Option to backup existing index files

[Hex Angel]

It would be nice if Zoom provided a config option (perhaps on the FTP tab) to backup any existing index files before overwriting them. This would provide some protection against, for example, failed site scripts or other errors that produce empty or corrupt pages during a spider.

I guess that implies an additional option to restore from backup.

Just a thought.

p.

[Ray]

Thanks for the suggestion. I guess this would mainly be useful for situations where the index actually runs successfully, but there were in fact problems with your dynamically generated website (eg. mistakes in the PHP or ASP scripts on your site that failed for one reason or another). It would seem however, that these mistakes would need to be fixed, and once they are, then it would not happen again and this feature would not be needed?

One other scenario where this may be useful is if you had connection problems during an automatic/scheduled indexing, and some files which otherwise wouldn't have failed - were unable to be indexed due to ISP issues.

(Note that Zoom will not automatically upload the files if the index fails. There is also an existing option to "Upload with .tmp filenames and rename when completed" so that it will not corrupt the live index files if something goes wrong during uploading).

One other thing to consider with the feature suggested above, is that the index files can be fairly large for big sites (which is when you'd most want to use this option to avoid re-indexing - if the files are small, then reindexing and reuploading should be no big deal), and in most cases, people are likely to leave the option off to avoid using up double the disk space by having two copies of the index files online. This can limit its usefulness.

Nonetheless, something to consider, and other users should feel free to chip in if they also think it useful.