My website file grew to a very large size because Sparkle stores the images in its project file.
I removed a lot of images by relocating them to a server folder, but many of them seem to remain in the project file (tested by deleting the upload site and re-publishing).
Is there a way to “optimise” the Project file, cleaning out unused assets?
On Sparkle, go to File > Revert To > Browse all versions. And then choose the one you’d like to delete by going to Revert To, and you’ll see delete this version. I would get a copy of the project file in case you delete a version you wanted to keep. This feature you can do on most apps on mac. I don’t think there is a bulk delete option (i’d do some google research about that feature).
Not the problem. I don’t want to “revert” to a previous version. I need to flush out redundant rubbish left behind in the project file following a redesign.
Although lots of images are not a part of any page in the project, the assets appear to remain in the saved project file, making it far bigger than necessary. These consumes disk space like a hungry hippo, as MacOS saves versions of this bloated file.
Hi @JAYEMM1951, what does the summary view of the site settings say?
Sparkle does get rid of images that are no longer used, and is supposed to not publish them again.
It says there are 101 images on 43 pages. It’s worth noting that each “page” has, on average, about 8 pop-up pages (behaving as “tabs”.)
Each main page normally has a single image (a few have perhaps 4 or 5) but the index page has 30 images. This might add up to 101 images. However, the project file is 600MB which seemed a lot for text and “structure data”. I guess that’s the way it is… and Sparkle does make building sites pretty easy!!!
www.jmpostcards.uk
@JAYEMM1951
Which version of Sparkle are you working with?
I have noticed that with the new V4 the file size of the project has decreased a lot.
Mr. F.
Sparkle One 4.0.4
I think that’s the latest available version.
@JAYEMM1951 what you haven’t mentioned is that you have for almost every page a different video background. Calcluate that one together and you would come to your 600mb, right?
That’s a possibility, except “normal” video is stored externally to the project file. Are background videos embedded inside the project file? If so, that’s the answer.
Background video has a setting for video storage, like regular in-page video.
Mine are all “In Original Location”. BTW, I hadn’t especially noticed or set that, so, I guess that’s the default option. Is there a reason why this isn’t an option for images?
The project I recently worked on had an Adobe Stock picture (1.2 MB, 4430 × 3386, JPEG) and it was generating more than 200 MB of data in the file alone just because it had Generic Gray Gamma Profile 2.2. And when I compressed the project and it went down to 11 MB. And then this difference made me try some other options.
So, without compressing or without changing anything else but the color profile, I applied sRGB (which is widely used color profile as we all know) and it generated only a few MB in the project file.
Although, Iwanted to keep experimenting and when I applied it as Custom Pattern instead of Image as the box background (And I still kept the Gray Gamma profile), it still generated some data but it was around 10-15 MB.
Rendering is working great on Sparkle when it comes to compression, creating webp images and color profiles and so on…
I am seeing a file on your website called “beautiful-color-grad-076-premium-dark” as a gradient. It “could” be the one what’s messing with you.
I did many combinations of the settings I mentioned above including duplicating and using a few versions of the JPEG with Gray gamma profile, on a new project file & on the current one, compression settings, disabling Generate webp… but I can say this Generic Gray Gamma Profile 2.2 can create a lot of data in the project file and it also can be seen when you check Box Backgrounds part under Summary tab.
Hope that info helps to anyone under this topic.
Thanks, Matt, for taking so much time looking into this issue.
I compressed the project file as a test. It shed around 250MB (40%) of its size, so you’re onto something. I’ve hunted down that gradient image and removed it. Regrettably, no change in size. However, although it’ll take a while, I’m going to look through every page and pop-up for any other weirdo box backgrounds.The summary says there are 59 “box backgrounds”, but their size is just under 21MB.
If anything turns up, I’ll post another reply.
Again, thank you.
Re-reading your note, I had an idea. I used an ftp program to download the “Images” folder from the published site. It contains 267MB of files. My guess is these are stored in the project file, rather than being generated each time during publishing.
Most of the filenames begin “poster”, suggesting these are badly compressed stills for the 305 videos used on the site. I’d resorted to using video because of the amount of space used by galleries storing images (at one time my project file had exceeded 2GB!!!).
So… Nothing I can easily do about it. If a project contains lots of images or videos, project file size is something to live with. Unless, of course, someone has a suggestion 
.
Just for fun, I loaded the largest poster (999MB) into an editor, made no changes and saved it at 100% jpg quality. The resulting file size was 378MB. A webp version at 80% was a mere 84MB. Interesting?
Once again, thank you (and others) for trying to assist.
Sure thing! I didn’t want to say it is the problem and there could be any number of factors. However, I do have iCloud Drive and a 50GB plan. I have a 2019 Macbook Air with 128 SSD and It’s been my go-to… it’s like a buck a month. I suggest checking it out if you haven’t already to help with your storage.
Can I ask why it is so much of a concern to optimise your Sparkle project file?
The project file is a container for the website project and is totally seperate to the final html/javascript/CSS that Sparkle publishes to the hosting server which Sparkle optimises for the web.
To some extent the problem is created by macOS and its versioning/autosaving mechanism. This eats up disk space, but also introduces processing overheads. I have no problem with disk space, per se. My files are local, copied to a raid formatted Synology server (Synology Drive) which is off-sited using HyperBackup to Google. This strategy is employed for a lot more than just Sparkle.
(Continued in my response to green skin below)
For 2 reasons.
If one allows software to eat unnecessarily through disk space, you have to pay for storage you need not pay for. If every application I used “overstored” its files one would need to pay for perhaps double the storage and Macs disk upgrades are at purchase time and aren’t inexpensive.
Large files take longer to load, longer to save and occupy more memory (or virtual space) slowing processing overall on the system. Whilst acknowledging that Sparkle is very reasonably priced, it should, nonetheless, be a efficient as possible. I accept “it is what it is”, but if an inefficiency can be corrected, then it should be.
There are often good reasons why software processes data as it does (e.g. Sparkle republishes unchanged pages) but if what we called “working bugs” can be fixed they should be.
Having over 300 videos with 560mb on a website project is not common.
If someone throws around with this amount off data then don’t deepest a small project file, whatever what program that will be the project file will be same.
If you don’t want to have just a big file you might start rethink the way you do websites.
This post should be moved to Humor, I swear… 
