Working Without a Site: Defining Remote Connections

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The previous chapter introduced Dreamweaver's new siteless working mode for local development. If you don't want to work within a site, but you still want to upload your developed pages to a server, Dreamweaver lets you define remote connections without a site as well.

To create a remote connection, right-click the FTP and RDS Servers icon in the Site panel, or choose from the Servers menu in the Site panel menu bar (see Figure 18.13). The Configure Server dialog box appears. Give your connection a name that you'll recognize, and enter settings similar to those that you would add in the Site Definition dialog box's Remote Info category. When you're done, click OK to close the dialog box. The Site panel now displays a list of files and folders on the connected server (see Figure 18.14). From now on, expanding the server connection in the Site panel to show its files will connect you to the server, if you're not connected already.

Figure 18.13. Defining a server connection without defining a site.

Figure 18.14. Accessing a connected server.

To save a document to the connected server ( essentially putting it), do this:

1. Open the document that you want to move to the server, and choose File > Save to Remote Server.
   
   
2. When the Save File dialog box appears, find your connection in the list on the left. This opens the server's folder structure. Select the folder where you want the document saved and click OK. This uploads the document.
   
   

To open a file from the connected server, right-click the file in the Site panel's list of server contents and click Open. This opens the copy of the file that's on the serverit doesn't get, or download, the file and open it locally. You can tell that this is happening by examining the title bar of the open document's Document window.

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