Defining a local testing server in Dreamweaver isn’t difficult, but a surprising number of people get it wrong. So, I have created a couple of video tutorials that describe the options and then take you through the actual process in the Site Definition dialog box. Because the options are different for Windows and Mac OS X, I have created separate tutorials. Both are approximately eight minutes long.
The tutorials are hosted on an Adobe site, and the videos start automatically after opening in a new window. A control panel lets you skip to different sections of the tutorial, and most of the text can be read by opening the Notes tab. The videos are resizable, but are best viewed in a 1024 x 768 browser window. The Windows tutorial is here, and the Mac one is here.
Hi David,
I bought a hardcopy version the CS3 edition of your ‘Essential Guide to Dreamweaver CS4 with CSS, Ajax, and PHP’ by David Powers. Excellent book but heavy to carry round, and the new edition has about 200 pages more, which means more material – jolly good; but some of as simply cannot carry that around.
I would urgently like to purchase the pdf/e-book version of the new, CS4 book so I can load it on my portable notebook and read almost anywhere – as my daily commute is my most precious reading time. Sadly, my search would seem to indicate that this is the only one among your books that has no e-book version (??). I was able to download chapter 6 from your web site but I need the whole e-book. Are there any plans at all to make that available for purchase?
Thanks you,
JoPee
It’s standard practice to release an ebook version of all new friends of ED titles. I suspect the reason there’s no link on the book’s page on the foED site yet is because the official publication isn’t due until 1 December. I know that it’s definitely being released as an ebook, so it’s just a matter of time.
FWIW, I agree that the book is a bit of a monster to carry around. I originally proposed two separate books, but my editor thought more people would prefer it as a single volume. Producing two books is more expensive, so the cost is reduced this way, albeit at the expense of convenience for carrying around. If you’re based in the United States, you might also be interested to know that all Apress/friends of ED books are gradually being made available in Kindle editions, too.
My apologies for going this route, but friendsofed forums appear to be discontinued, and Adobe doesn’t accept comments on CS4 help now that cs5 is out. I have your Dreamweaver cs4 book and have used it to set up my Dreamweaver for my first foray into server side programming. I have used XAMPP to set up Apache, MySQL and PHP on a second PC on my home network, and I’ve worked out virtual hosts and introduced myself to the hosts file. Your book and this video were invaluable in all of this. Thanks!
What you don’t appear to cover is is having source files on PC A, where Dreamweaver sits, the test server on PC B, and a normally hosted “production site” on an ISP’s computer “C”. I didn’t want to possibly mess up/slow down my main PC with Apache and so on, so I put it on “B”. Maybe this isn’t a great idea.
My problem is Dreamweaver doesn’t appear to have a mechanism for doing a mass update of source files from A to B. If I do a live view, it asks if I want to update the copy on the test server, but it doesn’t update dependent files, like includes.
Am I missing something, or am I trying to do the impossible? I can run a utility to compare the local and testing folders and do a sync, or I could point Dreamweaver to PC “B” for access to local files, but then I’d have to have both PCs up to do even a trivial change on a static page. Either way seems to be a pain.
I haven’t been able to find any help or advice on this issue, so if you could point me to a resource, I’d be very grateful!
Thanks
David