Macromedia Studio 8 [Electronic resources] : Training from the Source نسخه متنی

Defining the Site

In this task, you'll set up the site to use a ColdFusion environment. You already have a local version of this site, but you have not yet set up the remote version of the site, which has to be in a server folder on your hard drive (if you have a local server), a network drive, or even via FTP.

You'll add the remote version of the site in the coming steps.

In this step, you're telling Dreamweaver how you're accessing your remote folder to open and save files.

If you chose Local/Network as your option and you're working in a Windows environment using the built-in Web server, your remote folder must be in the following location: C:\CFusionMX7\wwwroot\dante\, as shown in the figure. Don't forget to create a dante folder in that directory.

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If you chose Local/Network as your option and you're working in a networked environment, whether you're a Macintosh or Windows user your remote folder should be your folder on the network appended by dante, which is the root folder for this site. Simply navigate in Windows Explorer or Macintosh Finder to the network location, and create a new folder called dante in that directory. Then select the dante directory.

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If you chose FTP, use the FTP credentials supplied by your network administrator. Because FTP information varies wildly by computer, we can't be any more specific.

All users: Leave the remaining options in this category at their defaults.

In this step, you're telling Dreamweaver which server model you're using (in this case, ColdFusion) and how the server can find your files. Much of this step is a simple repeat of Steps 2 and 3, except for the all-important URL Prefix setting covered in the next step.

The URL Prefix setting enables you to specify how the browser should access the files as the server processes them. If your pages do not preview correctly when you test them, this setting is the first place you should begin troubleshooting.

If you chose Local/Network as your option and you're working with the built-in ColdFusion Web server, your URL prefix is http://127.0.0.1:8500/dante/. The default installation of the built-in ColdFusion Web server includes a port number (8500) attached to the address of the server. If you're working in a Windows environment using IIS, your URL prefix does not, by default, include a port number, and would be http://127.0.0.1/dante/. The address 127.0.0.1, sometimes referred to as loopback, is the default address for the computer's local server. It can also be called with the more human-friendly

localhost for example, http://localhost:8500/dante/. Either address can be used to point to the files in your wwwroot folder.

If you chose Local/Network as your option and you are working in a networked environment, specifying the URL prefix can get a little trickier. Fortunately, your network administrator should be able to tell you what it is. Generally, the URL prefix is http:// + the server name + the path to your root folder. So, if I'm connected to a server called devserver, and my personal folder is jbardzel, then my URL prefix would be http://devserver/jbardzel/dante/. A networked server URL prefix can also contain a port number similar to the built-in server.

If you specified FTP as your method, your URL prefix is most likely a regular Internet address, possibly with a port number suffix added to the domain, as in http://www.myorganization.com:8008/jbardzel/dante/. If your site doesn't have a registered domain name (because, for example, you're testing over a home network), you can also enter the IP address of the machine with the site.

Regardless of how you connect to your remote site, your network administrator has the information you need to configure the URL prefix correctly.

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Dreamweaver scans the site and builds its cache.

In a dynamic site, the file extension is the signal the server uses to recognize that the file contains server code. If you leave the extension l, the ColdFusion code won't get processed and the file sent back to the user will not be readable to the user's browser.

When you change a file's extension, all the links that point to it are broken. Fortunately, Dreamweaver catches this problem; the Update Files dialog presents a list of all the files that link to the original name and offers you the choice to have Dreamweaver automatically update the links in these files to the new name. In all cases you want Dreamweaver to update the files, so choose Update. Two of the files, dante_quiz_ questions and dante_quiz_results, are not yet linked to any pages in the site, so this dialog does not appear for them.

When you're finished, none of the files in the site should have the l extension.

Note

At some point (but not necessarily right away), Dreamweaver rediscovers that you've made changes to the file names, and asks if you want to update the template files as well. Click OK to accept this option.

This transfers the entire site to the remote folder. Your site is configured and you're ready to start building dynamic ColdFusion pages.