Theme & CSS changes in editor saved but not synced to remote AWS site
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September 5, 2023 at 4:13 pm #10553
[anonymous]
As the title states, I am trying to use Publii to manage a very simple website, 1 page. Site is hosted on Amazon AWS S3. Site connects and uploads files. The issues is, SOME changes are not synced, or they’re being overwritten by Publii despite me clicking Save Settings. The frustrating part is, the “Save and Preview” shows the changes made locally in the app, but once synced, the theme changes are lost. It’s becoming infuriating.
I have done both software testing and software design in the past, and these issues are repeatable. This may be an issue with AWS, and if so, perhaps a bit more tutorial documentation could be written to explain the intricacies of how Publii interacts with S3 Storage, as it seems some files are either not being uploaded or not replaced on sync. I have even tried deleting all the CSS files on AWS then doing a sync, and the uploaded files still lose the theme / CSS changes made in the app. I am happy to do any suggested testing or documentation to help get to the root of this issue, as it’s very frustrating and turns simple site updates into a long, stressful experience.
September 5, 2023 at 6:49 pm #10554[anonymous]
I’ve been tinkering around with the theme files, and not even doing that seems to affect anything. I’ve deleted and reinstalled the theme (Simple, current version as of this writing), latest version of Publii (as of 9/4/2023). The behavior is still incredibly confusing. Change a theme setting (something as simple as colors), and the “Save & Preview” renders my changes. Click “Sync”, and it uploads the files, I guess, the Log Viewer “deployment-process.log” shows some files, usually only the index.html file, sample-title.html, and files.publii.json. Nothing about CSS listed. There is no explanation, or indication, that the style changes have been applied, according to the deployment-process.log. Viewing the sync’ed site show no style changes have been carried over. This isn’t a permission issue, I can make posts, change post content, add and remove images, but the theme changes are completely ignored, unless i’m changing the entire theme to a different one, but that’s not the issue.
Something as simple as Theme > Colors > (set to Dark) Primary color changed to #FF00FF from the default red, and the synced change is ignored. While Publii is really cool and makes managing a static site much easier, this issue is making it incredibly frustrating. For a tool aimed at non-developers as the primary users, I’d hope no one suggests anything like going in and editing the complex CSS and JS files to do something as simple as change a single color. If this errant behavior hasn’t been discovered (I have seen a couple posts suggest this sync issue, but not an exact same situation as I’m describing), I’m bringing it up here, so it can be tested, examined, and either explained (with a solution), or fixed by either the Publii team, or the theme developer themselves.
September 17, 2023 at 11:27 am #10600[anonymous]
Hi,
Publii uploads only modified files only. Maybe there is some issue here. I will rebuild and test AWS S3 deployment process in the nearest days so I will check if there are some issues with this deployment method
September 18, 2023 at 5:39 pm #10610[anonymous]
Thanks Tomasz, If you can, please reply to this thread, or message me directly with your findings. I would like to use Publii for site management, but with this AWS issue it’s a real struggle, creating extra work, and wasting excess time trying to manually fix the deployment issues this behavior creates.
November 3, 2023 at 6:41 pm #10906[anonymous]
Just downloaded the latest update to Publii. The AWS theme sync issue is still present.
Example, I have the Simple theme installed. In the site settings, go to Theme, then Colors > Custom Settings. If the “Set color scheme” is toggled to Light. Click the Save Settings button. Click “Preview your changes” to view the site locally. Confirm it’s displaying the Light version of the the Simple theme. Sync the site to an AWS host, then go view the site, confirm it’s showing the “Light” version of the Simple theme.
Go back to settings, Theme > Color > Custom Settings. Scroll to the “Set color scheme” section and toggle the site to Dark, click Save Settings, then “Preview your changes”. Confirm the site displays the Dark version of the Simple theme. Sync the site to an AWS host, then go view the site, confirm the theme setting change has not been synced, and the Light version of the Simple theme is still being displayed on the AWS hosted site.
Try this test again, but under Theme > Colors > Hero section, change the Link color to something obnoxious, like bright orange. Go to the Theme > Colors > Layout section. Add some text to the Hero box, and add a link to any site (ex: google.com). Click Save Settings, then “Preview your changes” to view it locally and confirm the Hero section has the new text link and the link color is bright orange. Now, click “Sync your website” to upload the changes to the AWS hosted site. In a private browser, go to your AWS test site. Confirm the new Hero section link text is present, but the link’s theme color change (bright orange) has not been synced to the AWS site.
This is incredibly frustrating. We can see the change is saved in the local preview, and the page content change is moved successfully to the AWS host. However, none of the theme changes are successfully moved to the AWS host. Something is broken in the sync operation regarding theme changes to a remote host, at least an AWS host. I do not have the ability to test this on another host at this time, so trying to document my bug case. Please advise any files, logs, or other information you may need to locate the cause of this sync bug.
November 3, 2023 at 7:27 pm #10915[anonymous]
Did some further testing and the AWS guide here: https://getpublii.com/docs/setup-static-website-hosting-amazon-s3.html, does not explain some things, especially in the lower section of Step 30. In the settings dialog, it shows https:// set and the AWS bucket endpoint for the URL and Relative URLs toggled off. In testing this further, I did notice that when using my own domain name (with SSL enabled on AWS), the site will load normally, but there is some issue with the domain resolution in specifically the (dynamic) CSS, where it somehow can’t locate some aspects of the CSS settings. If I load the direct AWS bucket endpoint, the CSS changes made in Publii are shown, but when I access the site using the domain name, the CSS settings are ignored, and it falls back to some other mysterious CSS setting I can’t identify.
So, while the dynamic CSS seems cool and is probably “hip” in web dev, it’s creating a major issue in this situation, as all other aspects of the site are being updated correctly, inter-site page links work correctly, image assets are located correctly, some of the CSS is not working, due to whatever is causing this “lost path” issue. I have been trying to express how frustrating this is for me, and my willingness to help troubleshoot and isolate the cause of this behavior, and I understand this is an open source, work on it when you have time, kind of thing, but c’mon, how is the app supposed to grow and become more widely adopted when such a small but maddening bug is still present? It’s like AWS support was half-implemented but not actually tested on a site with a top level domain and SSL that’s all hosted on AWS, otherwise this bugged behavior would have become immediately visible.