Deleted Products but no deleted files

[CreativeNRG]

Another problem I am now encountering with Actinic v7.

I have deleted products from the Catalog and they were not removed from the site so I purged the catalog and did another upload - still not deleted from the site. I did a full web refresh late last night and guess what - it still did not delete the files relating to the deleted items in the store of which there is about 100 or more products. So guess what happens last night, someone places an order for a deleted product and I get an email from the site owner asking how this happened(not happy). Short of deleting the entire remote website(causing downtime for my client) and then doing an upload how do i rectify this problem as a matter of urgency ?

Why did the Actinic developers not think of deleting the pages relating to deleted products? It's common sense that if they are deleted in the catalog they are certainly not wanted on the site and should therefore be deleted there.

If anyone knows of a less drastic solution to this I would appreciate the advice.

[Bruce]

Are you sure the site is being updated? If a product is deleated on the catalog then on doing an update of the site the page is generated without the deleted item.

Kind regards,

[CreativeNRG]

That may well be the case but what I am saying is that Actinic does not delete the file on the remote site so any search engine links to the page will allow people to order the item.

[Duncan Rounding]

I've changed pages many times and never had pages left on the server. I thought Actinic purges files that are not needed when it purges before uploading changes. I presume Actinic records what it has previously sent - if this gets confused then pages may get left on the server I suppose.
Can Support/Bruce comment on this - How does Actinic manage the files in acatalog in this respect?

Duncan R

[Bruce]

Creative,

I am checking this with Development at the moment and will get back to you on their response.

When "Web|Update Website" is requested the following actions are performed
in sequence.

*Checking Catalog...*
The catlog BLOBs are generated at this phase excluding the search indices.
IOW all the configuration information (settings, online prompts, etc) are
generated. All the .cat (section information) and most of the .fil
(configuration information) files are generated at this time. The
generated files are saved to the site directory.

*Checking HTML pages...*
The Catalog related HTML files are generated at this time. EC goes section
by section and generates the HTML files for all the sections. The
auxiliary HTML files (HTML templates used for the cart or checkout, search
page, site map, etc) are also generated at this time. The generated pages
are saved to SiteHTML folder.

*Checking brochure pages...*
If brochure is enabled the related HTML files are generated at this phase.
Otherwise the phase is hidden. EC goes page by page and generates all the
brochure pages. The generated pages are saved to SiteHTML folder.

*Checking search indices...*
EC generates the binary index file for online search at this phase. The
search index is saved to the site directory.

*Reviewing files...*
EC checks if there were a previous upload and if so determines which files
have changed and should be uploaded (by using the file dates). IOW the
previous phases generates all the files which are reviewed at this phase
to determine which ones should be uploaded (unless the refresh is not
forced by using Web|Refresh).

*Sending base files...*
EC creates an ftp connection and checks if the remote directory structure
is OK. If the required folders are not in place then creates the missing
folders (e.g. applet or digital download folders). If the remote directory
structure is OK then the base files (perl scripts) are uploaded to the
server. When the upload is done a new ftp session is created and the file
permissions are adjusted as required.
/Only ftp is used for upload at this phase./
/This phase doesn't exist in Host mode (the scripts are on the server)./

*Purging files...*
EC investigates the acatalog and the DD folders on the server to find any
files uploaded previously but not required ATM. If such a file found on
the server the file is removed.
v6 uses session files which are holding a lot of configuration sensible
information. If the sensible parts of the configuration (network settings)
have been changed then the session files are also removed at this phase.

*Sending catalog files...*
The content of the acatalog directory and the applet files are uploaded at
this phase. All the HTML files (catalog and brochure), BLOBs, images and
other files are upload to the acatalog directory. The files are uploaded
via ftp by default. If the files can not be uploaded by using ftp then EC
tries to upload them via http (by using the already uploaded
PerlScript.pl). Actinic Host uses http for upload by default.
When a bulk of files are uploaded a new ftp session is opened for
permission setting. The permission setting automatically done by
PerlScrip.pl if the upload uses http.

*Uploading Digital Download Files...*
If Digital Download (v6) is enabled then the DD files are uploaded in this
separate phase. The methods mentioned above (Sending catalog files) apply
here.

