Replacing Image Assets in Your EverWeb Project

Sometimes it’s the small features that can make a big impact when you are building your website. One such feature was recently introduced in EverWeb 3.4 – Replace Asset. This is an important feature as Replace Asset enables you to replace one image asset with another of your choosing. The key thing to remember is that when you use Replace Asset, it will apply to all instances where the asset is being used. As well as images placed on your pages and in Master Pages, the asset will be replaced in widgets, such as the Image Gallery, FlexBox and Text Section widgets, if the widget contains the asset. The great thing about this feature, is that when one image asset is replaced with another, the settings that of the original will be maintained for the replacement image asset. This will save you lots of time and effort as the image dimensions and effects such as, for example, an image overlay, will be retained so you don’t have to spend time resizing your image, or redesigning your pages when you replace one image with another.

Why Use Replace Asset?
EverWeb’s Replace Asset feature is perfect for instances such as updated company logos or any change in branding that is used across your website. It is also useful where you use one image on a number of your pages e.g. you could have a picture of your office on your job posting page and on your contact page. If you move office and have a new office image, you just need to replace the asset to update all instances of the image in your site. You may also have instances where you need to replace certain images at certain times of the year depending on events at that time of the year, or the season. There are many possibilities where Replace Asset can be used.

Be Careful when Replacing Assets
Using Replace Asset can make amazing global sweeping changes to your site. There is also a possibility for things to go wrong if you replace the wrong image or use the wrong image as the replacement. As you are replacing an image, you cannot undo the replacement once you it has been done. It’s advisable that you keep a copy of the original image file stored safely somewhere before replacing the image in EverWeb.

Using Replace Asset
As you probably have guessed already, the Replace Asset is used in the Assets List. Click on the Assets tab to view all of the assets in your site. Find the asset that you want to replace. You can scroll down the list, or use the Assets List Search box. If you don’t know the name of the Asset, you can also just go to a page in your site where the image asset is then select it. The image asset will then be highlighted in the Assets List.

Once you have located the asset that you want to replace, it’s worth taking a moment to see if the file name used for the asset is appropriate. It could be that the name refers to your old company name and not the new name, or the image you are using is just a sequential number used by the camera that originally took the photo. Now may be the time to change the name of the asset to something that’s more meaningful. To change the name of an asset, just double click on the asset name. Edit the name as you wish then press Enter when finished. From an SEO perspective, you it’s usually best to name files before you bring them in to your EverWeb project file. Renaming assets from within EverWeb is the second best option, if you’ve already imported the image asset in to your Project file.

Now that everything has been set up, secondary click on the asset and choose ‘Replace Asset…’ from the menu. Choose the asset that is to replace the existing asset and click on ‘Open’ to finish. Remember that when replacing an asset with another, the action cannot be undone. The only way to undo the action is to reimport the original image file in to the Project file. If in doubt, you can click on ‘Cancel’ to abandon the asset replacement operation.

If you continue and click on ‘Open’, the original asset will be replaced with the new asset.

Checking The Asset Replacement
It’s always a good idea to check that the replacement asset is appropriate even if you’re confident that it will look perfect on all of your pages. To check that your pages do look fine with the replacement asset, secondary click on the asset again, only this time use the ‘Find Pages Using Asset’ option. When you use this option, any page using the asset will be highlighted in the Web Page List. You can then go to each page to see if the asset is the correct replacement for the original image. To remove the page highlight in the Web Page List, secondary click on any of the highlighted pages in the Web Page List and choose the “Clear ‘Using Assets’ Indicator” option.

EverWeb’s Replace Asset feature is a small, simple to use feature that can really save you so much time and effort when used with a little caution!

Let us know in the Comments Section below if you have any questions about this post! We would love to hear from you!