Site Management and Collaboration > Site management and collaboration overview

Site management and collaboration overview

Macromedia Dreamweaver helps you organize the files in your local and remote sites using the Site window. It lets you duplicate the structure of your local site on a remote server, or duplicate a remote Web site's structure on your local system. The relative links you create on your local site continue to work after you transfer files to the remote site, because the structure of the two sites is identical.

You create a local site in Dreamweaver by using the New Site command to create a local root folder for the site (or by making an existing folder into the local root folder); see Using Dreamweaver to set up a new site. You define a remote site when creating a new site, or add that information later using the Define Sites command; see Associating a remote server with a local site.

Dreamweaver includes a number of features for structuring a site and transferring files to and from a remote server. When you transfer files between local and remote sites, Dreamweaver maintains parallel file and folder structures between them. When transferring files between sites, Dreamweaver automatically creates necessary folders when they do not yet exist in a site. You can also synchronize the files between your local and remote sites; Dreamweaver copies files in both directions as necessary, and removes unwanted files as appropriate.

Dreamweaver contains features to make collaborative work on a Web site easier. You can check files in and out of a remote server so that other members of a Web team can see who is working on a file. You can add Design Notes to your files to share information with team members about a file's status, priority, and so on. You can also use the Workflow Reports feature to run reports on your site to display information on the check in/check out status, and to search for Design Notes attached to files.

Dreamweaver can be integrated with some of the most popular source- and version-control applications. For source-control integration, you can connect to SourceSafe databases and other source-control systems that support the WebDAV protocol. (Note, however, that Dreamweaver does not perform version control.)

Once you've published your site, you or someone on your team can continue to maintain it using these same tools. Before and after publishing, you'll also want to troubleshoot your site on a continual basis. For more information, see Testing and publishing overview.