Re: site management in dreamweaver?

We used DW the same way you do.  Well, almost the same.

1.  All our work was maintained on the development server (same as you).
2.  Everyone on the team was responsible for maintaining their local copies 
in synch with the dev server (same as you).
3.  When it came time to upload to the production server, it was done by 
using command line instructions to merely copy from the dev server to the 
prod server.

A.  At no time did anyone have DW access to both the dev server and the 
prod server.  *Everything* was done with the dev server.
B.  Uploading from the dev server to the prod server was the responsibility 
of one person.   There were no exceptions to this.  (When we automated the 
process, only those files which had been changed were uploaded.)

In many ways it comes down to people management.  We eliminated errors by 
assigning specific tasks to specific people.  While we did cross-train (to 
account for illness, vacation, people leaving, etc.), any deviation from 
the SOP required mgmt approval.  Again, no exceptions to the SOP.

Sounds draconian?  Yes.  Any failures?  Never.  Did everyone agree to the 
process?  Yes.  What if they didn't agree?  They didn't work for us.  :)




At 05:37 PM 11/21/01 -0400, Dane Robison wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>I've finally succeeded in convincing my company to ditch FrontPage; we're
>now using Dreamweaver to manage our three corporate sites. Now I'm being
>held to the fire and I hope someone here can help.
>
>We have a corporate policy that prohibits any work from being done on a
>"live" production server. So, for each of our three sites we have two
>servers--development and production--plus the local copies made on our hard
>drives by Dreamweaver. My question is how we can coordinate the files
>between these two servers using Dreamweaver. The obstacle appears to be that
>we can only define one remote server for each site.
>
>As cumbersome as it seems, this is the best we've come up with:
>
>1. All work is done on the development server. It is assumed that at any
>given moment this dev box represents what we really want the site to be.
>
>2. When changes are made to the dev box, we synch our local copies to that
>server.
>
>3. We then define a new site (prod) that points to the production box but
>uses the same local files as the "Dev" site.
>
>4. Switching over to the Prod site, we synch it to our local files, thereby
>passing the updated files we just grabbed from the development box.
>
>How can we improve on this? It's not that it's terribly difficult, but FAR
>more hands-on and involved than it ought to be. I know a lot of folks use
>Dreamweaver for its site management capabilities; hopefully someone can
>point out an easier, more direct way to get files from development to
>production. Too many chances for error here, with a minimum of three
>different people doing this at any given time.
>
>Ideas?
>
>Thanks!
>Dane


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