Hi, Help please. The Sparkle app is showing in my Mac dock. When I click on it, my site is listed on the app but does not load. This has only happened since I published, before publishing, it loaded easily. So where is my site? I’ve confirmed it’s published but I thought that by continually saving before publishing, I would be able to continue working on the site locally after publication. Am I wrong? I have searched in ‘Finder’ for .sparkle but my website is not appearing. I’ve also looked on iCloud drive.
Strange! Have you got Time Machine backing up your data? If you do you can go back in time and find your Sparkle file.
It’s hard to help with something that’s local on your Mac.
Was the file saved to some specific location, or was it “untitled”?
Hi Duncan, apologies for such a long delay. I’ve solved only part of the problem. The Sparkle icon in the dock lists my website and ‘the contact form’. When I selected my website on the icon list nothing happened. Then I searched my laptop and my website folder was empty. My website in the meantime is published and working fine. Today spoke with Ionos and found that all files had been uploaded from my laptop to the hosting folder - that’s why I couldn’t find them. I have now downloaded a copy back to my laptop but can’t get Sparkle to open the site in order to edit. Can you help? On the Sparkle icon list, it looks like Sparkle has listed the download ‘contact form’ as a website and successfully opens the file.
Hi TerriQ.
Have you tried to import your website into sparkle?
As it is a sparkle made site, i assume it will work.
Mr. F.
Unfortunately without the original project file you can only recover the text and images (via Sparkle’s import feature), but not a lot of the settings and more advanced features you had in Sparkle.
Publishing a site produces web ready files, which you can think of as printing a copy of your Pages or Microsoft Word document. Sure you can scan it back in, but it won’t be like the original. Same thing with Sparkle project files.
I’m sorry but I don’t understand. Where is the original project file? I’ve downloaded everything from the server. I would assume that because the site is up and running the original file would stile be within the same folder.
Hello Mr. Fozzie,
No I haven’t tried importing because I didn’t want to over write anything and cause more problems. I frequently saved the site to a folder but after publishing, the folder was empty and it seems all files were uploaded. The site is published and works but I can’t access it anymore through Sparkle to update it because Sparkle can’t recognise it.
I’ve just been reading through similar posts and wonder if this is the problem: Critical Bug With iCloud Drive & Sparkle
I noticed that Sparkle created a folder on my iCloud drive. I never looked there because I didn’t create it and assumed my files where being saved in my designated folder. But the iCloud folder is now empty and I’m wondering if this is where my files disappeared from after publication.
Yeah @TerriQ, your Sparkle file is totally a seperate thing to your generated web-ready files, aka html, javascript, with a touch of php, that is uploaded to your hosting server.
Have you used your macOS Time Machine to hunt down your original Sparkle file in the past?
For me I use Sparkle’s Publish which has always worked for me, so there is no need to FTP the generated web-ready files to the hosting server… Sparkle takes care of that! 
Hi, I’ve found an earlier saved version in TimeMachine. Should I restore this? It’s the same name that is on the Sparkle icon list. So would that then open the sparkle app. If so, then I could update to the version currently running and re-publish. Am I correct? Thanks for the help.
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Ok, a great start!
Yes I would restore this file and then open it up in Sparkle and go from there.
You will be able to edit and when ready publish your updates, but I would learn how to use the Publish feature to avoid the extra steps of doing it via FTP.
Good luck!
Hi and thank you to everyone who have been helping me. I’ve found and restored my website from Time Machine (the save before it disappeared!) I suspect iCloud. Just looked in my home folder and the Sparkle app has disappeared from iCloud (I didn’t install it there) but the Sparkle icon folder remains on iCloud. I tried to delete the folder which is empty (on iCloud) but got the message 'are you sure you want to delete Sparkle everywhere - so I stopped.
The restored Sparkle site is back again on my HD>users>myname>sites>sparkle.
I’m now back to the original problem of trying to install a contact form (I hear a groan…) I downloaded the Sparkle sample contact form, made a page and an extra page for Thank You. But honestly I really need baby help in completing it. Any volunteers…?