Operation Manual

51
USING DREAMWEAVER
Working with Dreamweaver sites
Last updated 3/28/2012
File transfer to and from a Contribute site
Contribute uses a system much like the Dreamweaver Check In/Check Out system to ensure that only one user at a
time can edit a given web page. When you enable Contribute compatibility in Dreamweaver, the Dreamweaver Check
In/Check Out system is automatically enabled.
To transfer files to and from a Contribute site using Dreamweaver, always use the Check In and Check Out commands.
If you instead use the PUT and GET commands to transfer files, you might overwrite the modifications that a
Contribute user has recently made to a file.
When you check a file in to a Contribute site, Dreamweaver makes a backup copy of the previous checked-in version
of the file in the _baks folder and adds your user name and a date stamp to a Design Notes file.
More Help topics
“Checking in and checking out files” on page 82
Contribute file and folder permissions on the server
Contribute provides a way to manage file and folder permissions for each user role you define; however, Contribute
doesn’t provide a way to manage the underlying read and write permissions assigned to files and folders by the server.
In Dreamweaver, you can manage those permissions directly on the
server.
If a Contribute user doesn’t have read access on the server to a dependent file, such as an image displayed in a page,
the contents of the dependent file don’t appear in the Contribute window. For example, if a user doesn’t have read
access to an images folder, the images in that folder appear as broken image icons in Contribute. Similarly,
Dreamweaver templates are stored in a subfolder of the site’s root folder, so if a Contribute user doesn’t have read
access to the root folder, they can’t use templates in that site unless you copy the templates to an appropriate folder.
When you set up a Dreamweaver site, you must give users read access on the server to the /_mm folder (the _mm
subfolder of the root folder), the /Templates folder, and all of the folders containing assets that they will need to use.
If, for security reasons, you can’t give users read access to the /Templates folder, you can still enable Contribute users
to access
templates. See “Enable Contribute users to access templates without root folder access” on page 55.
For more information about Contribute permissions, see Administering Contribute in Contribute Help.
Contribute special files
Contribute uses a variety of special files that aren’t intended to be viewed by visitors to your site:
• The shared settings file, which has an obfuscated filename with a CSI extension, appears in a folder named _mm in
the root folder of the site, and contains information that Contribute uses to manage the site
• Older versions of files, in folders named _baks
• Temporary versions of pages, so that users can preview changes
• Temporary lock files, indicating that a given page is being edited or previewed
• Design Notes files containing metadata about the site’s pages
In general, you shouldn’t edit any of these Contribute special files using Dreamweaver; Dreamweaver manages
them automatically.