S.O.S Almost all images gone from RW /Stacks project this morning

Im posting this in a panic … then I’’ sit down and look on all forums for similar problem… but im so up against the gun and am desperate for a quick fix.
Using RW8.9.4 and stacks as I have done for many many years.

A few weeks ago many images vanished from my project as I was building it. From different stacks on different pages . eg: Shutter stack gallaries and Impact banners.
I should have got to the bottom of why they vanished but instead re added the images and got going again because I was in a rush. Now … at a very crucial stage and many many hours and pages later … woke up this morning to most images in the project missing ! Some pages are still ok but most have zero images… no idea why some still ok and others not.
I know its a RW and stacks conflict … have left a message for Isaiah … Im absolutely desperate to fix asap as I need to make crucial changes to the site … but cant republish until I add ALL the images back in. I cant use a Time MAchine version because they have missing images too.
I will now scour through all posts to try and find similar problems but if anyone can help even a tiny bit I’d be so grateful … totally paniced and feel violently ill! (I have not upgraded RW )

Check the online server with a FTP app. The published images are most probably still there in some pagename/files subfolders. Which won’t fix your project unfortunately, but still you might be able to recover the images from the published location. Hope this helps.

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Thanks Jannis.

Yes Im going to start adding them all back in.

And then: backup backup backup.

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Yes. How do you recomend B/U ? The timemachine version was screwed too. I’d love to know why!

There are a few issues here … some of which @Jannis already addressed.

First, are you using the newest Stacks 5? Isaiah thinks the bug that causes your problem was fixed in the latest stacks. If “no” then upgrade!

Second, do you take advantage of the RW option, within Publishing preferences, to backup your project? If not, set that up right away! You’ll probably want to set backup frequency to Once a Day, but you could do more often if warranted.

Third, a trick I use is in how I name my project files. I only do this for websites that are very critical and often experience changes … so I don’t do this with all websites. Essentially I date-stamp them. So instead of naming as “my-website.rw8” I’ll name as “my-website-2022-11-01.rw8”. If the next key work was done today then I’ll save as “my-website-2022-11-17.rw8”. All of these are backed up to my server. So I end up with a series of date-stamped versions of my website on the server. It can be a real time saver.

Fourth, and not for all, but for over 10 years now I don’t place images inside my RW project. I put them on my server in a dedicated folder using Transmit. Then I copy the full URL of each image and use that URL within Stacks.

Fifth, go to Advanced preferences. There’s a place where you can choose for Site Resources: copy into the document or leave in place. I’d suggest NEVER EVER choose “leave in place” as I think RW/Stacks can easily lose track of where your images and other things are located. That’s just asking for trouble. Nothing bad can happen in some cases, but the odds are likely against you.

Hopefully this gives you some extra things to consider. Sorry you are going through so much pain with this.

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