Exporting specific files/pages only ...

I'm not sure if this is something that is planned in the future or not, so I figured I'd ask.

I really would be nice to be able to export specific files and pages rather than always the full project. This would help those of us that like to use dates and times for knowing when changes were made by looking at those file dates and times. As it is right now, I almost never copy over the entire project into a production site unless I'm made aware there were Bootstrap changes, so it's a lot of added hassle (for lack of a better word, it's not a hassle just an irritant lol) to have to go through all the files and folders etc. to make sure the right ones are uploaded and so on. Would be so much quicker if we could put a check or highlight on an export window just the files and pages we want. A toggle for if you want to do this or not would be good as well. That way those that want to always export full projects can do so without the hassle of choosing folders and pages, and those of us that want full control of what is exported could pick and choose.

Just wondering if anything like this is on the table for a future update or not. :)

Jo, How do you upload your websites to your server? I use Filezilla, which allows you to just pick and choose which files you want to upload from your export folder.

Yep that's what I use too, but I'm talking about the export not the upload. If we could export just the parts we needed we could export them to an export folder (which is what I do) and then not have to pick and choose from there to overwrite the production files. I prefer to only overwrite what was changed in other words, and exporting only what we want to upload would be a simpler solution for this.

I understand now.

This is a perfect idea. It will also speed up backend development.

+1 I'm on board.

It's a lot easier than what I do now.

+1, this is an interesting topic to point out

Since the app saves only as a project file, I am not sure that it is possible to export only certain pages of it. If it can however, I think it should be triggered by pages that have undergone changes since the last export (these are the only files that need to be exported and uploaded). As it is now, all files have the same time stamp because they are all exported at the same time. If only files that have been created/altered/saved since the last export were exported, then the time stamps of each file would not be the same which would help us to quickly zero in on the files that truly have need to be uploaded. But with a single project file, if only one of the contained pages has been altered, the entire project file has been altered. So I am not sure how this might work but it would be nice if the timestamp of each file could be more accurately dated.

Yeah it would be something they'd have to do some brainstorming on to see what would be the best situation for us, but in the end, it would still be good to export specific files that we choose, not based on dates (maybe you accidentally deleted a file off the server and have to replace it, you don't need all the files for that, just the file you deleted), or (maybe you want to add something to a specific page that cannot be done in BSS, you don't need all the files for that), those types of situations.

I do agree that the time stamps of when something was edited would be a great addition as well. Right now I have to comb through all the files ( a couple of the sites I do have almost 50 pages and hundreds of images/files) so that takes time where as if I could check when I'm exporting and can more easily find what I need to export that would help a lot.

Would help even more if we could check it as we edit it. Then it would be all set to go at edit time and we wouldn't have to scour the files in or out of the app for uploading. Not sure if that can be done, but that would be perfect if it could!

I'd be appreciative of this should it be implemented..

I'm finding that working on large projects (300+ pages), export times can be frustratingly slow - around 5 min's, during which time BootStrap Studio is locked down/unusable.

If exporting just the modified pages/files this would/should alleviate this.

Thanks for all the feedback guys! This has been raised in other threads and it appears that everyone needs it to work in a slightly different way. I think we can add a simplified version of selective export that will handle most of the common use cases. It will work like this:

We can add a keyboard shortcut (e.g. Ctrl+Shift+E / Cmd+Shift+E for mac) which will export the active page only, alongside all assets (css, js files and images). We can improve this additionally by only exporting the images that are used by the page.

Do you think this would help?

Yes it would help, but I'm not sure it would be super helpful as many times when I edit a site, I edit multiple pages. Would be kind of overkill to have to export each page separately and have it keep overwriting the supporting files just to get them all. Would be better than nothing I guess, but truly not as helpful as it could be.

Would it not be possible for us to highlight (since highlighting is now implemented nicely in the files area) the pages we'd like to export? and have it export the supporting files (I say files in case some day you guys actually do let us import more than just images, css and js) for all that are highlighted? That to me would be a whole lot more helpful than one at a time would be.

Another idea would be maybe the ability to choose on export to have it export only what was edited? This way it could read the last edited files and just export that automatically. Giving a popup that asks us each time if we want to only export the changed files. This would basically do the same as above, but without any input which might be easier on your part than having to read what we choose might be?

Do you think this would help?

Yes, immensely.

Another idea would be maybe the ability to choose on export to have it export only what was edited? This way it could read the last edited files and just export that automatically. Giving a popup that asks us each time if we want to only export the changed files. This would basically do the same as above, but without any input which might be easier on your part than having to read what we choose might be?

That is the way Serif's WebPlus worked. Only changed files were uploaded. All other files remained untouched.

Another thought about the method suggested is that when a backup is done, only the changed files will be in the backup. Presently, all files are updated and that requires the backup to include all of the files, not just the changed ones. This slows down the backup process for incremental, differential, and image backups.

Would it not be possible for us to highlight (since highlighting is now implemented nicely in the files area) the pages we’d like to export? and have it export the supporting files (I say files in case some day you guys actually do let us import more than just images, css and js) for all that are highlighted? That to me would be a whole lot more helpful than one at a time would be.

This is a fantastic idea! In addition to the shortcut for exporting the current page, we will also add "Export" to the context menu of pages and folders (with support for multi selections).

Yaaayyyyy, now I'm definitely excited! Thanks Martin!