Managing links

Dreamweaver can update links to and from a document whenever you move or rename the document within a local site. This feature works best when you store your entire site (or an entire self-contained section of it) on your local disk. No changes are made to files on the remote site until you put or check in the local files to the remote server.

To turn on link management in Dreamweaver:

1	Choose Edit > Preferences, then select the General category.
2	Select Always or Prompt from the Update Links when Moving Files pop-up menu and click OK.
	If you choose Always, Dreamweaver automatically updates all links to and from a selected document whenever you move or rename it. (For specific instructions on what to do when you delete a file, see Changing a link sitewide.) If you choose Prompt, Dreamweaver first displays a dialog box that lists all the files affected by the change. Click Update to update the links in these files, or click Don't Update to leave the files unchanged.

To make the updating process faster, Dreamweaver can create a cache file in which to store information about all the links at your local site. This cache file is created when you select the Cache option in the Site Definition dialog box, and the cache file is updated invisibly as you use Dreamweaver to add, change, or delete links to files on your local site.

To create a cache file for your site:

1	Choose Site > Define Sites.
2	Select the site in the Define Sites dialog box, then click Edit. In the Local Info category, select the Enable Cache checkbox.

The first time you change or delete links to files in your local site after launching Dreamweaver, Dreamweaver prompts you to load the cache. If you click Yes, the cache loads and all links to the file you just changed are automatically updated. If you click No, the change is noted in the cache, but the cache does not load and links are not updated.

It may take a few minutes for the cache to load on larger sites; most of this time is spent comparing the time stamps of the files on the local site with the time stamps recorded in the cache to see if the cache is out of date. If you have not changed any files outside Dreamweaver, you can safely click the Stop button when it appears.

To re-create the cache for your site:

In the Site window, choose Recreate Site Cache.