Ten Ton Dreamweaver [Electronic resources]

Geoff Blake

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Maintaining Your Site

So just because your site's been uploaded doesn't mean you can hang up your web designer hat and go be a cowboy or a fairy princess. The work of a designer is hardly ever done for long. For example, your client or boss may come along with a round of changes and updates for the sitetime to get back on the job!

Fortunately, Dreamweaver makes maintaining your site easy, by providing the tools you need to keep your live site alive and running smoothly.

Changing Links Throughout Your Site

Sometimes, you may want to change the destination of a hyperlink throughout your sitefor instance, after you delete a file from your site, or after your site is reorganized, with pages added, shuffled around, or in some other way changed.

To update all your links, use Dreamweaver's Change Link Sitewide command.

To help you update all your links, Dreamweaver provides the Change Link Sitewide command.

Here's how to change a link across your site:

Choose Site > Change Link Sitewide.

In the dialog box that appears, enter the hyperlink that you want to change in the Change All Links To field.

In the Into Links To field, enter the new hyperlink destination.

All links that point to the destination that you entered in step 2 will change to point to the destination that you specify here.

Click OK.

Dreamweaver updates all the links in your site that pointed to the previous destination.

Keep in mind that when you use the Change Link Sitewide command, the changes are made to your local site, not to your remote site. Therefore, you'll need to upload to the remote site any files that have changed. To see how to keep your local and remote sites the same, check out "Synchronizing Your Local and Remote Sites" later in this chapter.

Hiding Folders

As you're working on updating your site, you can save a lot of time by enabling cloaking. If a file or folder in your site is cloaked, it will be ignored by certain site functions, such as Put (uploading) and Get (downloading). For example, if you have folders of PDF and MP3 files already uploaded to your web space, there's no sense in uploading them again when you update a few pages on your site, if these files haven't also been changed. So to save time, you can cloak these folders.

To take advantage of cloaking, make sure it's turned on in the Site Definition dialog box's Cloaking category. It's on by default, so if you didn't turn it off, you should be fine.

If a file or folder in your site is cloaked, it will be ignored by certain site functions.

Here's how to cloak a file or folder:

In the Files panel, select the files or folders that you want to cloak.

Do one of the following:

In Windows, choose Site > Cloaking > Cloak.

On the Mac, open the Options menu at the top right of the Files panel and choose Site > Cloaking > Cloak.

A red strikethrough appears across the file or folder icon, indicating that it's cloaked. Dreamweaver will now ignore this item during site operations.

To uncloak a file or folder, select it and choose Site > Cloaking > Uncloak. To uncloak all files or folders for your site, choose Uncloak All.

Synchronizing Your Local and Remote Sites

Once you've completed a round of updates, it can be tough to remember which files have been changed and need to be uploaded, and which ones are fine, especially when it's 4 a.m. Take the hassle out of updating with Dreamweaver's Synchronize command.

Essentially, in synchronizing, Dreamweaver compares your local site (or selected files within your site) with your remote site. If Dreamweaver finds any files that are more current than their counterparts, it will overwrite those older files so that the local and remote sites are in sync. Very handy.

If Dreamweaver finds any files that are more current than their counterparts, it will overwrite those older files.

Here's how to synchronize your local and remote sites:

In the right pane of the Files panel, right-click (Windows) or Control+click (Mac) and choose Synchronize.

In the Synchronize Files dialog box that appears, choose an option from the Synchronize menu to sync either the selected files in the Files panel or the entire site.

From the Direction pull-down menu, choose how you want to transfer your files.

Put Newer Files to Remote: Uploads any local files that are more current than the remote files.

Get Newer Files from Remote: Downloads remote files that are more current than the local files.

Get and Put Newer Files: Overwrites older files in either direction locally or remotely.

Click Preview.

The Synchronize dialog box appears, giving you get a last chance to verify that you're doing what you want to.

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To change the action on a file, select the file and click the buttons at the bottom of the Synchronize dialog box.

Mark Selected Files to Get the Remote Version: Replaces local files with their remote counterparts.

Mark Selected Files to Put the Local Version: Replaces remote files with their local counterparts.

Mark Selected Files for Deletion: Removes any selected files from both the local and remote sites.

Synchronicity Without Synching

If you want to see which files on your local and remote sites are outdated without actually transferring anything, in the Files panel choose Edit (Windows) or Option > Edit (Mac) and then choose either Select Newer Local or Select Newer Remote.

Dreamweaver selects the newer local or remote files (depending on the option you chose). At this point, you can decide which files to transferor maybe you just want to review the list to see which files have recently changed before doing a full transfer. In the latter case, when you're ready, just click the Get or Put button at the top of the Files panel to perform the transfer.

Ignore Selected Files During This Synchronization: Leaves any selected files out of the synchronization.

Mark Selected Files as Already Synchronized: Sets the status of selected files as synchronized, removing them from the file list (unless Show All Files is checked).

Compare the Remote and Local Versions of the Selected Files: Launches Dreamweaver's File Comparison utility.

When you're ready, click OK and bust a move.

Managing the Remote Site

Keeping Your Site Organized," to move a file or folder in your remote site, you drag it to a new location within your site structure directly in the Remote Site column of the Files panel. Dreamweaver will ask you to confirm that you want to move the file. Click Yes to continue. Keep in mind, though, that when you move files in your remote site, Dreamweaver does not automatically update your hyperlinks as it does when you move files in your local site.

When you move files in your remote site, Dreamweaver does not automatically update your hyperlinks as it does when you move files in your local site.

Wanna organize some files in your remote site? No problemo. In the Files panel's Remote Site column, you can rename files, delete them, or drag them to a new location, as you can see here.

You can also rename a file in your remote site from the Files panel just as you can for your local site, but again Dreamweaver won't update any hyperlinks for you.

And what if you want to completely remove your entire site, maybe for heavy-duty maintenance, or perhaps because it's old and no longer needed? To do that, select the remote site folder at the top of the Remote Site list in the Files panel and press the Delete key. Hey, it's quick and humane.