the site. Failing that, it's time for a call to Actinic support.

[demalpas]

None of these answers provide a robust solution to what must be a common problem for everyone running Actinic and it seems clear that several users are experiencing the same problem.

Can we please if possible have someone from Actinic Developers tell us what the solution is. I have spent hours this afternoon using an FTP program to delete obsolete html pages and images from the server. These pages go back over 3 years.

Surely there must be a better way than this!!

[leehack]

Once every 6 months, snapshot your site (all files being used get included). Repeat the process for safety. Then delete actinic off your system, delete all site information remnants. Then reinstall actinic and import snapshot. Purge all deleted items. That gives you a clean store.

Then at a quiet time for your site, ftp into the server, delete the contents of the cgi-bin and acatalog folder, then do a website refresh. Both your site and server are now spotless.

Should take about an hour to do on average, which once every 6 months seems reasonable time to spend housekeeping.

[demalpas]

Many thanks Lee - I was thinking over doing something very similar. We will take your advice and advise on results.

Still does not reduce the need for a proper Actinic solution for those not familier with FTP programs, file permissions etc. .... n'est-ce pas?

[TraceyHand]

Should take about an hour to do on average, which once every 6 months seems reasonable time to spend housekeeping.

ahhh..I remember the days when a full upload used to take under an hour!

that whole process (snapshot, import, remove from server, upload) would take me an entire DAY!

[Duncan Rounding]

Deleting all files from acatalog on the server can be quite difficult on a big site. Many FTP clients can't return all the files when asked for a 'list' and will time out. The only way to do it sometimes is to delete acatalog and then recreate the directory. This process alone can take a long time. I've done this on a site that had around >150000 files in acatalog and it took what seemed an age.

[nickcoleman]

Old pages

Once every 6 months, snapshot your site (all files being used get included). Repeat the process for safety. Then delete actinic off your system, delete all site information remnants. Then reinstall actinic and import snapshot. Purge all deleted items. That gives you a clean store.

Then at a quiet time for your site, ftp into the server, delete the contents of the cgi-bin and acatalog folder, then do a website refresh. Both your site and server are now spotless.

Should take about an hour to do on average, which once every 6 months seems reasonable time to spend housekeeping.

Sorry to reply to old thread, but is this still the case? I need an easier way to get rid of old files as our site changes frequently. Website refresh for us takes hours and Actinic should really take care of this housekeeping, or have I missed something?

Thanks

[leehack]

What are you trying to clear up Nick, can you be specific, nothing you do here will make a refresh any quicker, this is about spring cleaning as much as anything. Actinic does clear many of the files, there are certain situations such as page name changes where it does not track and i don't think you'd want it to anyway.

[nickcoleman]

What are you trying to clear up Nick, can you be specific, nothing you do here will make a refresh any quicker, this is about spring cleaning as much as anything. Actinic does clear many of the files, there are certain situations such as page name changes where it does not track and i don't think you'd want it to anyway.

To be specific, I seem to have a lot of old files in my acatalog directory from (a) deleted products (b) pages that I have changed their titles

(b) happens a lot because I am often changing page titles for SEO purposes.

I would like to get rid of these files without having to make the site unavailable by deleting the whole site and reloading.

The site is www.colemans-online.co.uk.

[leehack]

I'd recommend:

a) choose your least busy time (usually middle of night) and do a delete and refresh to get you back to square one
b) get your page names correct from the start, which will assist seo greatly

When you change page names, actinic will not keep a log of what it was and what it is now in my experience, so you will always have this problem if you do not setup pages correctly from the start i'm afraid. Reason it won't is probably because that page name may now be needed and indeed used on another page, so it could be deleting a required page.