File magically growing in Size? 
Author: James Z.My wife manages 3 websites under the US GenWeb Genealogical Project. Thru the last 10 years she has used Dreamweaver 3 on a Windows XP Computer. I wanted to update her computer and program to something more modern. After looking at various programs and being on a retired persons budget, I decided on Website X5 Evolution. I got volunteered to help moved and transfer date from the old system to the updated version. Before going completely live with the new version, I am trying to finish at least on site. Here is the address for my work in process, http://www.ingenweb.org/infountain/jim/index.html under Website X5.
My problem or question is, as I save the work and update the structure, files that have not been changed are redate andor, increase in size. Using "Goodsync" to back up files I have noticed the file sizes have changed on un-altered files. During this last backup this was a 15% increase in size. I currently have 3,000 *.html pages and a long way to go.
I am afraid that the projects hosting site will tell me the site is TOO BIG, and I need to shrink it. The current upload is not complete. This particular site is in the middle size wise of the three sites we are working on.
I have a 6 core processor and a striped drive array, which holds the data. Depending how deep the structure changes while adding new material it can take well over 1 hour to safe. I am not looking forward to this when I get everything loaded into the system. Lord help me when I try to upload this. This computers OS is Windows 7 elite. My wife's with simular stats is Windows 10.
Is this a sign I need the Professional version?
I have never done any web building before, but I find the program easy to use once I firgure out how thing work. I have had a little trouble figuring somethings out, but after reading help screens 2 or 3 times I figure things out.
I have learned over the years, that patience important in using a computer.
James
Open your site, go to step 5 and export website to disk (choose/create an appropriate folder).
Check the size of this folder - this is the size of your website for upload.
The various files, library and source code are required to create, re-create and modify the site and as such a generally much larger than the final generated site. Add to this you probably now have multiple backup files as well as the iwprj file and you could expect the "source" to be considerably larger that the final output.
Author
Thank You,
I understand that the program assembles the source files into the Website upload directory as you state.
It is not the size of the upload directory that has me concerned, but the individual html files.
I use Filezilla to upload since I have been unable to get the built-in FTP engine to work. Watching Filezilla transfer files I have noticed that my *.html files have grown by 15 - 20% almost 1MB in size (700KB to 975KB). Most of my pages do not contain much material. It is the expanding menu, I beleve, That has increased the file size.
The more I have thought about this, I believe it is caused by the extensive use of sub-levels in the menu. I am think about going back to the begining and building pages with links instead of using the sub-levels. This will be a lot of work, but I believe the *.html file size will be reduced, because the MAIN PAGE template size with menu will be a lot smaller.
I am expecting to have 20,000 to 30,000 html pages by the time I am finished. The size of the Exported Website is currently about 2.9GB, which is equal to the size of the entire site produced with Dreamweaver 3. I would say, I am about 1/3 done in the conversion to Website X5.
I guess I will find out if this assumption is true. Any more ideas?
Good luck James. Yes I do believe it is your menus bloating each page, I looked at the source of one page at random and it is 98% menu. If you were able to keep the site to 2 levels of menu options and then pages of links I suspect the site would be smaller, faster and more manageable - and quite possibly more stable. When you do it, keep one eye on the potential to make this a responsive site for better access through tablets and phones.
I too use filezilla because it gives me more control, for instance it lets me upload the backup file chould I choose to do so.
Author
Esahc, Thank you for feedback. I am still rather new dealing with building websites. I have been a computer user for 25 years, more self taught thru trial and error. I have gotten involed with websites, trying to help my wife upgrade to a more modern program to run on new system with Windows 10.
Thanks again, it's bedtime for me. I'll dream about what to do before I get started. I have a retirement job at a golf course, which takes most of my time now. In a few months I'll be going at this, in a full time passion
Thanks again!