Flash Content Deleted on Each Publish (svViewer) iWeb '11

Question

Hey everyone, hope you can help me out.
So I have built an iWeb site for my wife's side business. There are lot of photos that I must show for each product she sells. The best way I found to do this and helps give the site a little "life" is to use svBuilder and create a flash photo gallery for each item. The photos are referenced from her Flickr gallery which keeps the flash file and the size of the website way down.
Anyway, I create a gallery with svBuilder Pro and use a HTML widget to reference the flash file that is created. svBuilder provides the code which I paste into the snippet. SvBuilder also then exports all the files I need into a folde on my iMac. I then need to copy that content (flash file, css file, etc....about 250k of data) into the folder for the page I am working on for that product. Everything work great until I need to change one little thing on that page. It could be something like text or just moving a button. Once I republish changes in iWeb, the folder for that page on my iDisk that contains the flash content I manually transferred over is now gone. I need to re-upload that flash content each time, and for each page I change.
This is a huge PITA as we are talking about 100 product pages each with it's own flash gallery. I understand what iWeb is doing. It doesn't see those files "IN" or "EMBEDDED" in the page, so it rewrites the folder to only include what iWeb "sees" in the program. What I want to find is a way to either:
- Embed the flash files into the page in iWeb so iWeb actually uploads those files into the page folder on my iDisk without me manually having to do it each time.
or more likely
- Find an FTP or automated program that will scan my iDisk folders within my site and if it sees those flash gallery files missing, will automatically sync them with the hard files I have on my iMac.
I am by no means a programmer (hence using iWeb) but I think Automater might be able to do it. Do any of you have any experience with this sort of thing? I thought I would ask here first.
Here is the website if you want to see what I am doing:
www dot bibsandbuttons dot com
Marc

Answer 1

Hey Roddy,
Thanks for your help.
After some research on the simpleviewer website, I found the code I needed to place into the snippet. For others that may have the issue, here what it looked like:
<script type="text/javascript">
var svCoreURL = 'http://web.me.com/username/Folderwhich_containssvcore/svcore/';
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://web.me.com/username/Folderwhich_containssvcore/svcore/js/simpleviewer.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
var flashvars = {};
flashvars.galleryURL = "http://web.me.com/username/Folderwhich_contains_gallery_xmlfile/gallery.xml";
jQuery(document).ready(function () {
SV.simpleviewer.load('sv-container', '100%', '100%', 'FFFFFF', true, flashvars);
</script>
So basically here is what is happening, and I am by no means a programmer coder, so some people may be able to read that and make sense of it, but I'll explain it in lay terms.
When you use svBuilder to create a photo gallery, it spits out 2 things, the HTML code for the gallery and the files for it. What they tell you to do is to place the files svbuilder spits out (1 folder of "core" files, 1 html file, 1 xml gallery file) into the page you want the gallery. The folder with the "core" files (named "svcore") is the same no matter which gallery it applies to. So the easiest way for me was to have this in one location outside of my iWeb page so I didn't need to keep re-uploading that folder to my iDisk. Hence, the code:
var svCoreURL = 'http://web.me.com/username/Folderwhich_containssvcore/svcore/';
This references the "core" files that make up the gist of the photo gallery and keeps it in one place to where I never need to touch it.
Where I was going wrong from my original post, was telling the gallery HTML page where to reference the gallery itself. Again, I was always putting it into the iWeb folder of files for that page. To get the gallery out of there, I just created a folder called "flash" in my Web>Sites folder on my iDisk. In the Flash folder, I have subfolders for each gallery I create. In those folders, contains the HTML and the XML file for the gallery. The key code I was missing, was telling it to reference the XML from an external location. That code required the "flashvar" command as you can see here:
var flashvars = {};
flashvars.galleryURL = "http://web.me.com/username/Folderwhich_contains_gallery_xmlfile/gallery.xml";
Then I was banging my head against the wall because it still wasn't working, and I realized I missed the load command to load the flashvar, as noted here:
SV.simpleviewer.load('sv-container', '100%', '100%', 'FFFFFF', true, flashvars);
So now all my galleries are loaded from another folder outside my iDisk folder for the website and I can publish changes to each page with a gallery and never have to transfer files over. Since all my galleries reference photos stored on Flickr, the page loads quick and the website stays small.
Hope this helps anyone else with this issue.
Marc