The most common use of synchronization is to maintain a local copy of a web site, so that changes made at the Server or locally on your Mac will always be kept up to date with its mirror.
To start a synchronization, you must have a connection established to the required Server and the FTP Browser window showing.
You should then navigate to the Mac and Server directories to be synchronized, and then press the Synchronize button in the Toolbar, or select the Synchronize option in the Transfer menu.
Since the synchronization feature can automatically replace or remove files, both on your Mac and on the Server, it is potentially dangerous if used incorrectly. We highly recommended that a test be made before proceeding with a synchronization using real files, so that you may familiarize yourself with the functionality.
Before a synchronization can commence, you should study the options available and decide which are best for your particular situation. For most users, the default settings should work.
Firstly, choose which method of synchronization should be used. The most common setting is Update Server, which will transfer newer files from the copy of your website on your Mac to the Server. Whatever the selection, the Synchronize window will describe what will be performed depending upon the choice you make.
Decide which method Yummy FTP should use to determine which files are newer on the Server or your Mac. There are two methods by which Yummy FTP can do this:
This method relies on the clock in your Mac and the clock on your Server being in sync - the same time. If the Server is in a different time zone, then it is crucial that the Server time difference is set and set correctly.
Unless you are certain of the exact time difference, enable the ‘Automatically detect time offset’ check box. This will determine the time difference between your Mac and your Server by uploading a small file to the Server and noting the time on your Mac when the upload completes. By then examining the Date Modified value displayed by the Server, the difference between this time and the upload completion time noted previously is the Server time difference. The test file will be deleted when the detection is complete.
Although this method is simpler to use than the date comparison method because there is no Server time difference to worry about, it can be less reliable because a file can change its contents completely and yet remain the same size. In this case it is impossible to determine that the file has changed.
The default setting is to use date comparison since this is usually the most reliable, so if you are unsure, use this. Either way, if one method does not produce the results you expected with your particular server, try the other.
If you require an Update Mac or Update Server synchronization to produce an exact copy of the source files and folders at the destination, the following setting will be needed:
Delete orphaned items - This option is disabled by default because it causes items to be deleted at the destination. An orphaned item is a file or folder which exists in the source but not the destination, where the source and destination are your Mac and the Server (for Update Server) or the Server and your Mac (for Update Mac). This option is unavailable during a Mirror.
In some situations it is desirable to discount certain files and or folders from the synchronization process. There are two ways of achieving this for different situations:
Process sub-directories - This option is enabled by default. If you require only the contents of the top-level directory to be synchronized, ignoring all the directories within it, disable this option
Filters - For more advanced cloaking capabilities, use the Filters window to specify exactly what should be included or excluded from synchronizations. The Filters window is available by selecting Filters from the Listing menu. You must configure this separately from the Synchronization window. See the Filters section in this Quick Start Guide for more details.
When date comparison is set as the method to determine newer files, Yummy FTP will compare the sizes of files when their dates are exactly the same. If the sizes differ, Yummy FTP will consider that one of the files has changed and transfer one according to the direction of synchronization - for and Update Server the Mac file would be uploaded. This behavior can be disabled with the following option:
Compare sizes if dates match - This setting is on by default. However, in some situations, although the data of two files may be identical, the storage format on the server can cause the sizes to be different despite the files actually being identical. In this case Yummy FTP would erroneously transfer what it considers to be the ‘newer’ file. Disable this option to cater for this type of scenario.
To enable you to troubleshoot synchronizations, the Enable diagnostics option can be used. This will report in the FTP transcript reasons why each file/folder are synchronized. The ‘Log all transfers’ option in the Transfers tab of the Preferences must normally be enabled for this feature to work.
When you are completely satisfied that the synchronization is correctly configured, press the Synchronize button.
The Synchronize feature will first analyze both the Mac and Server directories to build a list of files and folders to upload, download, or delete, depending on the settings you have selected
For large directories, the analysis stage may appear to take an extraordinarily long time. This is nothing to be concerned about - the majority of time spent during the analysis stage is for fetching directory listings from the server, which would have to be done in any case during the subsequent transfers. Yummy FTP does not re-fetch the directory listings when it starts to transfer because it already has them cached.
When comparison is complete the necessary transactions will be performed. A progress bar and the approximate time until completion will be displayed.
When the synchronization has completed a report will be shown to give an indication of what was transferred.
Yummy FTP provides a means to automatically synchronize once at specific time and optionally to repeat the synchronization at certain intervals. This has a wide range of uses. For example, a server could be update once a day at 1am.
To configure.a scheduled synchronization, set up the synchronization as would be suitable for immediate processing, but press the Schedule button when ready.
When you have configured the schedule as required, press the OK button. Then press the Run Schedule button in the Synchronization window. The scheduled synchronization will be added to the Queue drawer, awaiting execution:
To remove the scheduled synchronization, simply select it in the Queue drawer list and press the Close button.
To reconfigure the schedule, select the entry in the Queue drawer list and press the Clock button.
To start the scheduled synchronization immediately, select it in the Queue drawer list and press the Right-Arrow button.
You may configure as many scheduled synchronizations as your require. Each one has its settings and last date and time of synchronization stored in the Bookmark with which it was created.