- Textastic for iOS
- iPad
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Questions
WebDAV won't maintain simultaneous connection to parent + child sites/subdomains
Hello! I'd appreciate some guidance as I've run into an unexpected annoyance with webDAV in Textastic on iOS. I use it on a 2nd gen iPad Pro, just updated to iOS 18.3.2, Textastic version 10.5.4
I have 3 sites all hosted through Neocities: my primary/parent site and 2 new additional child sites. I have a custom domain through Namecheap and 2 subdomains created for that domain. My primary site is linked to the custom domain, and each child site is linked to its respective subdomain:
- parent.neocities.org = mydomain.com
- sub1.neocities.org = 1.mydomain.com
- sub2.neocities.org = 2.mydomain.com
Going off Neocities' own webDAV instructions I should be able to set up webDAV connections to any child sites by using their site name as the username + my existing account password. To be fair, I CAN connect to all 3 via webDAV in Textastic!....I just can't switch between them.
Upon opening Textastic, whichever webDAV connection I load/utilize first is then the ONLY webDAV connection I can see/access unless I fully restart the app.
For example, I load the app, make some changes & successfully upload to sub1. If I then make edits to a file for sub2, trying to upload/download or view will still only show me the files & folders for sub1. I have to fully restart Textastic THEN select sub2 first, rinse & repeat any time I want to upload/download from a different connection.
I'm not a web developer or super knowledgeable in this area in general so it's entirely possible it's just user error with how I entered the credentials, or maybe this is an existing limitation/behavior with webDAV I just can't find documentation on :') I tried searching for the same/similar issues for Textastic but didn't see anything, and looked back through all the webDAV sections in the Textastic documentation and, as far as I can tell, I've set things up correctly.
Any assistance or feedback would be HUGELY appreciated! I'm happy to provide more info, screenshots, etc as well if this is actually a bug or something I might've set up wrong. As it is, I CAN still manage each site through Textastic, but being unable to seamlessly push updates between them is a huge headache since I'm frequently jumping between sites while editing since it's related/connected content.
Overall Textastic has been a monumental lifesaver since I don't have reliable computer access and have no choice but to manage my site from my iPad (& sometimes my phone lol), so figuring out this unexpected annoyance would be amazing! 🙏🏻
Customer support service by UserEcho
I think I heard a similar report from another user before.
I need to look into this more, but I believe the problem is that the WebDAV connections share the same session. So when you are connecting to the same domain, just a different subdomain, it will use the already established connection while it should actually try to authenticate again.
I don't have an environment like that to test at the moment, but I'll try to reproduce it.
I looked up previous user reports: for them, it happened when having multiple WebDAV connections to the same server URL, but with different user names and passwords.
Just to make sure: you are using different subdomains, right?
So one connection is to https://sub1.neocities.org/ and another is to https://sub2.neocities.org/
I appreciate the insight! Since they're all under the same overall account login I did figure it just couldn't "refresh" or such when trying to switch between sites in the same account.
Correct, I have my main/parent domain plus 2 subdomains. On my Neocities account, the domain + 2 subdomains are linked to my parent site + 2 child sites respectively as:
main.neocities.org = mydomain.com
sub1.neocities.org = sub1.mydomain.com
sub2.neocities.org = sub2.mydomain.com
Since they’re all managed through my single Neocities account they share one account password, even though I'm using the respective child site names as unique usernames for each webDAV connection. From the Neocities instructions:
“By default you can use your username/password combination to access your parent site via WebDAV. In case you want to access your child sites with WebDAV, you only need to use the site's subdomain name as the username (with the same password for your parent account).”
Since restarting the app lets me then choose a new connection I don't think it's an issue that they're using a single password, but I could be wrong and I don't have a 2nd separate Neocities account/login to test with to see if THAT could maintain a connection at the same time as any 1 of my other sites on my existing account.