Designer Pro X - FTP timeout error when publishing

**jonstrong** · 03 May 2017, 04:14 PM

I started running into the dread, "FTP timeout error" when trying to publish an early draft of a website I'm working on. I was actually able to publish the site via DPX to the same location, successfully, and started running into this error just a few days ago (after taking one or more DPX updates I believe).

I've done some homework on this - googled it pretty thoroughly, read a number of threads for folks who have run into this occasional issue publishing websites from one of the Xara products, and:

I've checked for and accepted all pending updates for DPX, and I'm now on version: 12.6.2.49603 .
I do not have a lot of large images on the site - but I went ahead and Optimized all of them anyway.
Although I do have the "retina" option turned on for his res displays (I work on 4K displays), I checked, and the images don't appear to to be the problem: all of them were successfully published to the FTP site, and none are bigger than 146 KB - the largest file on the site.
I navigated to the FTPLibcURL section of the Windows registry and increased all the timeouts to 20 seconds, as recommended by Xara support to other users running into timeouts.

Still no joy -- my "publish" attempts make it to 99%, and the uploader apparently retries a few times before finally giving up and declaring that FTP has timeout out, or a message indicating "remote file not found".

I exported the website to a local folder on my pc, and compared the files that were exported there, and they are virtually identical to the files that DID make it up to the FTP / web directory: with one exception. There are the same 331 files in the index_htm_files directory both on my local machine (where I exported them) and on the web server / FTP site. The ONLY difference is that the "index.htm" file itself didn't make it up there, although it published locally just fine. The file is small -- about 1.01MB.
I also watched the publishing progress indicator - and could see that index.htm is the file it got stuck on, retrying several times on this file before giving up.
For comparsion, if I use my own FTP client, the entire site is easily uploadable - including the "index.htm" file in the folder above "index_htm_files". The FTP client doesn't hestitate at all on "index.htm". It's just the uploader in DPX that gets stuck on the file.

This is also definitely NOT due to a resource constraint:

My Internet connection is via Verizon FIOS at 150 MBPS up/down (I test periodically, and am getting that, or very close, at the laptop itself). The machine I'm working on is just a few months old, i7 Kaby Lake based, 32GB DDR4, 1TB SSD. Latest Windows version, all updates applied. I also have a few decades

of technical experience, so if there are tech issues to discuss, please don't hesitate!

Everything flies with the publish function - until it tries to publish the one "index.htm" file to the FTP / web server.

The only thing I can think of that's different between the files that publish with no problem (the 300+ in the index_htm_files folder) and the one that doesn't, is that the "index.htm" file is NOT in that subfolder. It sits one level higher...but as I'm using this as a test location, the whole thing is located in a subfolder under another website on the server:

Domain name is "stronggroup.com" (there's an 8 year old webpage sitting there that I have to replace when I have the time! please ignore that old one! also please remember that the new site I'm working on is very much "in progress" - much of the content is still placeholders, etc.).

Under the root for "stronggroup.com" on the server, there's a folder "mpartnersltd", which is the logical root for the site I'm building with DPX. The "index.htm" file sits in this "mpartnersltd" subfolder, and from the web the location for this file is:

http://www.stronggroup.com/mpartnersltd/index.htm

Remember: I had to manually FTP this "index.htm" file to the web server in this location, since "publish" couldn't do it - that's how it got up there. In that same folder is the "index_htm_files" folder with all 331 files that match the ones that I exported to my local machine. I did NOT have to manually FTP these -- all 331 got up there via "publish".

The only difference between what Export and Publish did was that Publish couldn't update the index.htm file. That's the one it got stuck on and retried uploading several times before Publish gave up.

---

For the moment, I can continue to export and manually FTP, although I prefer the workflow via the Publish option if we can get it working.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts / suggestions.

- Jon

**Acorn** · 03 May 2017, 05:41 PM

What would help if you had an older version still around and publish from this - I bet it would work.

Failing that, can you upload your design to TG so someone can try and publish to their ISP.

Acorn

**jonstrong** · 03 May 2017, 05:50 PM

Originally Posted by Acorn

What would help if you had an older version still around and publish from this - I bet it would work.

Failing that, can you upload your design to TG so someone can try and publish to their ISP.

Acorn

Thanks...no older version available here. I'm attaching the current version of the XAR file for the site to this post.

- Jon

**Acorn** · 03 May 2017, 06:30 PM

Originally Posted by jonstrong

Thanks...no older version available here. I'm attaching the current version of the XAR file for the site to this post.

- Jon

Jon, other than a slow generation time followed by a slow upload, it published to http://acorn.xara.hosting/MP/.

It got to 99%, whizzed through index.htm and the robots.txt file and sitemap.xml and reported success.
I enclose the xr_files.txt for comparison: xr_files.zip.

