A tip for working around the limitations of Weebly (..and bypassing it's CMS)

Probably most of you will choose WordPress over Weebly for a client who needs the support of a CMS (Content Management System).

However, every one and a while I get a client who loves Weebly's simple CMS.

They usually come to me because they have one special page they want made up that is a little more complex than Weebly is designed to support.

For those who find themselves in similar circumstances, this forum post is about how to both bypass the Weebly CMS and have a page that bypasses the current theme the Weebly site might be using.

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To start off you'll need a an html file (possibly with accompanying .css file(s) and/or javascript file(s)

that you have designed in the IDE editor or you choice.

(I know everyone that has taken Treehouse's Web Dev track can do this already).

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Ordinarily once your web page is done, to get it up to the server

you would just start up you favorite ftp uploader software (I like Filezilla),

type in you ftp login info, connect and sign in, then start uploading your files.

Unfortunately Weebly doesn't allow FTP access directly.

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The CSS situation is a little more awkward that most web designers might like as well.

All Weebly themes have (by default) only one css file as part of their theme -- "main_style .css".

That is the only css file the theme pays attention to.

If you edit this file you always have to be very careful that none of your changes

(added css code) causes some unwelcome "side effects" with how the rest of the theme'd pages look.

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So no officially sanctioned FTP for Weebly (Bummer!)

However, there is a way to upload files via the Weebly content management system.

Go to the "Theme" tab (once you are logged into the Weebly site's Dashboard")

and on the left side panel, down at the bottom, you'll see a button that says:

"Edit HTML / CSS"

If you press this then the left side panel changes to will show a list of all files associated with the site

including a bunch of image files files under "Assets" (scroll the left side panel if need be to get down to this).

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If you click on "Assets" in this left panel you just end up toggling the visibility of the asset files.

However, clicking on "+" plus sign (to the right of "Assets") will

drop down a hidden sub-menu that has the following choices:

• Upload File

• New File

• New Folder

Here's a screenshot:

http://weeblytricks.weebly.com/uploads/9/4/9/4/9494510/9790630_orig.png?793

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This is the "secret" way to "bypass" Weebly's lack of inbuilt FTP upload capability.

The images uploaded this way have a funny url.

This stackoverflow page talks about Weebly site image pathing:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11274881/how-to-find-the-path-of-the-uploaded-files-on-weebly

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The funny "/upload/" path is for pictures, but what about linking to uploaded html web page files?

It uses the pathing like:

http://yoursubdomain.weebly.com/files/theme/some_file_name.html

Or you can create a special folder under Assets (which I recommend).

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So if you create a folder named "x" then the pathing for html files will be something like:

http://yoursubdomain.weebly.com/files/theme/x/some_file_name.html

Just make sure you click on the "x" folder's "+" plus sign to select "upload file",

instead of the "upload file" from directly underneath the Assets submenu.

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You can then use this link to the html file web page from within the Weebly CMS

(either a Weebly CMS menu or a text hyperlink on a Weebly CMS page).

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Hopefully this helps someone who is forced to deal with working on a Weebly site .

Maybe someday Treehouse will have some Weebly tutorials at some point, but until then..