I tried using nPower last night

[mav91]

Mixed results in an hour of trying to use it last night.

I've never used it before, but to edit files in nPower, you have to generate a .nfc file. But the documentation movie and info doesn't really explain a few steps/settings you need on your NOF file to generate a .nfc file.

If I understand it right, you have to have NOF file set to generate versions, which involves some settings like sending a file to website directory on the web. (again, not explained very well in the documentation in my opinion).

And then you have to go to File--versions manager and then "Export..." which generates the .nfc, which is what nPower works from apparently and hung up once or twice until I got one of the directory settings correct. But when I tried to actually edit the .nfc file, it hung up on my PC or wouldn't launch nPower on the two times I tried to launch the file. But since it seems like NOF and nPower need access to the web to grab various files or whatever, I'm gonna go back and check all my settings. Seems like one of the steps did take a few minutes to execute so maybe I wasn't patient enough. Or my 256MB memory isn't enough. Or dial-up isn't a good choice for nPower. Or one of my settings is wrong. I'm sure if work with it enough, I'll figure it out.

But I'm going to try setting up a totally new test website, clear the version data out of my version directory on my website and see if that helps. 

But on the subject of versions, how is that different that backups? How often does it generate backups? How often does it generate versions? I'm not totally clear on the real difference between these two concepts.

[Micah Klesick (Admin)]

Nothing on NPower is explained well, and even the support is not that great.  I still have not figured it out.  So if you do, post a tutorial, please.

[mav91]

Progress to report...

I started with a new website...

was able to use NOF10 to FTP it, create a .nfc file, open that file with nPower, and publish it. Kind of.

The biggest problem I'm having is getting the "directory" (NOF FTP setting) and "path (or relative path)" on the version manager to put my files in the right place. Once I figured that out, kind of, now I'm having trouble figuring out how to FTP it from NOF10. It's like when I ftp it with the "send version manager update" or whatever box checked, it doesn't send the latest version. If I ftp it without it checked, it goes into the correct directory fairly quickly. But I'm not sure if it's sending the version correctly. I just need  another couple of hours (?) to figure it out I guess. And then when I published the minor changes I did in nPower, it didn't send them correctly at all and I got a message basically saying 31 files couldn't be found or something. Fun.

The main thing to remember, it seems, is that nPower (and NOF10) is slooow when it comes to publishing. If you're just FTPing, it goes quick and it gives you a readout of what files it's sending. But when either program is sending the version info (basically just a zipped .nod file), there's no indicator of what it's doing, which makes it seems like it's timing out. But have patience. It's doing something, but I had several minutes to wait so I warmed up some frozen sausage biscuits in the microwave and came back and a few minutes later it was done. The .nod file was about 1/2 MB big, zipped. And when it's checking or retrieving versions, it's grabbing and/or sending that file. If you're on dial-up, it's gonna take a few minutes. nPower also took a full minute or two to open...

I still need to figure out the paths for version manager and ftp (still not clear on whether I need to call it "./", "../", etc. for each setting. For testing purposes, I was wanting to put the new site in a subdirectory called 'abc'--like "www.mysite.com/abc" and the version info in "mysite.com/abcversion". But how to set it to do the subdirectory on each, the documntn isn't clear, and it seems version manager settings and basic FTP settings are slightly different for each directory, and considering each is supposed to go in a different directory and of course everyone's web host can be a little different (I use godaddy, but their documentn wasn't much help either). Shouldn't be this tough, ya know?