Site Management and Collaboration > Synchronizing the files on your local and remote sites

Synchronizing the files on your local and remote sites

Once you've created files in your local and remote sites, you can synchronize the files between the two sites. Use the Site > Synchronize command to transfer the latest versions of your files to and from your remote site.

If your remote site is an FTP server (rather than a networked server), then synchronizing your files uses FTP. For more information on using FTP, see Associating a remote server with a local site.

Before you synchronize your sites, Dreamweaver lets you verify which files you want to put onto or get from your remote server. Dreamweaver also confirms which files have been updated after you complete the synchronization.

To see which files are newer on the local site or which files are newer on the remote site, without synchronizing, choose Edit > Select Newer Local or Edit > Select Newer Remote (Windows, from the Site window) or Site > Site Files View > Select Newer Local or Site > Site Files View > Select Newer Remote (Macintosh).

To synchronize your files:

1	If you want to synchronize specific files or folders rather than the whole site, choose those files or folders in either the Local or the Remote pane of the Site window.
2	Choose Site > Synchronize in the Site window (Windows) or from the menu bar (Macintosh).
3	To synchronize the entire site, choose Entire 'Site Name' Site from the Synchronize pop-up menu. To synchronize selected files only, choose Selected Local Files Only (or Selected Remote Files Only if the Remote pane was where you made the most recent selection).
4	Choose the direction in which you want to copy the files:
	Choose Put Newer Files to Remote if you want to upload all the local files that have more recent modification dates than their remote counterparts.
	Choose Get Newer Files from Remote if you want to download all the remote files that have more recent modification dates than their local counterparts.
	Choose Get and Put Newer Files to place the most recent versions of all the files on both the local and the remote sites.
5	Choose whether to delete the files on the destination site that don't have counterparts on the origin site. (This is not available if you have selected "Get and Put".)
	If you choose Put Newer Files to Remote and you select the Delete option, then Dreamweaver deletes any files in your remote site for which there are no corresponding local files. If you choose Get Newer Files from Remote, then Dreamweaver deletes any files in your local site for which there are no corresponding remote files.
6	Click Preview.
	If the newest version of each chosen file is already in both places and nothing needs to be deleted, an alert appears, informing you that no synchronization is necessary.
7	In the Synchronize Files dialog box, verify which files you want to delete, put, and get. If you don't want Dreamweaver to delete, put, or get a particular file, deselect it by clicking the checkbox to the left of the file (in the Action column).
8	Click OK. The files are automatically transferred (and deleted as necessary), and Dreamweaver updates the Synchronize Files dialog box with the status.
9	To save the verification information to a local file, click Save Log.