Site Management in Dreamweaver MX

Site Management is a feature of Dreamweaver that allows the program to keep track of all the files associated with you webpage. At Drew, it is useful for departments and groups creating a website that have multiple users working on it, as Dreamweaver keeps track of moving, deleting, and changes made to files.

Defining your Site

Before defining your site, create a folder on your hard drive or your F: drive to use for storing all your files. This will be where your local site is stored.
Open Dreamweaver MX.
Go to the Site Menu and click New Site
This will bring up the Site Wizard
Click on the Basic tab
Give your site a name (i.e. Basketweaving Department). This is only the way in which Dreamweaver will refer to the site, it will not appear on the webpages by default. Click the Next button.
Click on the option for "No, I do not want to use server technology". Click on the Next button
We recommend that for the next option you choose "Edit local copies on my machine, then upload”. This allows you to save a copy of your files into your test folder to see how the webpage looks before putting it up onto the network where it can be generally accessed. This is the best option when multiple people are working on a site.
Click where it says "Edit local copies" . Click on the small folder and browse to where you created the folder earlier and select that folder for "Where on your computer do you want to store your files". Click Next

When it asks "How do you connect to your remote server" , choose Local/LAN.
In the field "What folder on your server do you want to store your files in?”, click on the small folder to browse to the network folder where you are going to store all the files. If this is a departmental website, it would be G:\www. This is where all the files must be in order to make the website public. Click Next.

Choose the option for "Yes, enable check in and check out” – This allows Dreamweaver to treat files like library books. Users can check out the library books, and others who look at the files can see who has a file checked out. Upon finishing work on the files, users must check the files back in. If two people attempt to edit the same file at once, Dreamweaver will notify the user and tell them the file is already checked out. Click Next.
Note: File check in/check out works best when multiple users, such as the case with departments on the G drive, are all working with the same files. If you are the only one using the files, file check in/check is probably unnecessary.
Dreamweaver will then display a summary of the information you entered. Check that it is all correct. Note: the local folder and remote folder should be different.
Click Done. The "Edit Sites" window will then appear. Click Done in that window as well.
The Site panel will now be open on the right side of your screen.

Understanding synchronization

Site synchronization is how Dreamweaver enables you to ensure all the files on your local site are the most current with what's on the remote site.
Another part of keeping your site organized is the check in and check out feature Dreamweaver offers. Check in/Check out allows other users to see when you are editing a file and prevents them from overwriting your changes.

A couple of things to remember when using Site Management

Once you put a file into the site folder, you should NEVER move or delete that file except within the Site Management window. This is because Dreamweaver will automatically update any links or warn you about potentially broken links from such file movement.

If you move a linked file to another file using the “Files” panel, Dreamweaver will find all the page it is linked from or is linked to and ask if you wish to update automatically.


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