Cloaking Files

Not every folder in your local site needs to be uploaded to the remote site on the Web server. Dreamweaver allows folders to be cloaked , which means that they will be exempt from synchronization. This can save you a lot of time. Imagine that you're working on a site that contains large movie files. Cloaking the folder that contains the movie files means that while you're working on other parts of the site, Dreamweaver won't take the time to scan through the folders when synchronizing, and won't upload any of the files. When you're ready to upload the files, uncloak the movies folder and synchronize the local and remote sites.

To cloak a site folder:

1.	Right-click a folder in the files area.
2.	From the resulting shortcut menu, choose the Cloaking submenu, then from the submenu, choose Cloak ( Figure 2.23 ). Figure 2.23. Choosing Cloak from the Files panel shortcut menu keeps a folder and its contents from being affected during synchronization operations. Dreamweaver displays the folder with a slash through it, indicating that it is cloaked.

Tip

• You can only cloak folders; you can't cloak individual files. But you can cloak all files of a particular type. Choose Site > Manage Sites, then select the site you're working on. In the Advanced tab of the Site Definition dialog, choose the Cloaking category. Enable the "Cloak files ending with" check box, then enter the file extensions of the kinds of files you want to cloak ( Figure 2.24 ).

  Figure 2.24. The Cloaking category in the Site Definition dialog allows you to set particular kinds of files to always be cloaked.

  

To uncloak a site folder:

1.	Right-click a cloaked folder in the files area.
2.	From the resulting shortcut menu, choose Cloaking > Uncloak or Cloaking > Uncloak All.