13 Replies Latest reply: Feb 17, 2011 2:22 PM by MurraySummers RSS

    Ramdomly attempts to save normal HTML page as template

    JayNewWeb Community Member

      DW CS4.

       

      If I have a plain HTML file, such as one called index.html for instance, and I make changes and go to Save it, "sometimes" DW saves it just fine. But sometimes it attempts to save it as a template -- and won't let me save it in standard file format.

       

      I have to do Save As to create an alternate file, and do Save As to write that alternate file as the orignal filename (ie: index.html) that I wanted in the first place.

       

      And the behavior is intermittent. Sometimes is keeps doing it, and sometimes it won't do it at all. Even within the same site files.

       

      Any suggestions?

       

      Thanks!

        • 1. Re: Ramdomly attempts to save normal HTML page as template
          MurraySummers CommunityMVP

          If this is happening then the page you are trying to save IS a template.  Look at the code - you will see everytime that there is template markup in there!  How does this happen?  It can only happen by user error - by opening a template file, adding unique content to it, and then trying to save it as a 'normal' page.

          • 2. Re: Ramdomly attempts to save normal HTML page as template
            JayNewWeb Community Member

            Okay. That makes sense.

             

            So, any chance there's a reasonably simple way to convert that page into a normal, non-template page?

             

            Thanks.

            • 3. Re: Ramdomly attempts to save normal HTML page as template
              MurraySummers CommunityMVP

              So, any chance there's a reasonably simple way to convert that page into a normal, non-template page?

               

              Manually remove the template markup from it.

              • 4. Re: Ramdomly attempts to save normal HTML page as template
                JayNewWeb Community Member

                This is what's at the top of the page.

                 

                Can you please show me what to delete?

                 

                I don't think Dreamweaver will let me edit or delete what's grayed out, but I suppose I could do that in Notepad with no problems, correct?

                 

                Thanks!

                 

                ___________________

                 

                <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
                <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><!-- InstanceBegin template="/Templates/WidgetCoTemplate.dwt" codeOutsideHTMLIsLocked="false" -->
                <head>
                <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
                <!-- InstanceBeginEditable name="doctitle" -->
                <title>Welcome</title>
                <!-- InstanceEndEditable -->
                <!-- InstanceBeginEditable name="head" -->
                <!-- InstanceEndEditable -->
                <link href="../custom2.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
                <style type="text/css">
                <!--
                a:hover {
                color: #999;
                }
                -->
                </style>
                <script type="text/javascript" src="swfobject.js"></script>
                </head>

                <body>
                <table width="900" height="97" border="0" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">

                • 5. Re: Ramdomly attempts to save normal HTML page as template
                  MurraySummers CommunityMVP

                  This is not a template page - it's the child page of a template called 'WidgetCoTemplate.dwt'.  You will have no problem saving this page with an html or php or whatever extension.

                   

                  And for any template child page, you would not be able to remove any of the template markup in DW, unless you told DW to edit the page as a text only page.

                   

                  I'm sensing that you do not understand how to work with templates.  Is this a site you have inherited?

                  • 6. Re: Ramdomly attempts to save normal HTML page as template
                    JayNewWeb Community Member

                    I'm a business owner doing this all myself to create our own websites. I'm barely fluent enough to get the job done, but I do seem to get the job done. Barely.

                     

                    I can tell you for sure that the file in question has a .html extension. As I said, the behavior has been intermittent.

                     

                    I'm not very fluent in Dreamweaver, but I'm very experiences with IT in general. You can rely on my reporting here as being pretty dependable: .html extension and intermittent behavior.

                     

                    In fact, I discovered a new workaround. When I do File > Save and it tells me it wants to save it as a template, I can cancel out of that and just "close" the file with File > Close or the "x" at the upper right and when it asks if I want to save it can say Yes with no issues.

                     

                    So, I seem to have found an adequate workaround, at least.

                    • 7. Re: Ramdomly attempts to save normal HTML page as template
                      bemdesign Community Member

                      This has "future train wreck" written all over it. I would highly, highly suggest looking at your help files and learn about Dreamweaver templates and how they work. Because at some point this workflow is going to crash and burn in such a way that the only recovery state will be to start from scratch.

                      • 8. Re: Ramdomly attempts to save normal HTML page as template
                        JayNewWeb Community Member

                        I appreciate the advice. Doing it from scratch sounds good, but the time is excrutiation given what I currently have on my plate. Late I can hire a pro to redo it.

                         

                        I have two websites up and they've been running perfectly fine for years. I edit them often and things keep running perfectly fine. The one and only glitch is the one I mentioned to you. And I do very frequent backups, too. I think you under-estimate my aptitude. I made the one mistake of saving a template file as a plain html file (or two) in the past, I'm sure, but other than that I'm adept enough to have been modifying the templates to both sites often with no issue whatsoever.

                         

                        How bad is it, really?

                         

                        May I PM you the two URLs to glance at?

                         

                        Thanks again.

                         

                         

                        http://www.silver100.com

                        • 9. Re: Ramdomly attempts to save normal HTML page as template
                          MurraySummers CommunityMVP

                          In fact, I discovered a new workaround. When I do File > Save and it tells me it wants to save it as a template, I can cancel out of that and just "close" the file with File > Close or the "x" at the upper right and when it asks if I want to save it can say Yes with no issues.

                           

                          If you are taking about the page you showed earlier, then it's not possible for you to be getting this message when trying to save that page.  Now, given that you only showed us a piece of the code, I cannot know what's in the rest of the page - but if you are indeed getting that message with this page then that's a bad sign.  It means that you not only have templates but you have nested templates.

                           

                          We'll be glad to help you out of this mess if you post your links here....

                          • 10. Re: Ramdomly attempts to save normal HTML page as template
                            JayNewWeb Community Member

                            I really appreciate it!

                             

                            (By the way, I neglected to mention that I actually have three sites, not two.)

                             

                            Forgive me, but I have to confess it's very possible I gave you the code from a different file than the one that was giving me that behavior. I may have lost track of which file it was.

                             

                            I can tell you the file that was misbehaving was at one of the first two of the following three sites. And it was defintely a file named "index.html" although after I enoountered that behavior I renamed one of my "index.html" files to "home.html" (I don't "think" that was the file that was misbehaving, but I can't be sure). The "home.html" file is in the second link below.

                             

                            Here are my three sites:

                             

                            http://www.silver100.com

                             

                            http://www.prosilver240.com which has most of its files in ../content

                             

                            http://www.silversafety.org

                             

                            Thanks so much!

                             

                            Jay

                            • 11. Re: Ramdomly attempts to save normal HTML page as template
                              MurraySummers CommunityMVP

                              None of these sites' index pages contain template markup (meaning that they all appear to be normal child pages, including the home.html file in the middle site) - thus they would not cause DW to want to save them as template files.  Dunno how to help further....

                              • 12. Re: Ramdomly attempts to save normal HTML page as template
                                JayNewWeb Community Member

                                Okay. At least we tried, and now I'm not so worried about being in a potentail crash-and-burn situation.

                                 

                                I always have my little workaround as needed.

                                 

                                Thanks so much!