*Merging incremental updates at the web site*
There are a few large binary files (search index, customer account
details) used in catalog. It would be quite ineffective to upload them in
case of any small change. Therefore EC keeps a copy of these files from
the previous upload (if there were any) and compares to the current one.
Then only the differences of the previous and the current version of the
files are uploaded to the server. These files (the previously upload full
file and the actually uploaded differential file) are assembled by
MergeDiff.pl at the last phase.

Will keep you updated.

Kind regards,

[CreativeNRG]

If it helps - there is a whole section being left on the server but not linked to from any of the pages and you can see that from this page > http://www.dartington.co.uk/acatalog/Nachtmann.html. The section information is not being added to the SectionList generated by Actinic as you can see on this example http://www.dartington.co.uk/acatalog...g-Dolphin.html.

[Bruce]

Thanks for the links.

[Bruce]

Can you check on your server to see what permissions have been given to the 'acatalog' folder and check the permissions on the Nachtmann.html page. This problem looks like it could be down to permission issues on the files, if the files have 644 permissions then Actinic is not able to rewrite / purge the page and hence it remains on the server. Ideal permissions are 777.

Kind regards,

[I-CC]

Actinic seems to have a tendancy to promote 777 permissions on files and folders, but caution should be advised when ever settings files and folders to this level, as is it possible in some instances for these files and folders to be written to and altered from outside of your website, with permissions on 755 more appropriate a permission and a lot safer as it does not provide world write abilities.

Just me 2 pennies worth

[CreativeNRG]

Actinic Not Deleting Files

Can you check on your server to see what permissions have been given to the 'acatalog' folder and check the permissions on the Nachtmann.html page. This problem looks like it could be down to permission issues on the files, if the files have 644 permissions then Actinic is not able to rewrite / purge the page and hence it remains on the server. Ideal permissions are 777.

My FTP software reports 644 permissions as you indicated, however the host is a windows machine and I can therefore not update the permissions myself as I could if it was on a unix box. Are you saying we need to talk to the host to have the permissions updated and if so what do they need to be on a windows server so that I can forward the relevant information on?

[Bruce]

For a Windows server the permissions need to be

Owner : Read, write, Execute
Group : Read, Execute
Public: Read Execute

These permissions are identical to those of the cgi-bin so should be fairly simple to do. Please make sure that they allow these permissions to files within the acatalog folder.

As support@Techno rightly says, you do not need to give the world permission to write to your folders

Kind regards,

[Bruce]

Creative,

Can you tell me if at any time you tried out Actinic in Test Mode and tried this scenario...

Switch to Test Mode
Delete a section
Update site
Switch to Production Mode
Update site - Actinic does a full upload

It is important to understand that Actinic does not get the directory list to determine which files should not be on the server. Instead it keeps track of every file that it has uploaded and when the file is no longer required it will be deleted from the server. if the 'FileList is' table does not reference any files for 'Nachtmann' for example, so far as the application is concerned the file 'Nachtmann.html' does not exist on the server and therefore will never attempt to delete it.

This is a bug as the 'FileList is' table for the 'Production Site' is not preserved.

Kind regards,

[demalpas]

We are having this very same problem - namely that when pages are deleted in Actinic and a site upload is done, the deleted page or pages remain on the server. Of course they then get into search engines - e.g. Google - people find the page click on it and then of course are able to order a product that does not exist.

This is plain stupid and there must be a foolproof way provided by Actinic to prevent this happening. The solution should delete obsolete files including images when a full upload is performed.

I tried setting the page permissions to 755 on the server as suggested but it made no difference at all.

Does anyone have the answer please to this program other than suggesting manual deletion at the server level?

[DiskDepot]

We are having this very same problem - namely that when pages are deleted in Actinic and a site upload is done, the deleted page or pages remain on the server.

Yes, we've had this problem on occasion in the past (though not that often), even though IIRC we hadn't changed the permissions before or after.

Although Actinic seems to delete files in general, would I be right in guessing that if it fails to delete them the first time or can't "find" them, it assume they're gone and doesn't try again?

[Duncan Rounding]

Section pages deleted in Actinic, do remain on the server. There are a number of threads relating to this including how to go about cleaning out files on your server.