User Guide

30 Preparing Your Network and Installing Contribute
Network paths and web addresses (URLs)
When creating a connection to the website, Contribute prompts you to provide the web address
(URL) of the website, and the network connection information of the server and folder storing
the website. Both the web address and network path must point to the same folder in the website.
For example, suppose your website is located at the directory path:
\\MyServer\wwwroot\sites\MySite
And the corresponding web address for this site is:
www.MyServer.com/sites/MySite
When creating the connection, you must enter these values correctly, so they point to the same
folder.
To ensure that the website and network folder (or in the case of FTP and SFTP, the FTP folder)
are the same, Contribute uploads a temporary file using the path information you provide.
Contribute then attempts to read the temporary file through HTTP, using the web address you
provide. If Contribute succeeds in locating the temporary file, the paths match, and Contribute
creates the connection. If the paths don’t match, Contribute prompts you again for the correct
path.
Note: If your users will use FTP to connect to a website folder in the FTP Host folder, you must
provide an absolute path to the folder.
Installing Contribute and creating an administrative connection
After you plan your website infrastructure and configure the network and server permissions for
appropriate read, write, and modify permissions, you must install a copy of Contribute and create
a Contribute administrator connection to the website.
Note: You can create as many administrative connections as necessary, depending on how many
sites and subsites you need to establish.
Go ahead and install Contribute, and then gather the information you need for connecting (see
“Preparing to connect to a website” on page 30) and establish your administrative connection (see
“Creating a Contribute website connection” on page 31).
Preparing to connect to a website
Before you begin, gather the following information:
• Your user name and e-mail address
The user name and e-mail address identify users and the web pages they are working on.
Contribute prevents multiple users from simultaneously editing the same web page.
(Contribute uses a system much like the Dreamweaver check in/check out system to avoid
editing conflicts.)
Tip: If you have multiple copies of Contribute, use a different user name for each copy. For
example, Chris(laptop), and Chris(Mac). Using the same user name can cause problems because
you can override checkouts you make on the other computer.