I will remove the link in a day or two.

Acorn

**jonstrong** · 03 May 2017, 07:36 PM

Originally Posted by Acorn

Jon, other than a slow generation time followed by a slow upload, it published to http://acorn.xara.hosting/MP/.

It got to 99%, whizzed through index.htm and the robots.txt file and sitemap.xml and reported success.
I enclose the xr_files.txt for comparison: xr_files.zip.

I will remove the link in a day or two.

Acorn

Thanks for trying this. This was a really good clue -- I called GoDaddy and learned that my account was still on a 7 year old hosting plan which made use of a somewhat problematic old Linux configuration. Turned out I was due for a renewal, and moved my hosting plan over to their newer cpanel based setup, new servers, better hosting software, etc.

I have to pull down the software off the old site st stronggroup.com, move it to the new IP address, and when that's done they'll take care of the DNS remapping.

But...I just did a quick try, and Designer Pro X had no trouble at all this time publishing to the new destination, as can be seen now at new.stronggroup.com/mpartnersltd (temp location).

Thanks again! Your test and results provided the clue I needed so I could find the culprit. Much appreciated! I'll post an update when the site is actually finished...

Jon

**gwpriester** · 03 May 2017, 10:36 PM

I have some serious doubts about your team. Are they part of the witness protection program?

I would make the text 2pt larger on your Services drop down menu and/or add more space between entries.

**jonstrong** · 04 May 2017, 01:36 AM

Originally Posted by gwpriester

I have some serious doubts about your team. Are they part of the witness protection program?

I would make the text 2pt larger on your Services drop down menu and/or add more space between entries.

The team...um...I'm not allowed to speak about them...

Yes - the drop-down is definitely too tiny / tight - so far that's just the default settings from the template I started with. I'll have to take a look tomorrow - going to experiment with the overall appearance of that drop down. Think I also have to make the top and bottom dark banner areas narrower: too much of the page body is cut off when a new page comes up, and when selecting among the different service areas on the services page, some people aren't seeing the changing descriptions since those are so low on the page... I definitely need to make it more user friendly! I appreciate any/all suggestions (thx!).

Think i'm past the technical challenges - now to focus on look and feel! thx again for all the input and suggestions.

Jon

**roly** · 04 May 2017, 04:58 AM

Hi Jon, I like your website layout, clean and simple. My only comment is you could make it easier on the readers eyes (about 95% of your site is text) if you went to 14px instead of 12px.

Ciao

Roly

**roly** · 04 May 2017, 06:19 AM

Hi Jon, I just noticed that in export options supersite is clicked instead of conventional site. My understanding is that when in supersite mode all the pictures must open before you see the site (perhaps my understanding is wrong), if so this would slow things down. Also you have 3 variants (480,640 and 960px) , I have often read on TG that with 2 you cover most devices, having 3 instead of 2 I believe also slow things down.

Perhaps some of the TG more experienced users could comment on this ( or correct my understanding).

Thank you

Roly

**Rob-Xar** · 04 May 2017, 10:19 AM

Originally Posted by jonstrong

I navigated to the FTPLibcURL section of the Windows registry and increased all the timeouts to 20 seconds, as recommended by Xara support to other users running into timeouts.

Hi,

Just to add my 2 cents or give you insight in what we do here, the first step we take in debugging a failure in FTP publishing is running the debugview program while publishing before suggesting any changes to the registry. Sometimes there are errors occurring while uploading that help identify the problem, which don't appear within Xara. This requires changing a setting in the registry to enable output of publishing information, please see instructions below:

1) Close Xara - Important!

2) Go to start, type "run" and press enter. Type "regedit" and press enter.

3) On the left hand side, please navigate to the following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Xara\[program]\[version]\Options\Publish

4) Right-click on the Value "FTPTrace" > Edit > Change the value to "1".

5) Close the register then open this program and keep it running: http://live.sysinternals.com/Dbgview.exe

6) Run Xara and try to publish again.

This outputs the basic information needed to debug any publish. We increased the default timing a number of patches ago which reduced the number of FTP timeouts we were seeing from tickets, so normally we no longer need advise anymore to change this setting unless the user is in the far reaches of the world and have a very slow connection. This also only applies to timeout error messages, a Remote file not found error message usually won't benefit from changing these options.

As you know Xara uses the libcurl library to publish so you can use their error code and message guide here in identifying the problem: https://curl.haxx.se/libcurl/c/libcurl-errors.html

Sometimes it's worth passing the log file onto a host to see their thoughts but rarely have I found a useful reply from them.

Lastly don't be afraid to send us at support a ticket and we can look into this and even see if we can replicate the error here by publishing to your host. FTP publishing can be a rather fickle process at times, restarting your PC then trying again seems to work a lot of the time (more than it should lol).

Thanks
Rob