Summary

This chapter dealt with the "end game" of building dynamic sites, which is the upload of the site to the server and its subsequent maintenance.

We started with an overview of how to end up with a smooth deployment of the site from your computer to the server. This included setting up the testing server to match your deployment server, why you shouldn't use absolute addressing, and why pages should be modular.

We showed you how to test ColdFusion Components using the Remoting capabilities of Flash MX 2004 and some issues to be aware of in the realm of database connectivity.

We then reviewed how to use Dreamweaver MX 2004 to upload files from the local computer to the server. This included a rather extensive overview of defining a remote site. We also spent quite a bit of time reviewing how to use the Files panel to move files from the local site to the remote site and showed how to use the "Put" and "Get" features of this process. We also showed you how to synchronize the files on the local and remote sites in order to have the most current versions of the pages on the local and remote sites.

We also discussed the use of Contribute for site maintenance and showed you how to have Dreamweaver MX 2004 manage a Contribute site. This involved a rather comprehensive overview of how the various areas of the Contribute administrator page enable you to control not only who has access to the site but also the types of changes the users can make to the Contribute site.

We finished the chapter by explaining the importance of a back-end to manage the data in a dynamic site and spent a bit of time briefly reviewing the server behaviors in the Dreamweaver MX 2004 Application panel. As we explained, these behaviors are what put the word "dynamic" into the title of this book.

Which brings us to the end of this book. When one of the authors finishes a class or seminar, he always asks the students or attendees: "Did you learn anything?" We hope you did and that you discovered , as you moved through the book, that building a dynamic site using the comprehensive suite of tools in Studio MX 2004 is not a process involving mysticism and strange incantations. It is common sense that starts with two questions: "What do I want to do?" and "How do I do it?" Ask those questions, and you focus on the process of building a dynamic site and not the technologies that make it happen.

We also hope you had some fun building a dynamic site with the Macromedia Studio MX 2004. As we are fond of saying, "The amount of fun we have in this business should be illegal." We'll see you in jail.