New Procedure for Dreamweaver Users

June 2006

• Overview
• Connecting to the development server in Dreamweaver
• Reviewing changes on the development server
• Promoting changes from the development server to the public server

Overview

To improve the security of the TWU website, a new development web server has been set up on the TWU network between us (webspinners) and the public web server. The development web server is accessible only to people who have access to the TWU network. You will now use Dreamweaver to upload your new or revised pages to the development web server ("dev server") instead of uploading them directly to the public web server ("public server"). Then, after you've reviewed your new or revised pages on the dev server to confirm that they appear the way you intended, you will "promote" the pages from the dev server to the public server so that everyone on the internet can see them.

The new procedure in a nutshell is:

1. Change ftp settings in Dreamweaver to connect to the development server (required only the first time).
2. Edit pages in Dreamweaver.
3. Upload revised pages to the development server (wdev.twu.edu).
4. Review the revised pages on the development server.
5. Promote the revised pages to the public server (www.twu.edu).
6. Review the revised pages on the public server.

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Connecting to the development server in Dreamweaver

1. First you need to change your settings in Dreamweaver so that it connects to the new dev server. In the Dreamweaver menu at the top of the window, click on Site and then Manage Sites...
2. The Manage Sites window will appear. Select your site, if it's not already selected, and click on the Edit button.
   
3. The Site Definition window will appear. Click on the Next button at the bottom of the window three times until you reach the window as it appears below. This is the Sharing Files part of the Site Definition window. The field below question two, "What is the hostname or FTP address of your Web server?", is the only field you need to change. Instead of "www.twu.edu", change the address to "wdev.twu.edu" as indicated by the gray highlight below.
   
4. When you've changed the address, click on the Next button at the bottom of the window two times until you reach the last Site Definition window as shown below. Click on the Done button.
   
5. The Manage Sites window will reappear. Click on Done.
   
   

You've now completed the only change that needs to be made to Dreamweaver. Edit your site as you did before and upload your changes as you did before. The changes you made above will see to it that your pages are uploaded to dev server as they should be. The rest of the new procedure takes place in your web browser.

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Reviewing changes on the development server

Once you've uploaded changes to the dev server, it's a good idea to review them to confirm that they appear the way you expect them to appear. You can review your changes by opening your web browser and navigating to the page on your site that you'd like to review. For our example below, we'll use the home page of the College of Nursing website.

1. Navigate to the page you would like to review. Near the top of the browser window is a field that displays the address (URL) of the page you're browsing. In Internet Explorer, this window is labeled "Address"; in other browsers such as Firefox, it merely contains the address of the page, which looks like this: http://www.twu.edu/nursing/ .
   
2. To see your changes on the development server, you need to change that address in our web browser. You can do that by clicking inside the Address field. When you click inside the Address field, your mouse cursor will change to a text cursor that looks like a capital letter "I", and the address will be highlighted, as shown below.
3. Move your cursor to the "www" part of the address as shown below and click again. You can now change the address by typing in the Address field.
   
4. Change the "www" to "wdev" so that the address now reads "http://wdev.twu.edu/nursing/", then press Enter. Your browser will reload the page. You are now looking at the page as it is on the dev server. Review the page to confirm that the changes you made in Dreamweaver now appear on the page.
   
5. If your page appears unchanged and you're certain you uploaded the new version of the page in Dreamweaver, your browser may be showing you a stored ("cached") version of the page. As shown below, click on the Refresh button near the top of your browser window to force the browser to check the server for a newer version of the page.
6. Your browser will reload the page. You should now see the changes you made. If you still don't see them and you're certain that you uploaded the correct page in Dreamweaver, try holding down the Shift key on your keyboard and clicking on the Refresh button again. The browser will reload the page again and you should see your revised page.
7. If you still don't see your revised page on the dev server, backtrack through your steps and double-check your directory (folder) names and filenames to make sure you uploaded the revised page to the correct location on the dev server. Also confirm that the address in the Address field contains "wdev" instead of "www", and that it also contains the correct directory and filename.

Once you've confirmed that your revised pages appear as they should on the dev server, it's time to promote them to the public server.

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Promoting changes from the development server to the public server

1. When you're ready to promote your pages from the dev server to the public server, you'll return again to the Address field of your browser. Make sure that the address contains "wdev.twu.edu" instead of "www.twu.edu".
2. Click in the Address field as you did when you reviewed your changes on the dev server. This time, remove any filename on the end of the address so that only the directory that contains your site is left on the end of "http://wdev.twu.edu/".
   
   In other words, if you had edited the about-us.htm page on the nursing website, your address in the Address field would be:

   http://wdev.twu.edu/nursing/about-us.htm

   You would remove the "about-us.htm" part of the address so that you're left with this:

   http://wdev.twu.edu/nursing/

   On the end of that address, type "promote.asp". Your address would now read:

   http://wdev.twu.edu/nursing/promote.asp

   
3. Press the Enter key on your keyboard to reload the page. Your browser will open a window asking you for your User name and Password. Type in your portal name and password and click OK.
   
4. Your browser will load the promote.asp page (below), which is a page that contains only one item, a button labeled, "Promote all files changed within the past 24 hours". Click on the button and wait a few moments. A script (a program) will run on the dev server that will copy all the files you've changed within the last 24 hours to the public server. Your browser will then display a list of the files copied and whether the promotion was successful or not.

If you receive notices that promotion failed for some reason, contact Scott Bynum of Marketing and Communication or Brett Beaudoin of ITS.

5. If the files were promoted successfully, confirm that they appear on the public server by navigating to the revised page on the public site. If your page appears unchanged, remember to click on the Refresh button near the top of the browser. The page will reload and you should now see your changes.
   

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