My iMac recently froze up and, when I – eventually – recovered from the forced shut down and restart, I discovered my Dreamweaver preferences had been reset to the default settings and, even worse,
ALL 50 OF MY SITE DEFINITIONS HAD DISAPPEARED!
I have my site definitions backed up (most of them anyway) but the option of importing them one by one didn’t really appeal to me. Besides, I have Time Machine installed so I reasoned that, if I could figured out where Dreamweaver stores its site definitions, I could restore them all from the backup.
Well, it took a bit of research but I was able to make it work. Should you wind up in the same situation, here’s how to do it.
Sorry but these instructions are Mac OS X and Dreamweaver CS3 and CS4 only, if anyone can figure out how to do the same on a PC or for other versions of Dreamweaver, I’m sure a lot of folks would like to know about it.
Dreamweaver CS4 Mac stores site definitions in the file:
Macintosh HD:Users:<username>:Library:Application Support:Adobe:Common:10:Sites:Site Prefs
For CS3 the file is: Macintosh HD:Users:<username>:Library:Application Support:Adobe:Common:9:Sites:Site Prefs
Substitute your user name for <username> and, if you have renamed your computer’s hard drive, sub your drive’s name for Macintosh HD. The colons separate folder names.
Using Time Machine, restoring the site definitions was a simple matter of selecting the file, activating Time Machine, scrolling back a day or two and selecting Restore to replace the current (empty) Site Prefs file with the previous version.
Note: Make sure that you have Dreamweaver closed when you restore the Site Prefs file or the restored file will end up empty as well.
As I said, I also lost my customizations to Dreamweaver’s preferences. I was able to restore them in the same way. Dreamweaver’s preference settings are stored in the file:
Macintosh HD:Users:<username>:Library:Preferences:Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 Prefs
Of course, it’s Dreamweaver CS3 Prefs for users of Dreamweaver CS3.
If you don’t have Time Machine installed, you can also replace the Site Prefs and Dreamweaver CS4 Prefs files using a recent back up (you do have a recent back up don’t you?).
And, if you haven’t found yourself in this situation, be thankful and consider making a backup of your Site Prefs and Dreamweaver CS4 Prefs files and storing them somewhere handy.
As always, feel free to email me with your questions, comments and suggestions. And please follow me on Twitter (DWcourse) for additional Dreamweaver news and tips.
{ 28 comments… read them below or add one }
Not that I need to say it, but thank you SO much for posting this. First time I’ve had this issue and I was fortunate to find the solution. Thanks again!
-chad
Hey, a thank you is never wasted (of course links are good too!).
You are a life-saver. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!
Amazing. MAKE SURE DREAMWEAVER IS NOT OPEN WHEN YOU COPY THE BACKUP TO THE NEW LOCATION!!!!!!!!! THis is what slowed me down. I even copied the entire app support adobe folder from my time machine before reading this. Way to hunt the file down.
Thanks, found my file and of course it’s empty with no backup, lesson learned. How does this file just randomly corrupt. I did nothing out of the ordinary.
I wish I knew, it’s happened to me more than once.
I’d just like to thank you for your very helpful, clearly written article. It’s saved me from redefining over 50 sites first thing on a Monday morning!
Thank you so much for this explanation. Your solution worked perfectly.
Bernie Koloski
Thanks! I searched all over to find out how to bring back the sites after DreamWeaver had a Fatal crash and couldn’t find the info, until here. Saved me a lot of time rebuilding them. Weird there’s no mention of this on Adobe’s site or it’s extremely hard to find if it is there.
Awesome thanks!
David
Can’t believe I’m back here doing this again!
you rock!! saved me totally.
THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! Great information with easy to follow instructions.
hi JCOOK-firstly thanks for the awesome article…. just what i needed – the missing puzzle – now for Dreamweaver 8 and how to restore your site locations and site preferences the location of the correct file is:
For DW8 the file is: Macintosh HD:Users::Library:Application Support:Macromedia:Common:8:Sites:Site Prefs
as you can see pretty close to DW9…
ROCKON!! thanks again cookie
Thank you so much for the post. I was able to restore my sites, but the FTP login and passwords were not restored. Is there anyway to retrieve this information? I have just moved, rebuilt my computer after a hard drive crash, thankfully have everything backed up… but finding all the user names/passwords will be nearly impossible. Any suggestions? Please help. Thanks again.
If the ftp info was saved in the definition before, then it should have been recovered. If it wasn’t, I don’t know any other way to retrieve it (except perhaps trying again).
i did try again, but I’ll do it again! Never know when it was just magically work, right? I’ll keep you posted, and thank you again for atleast getting me this far! It is very much appreciated.
It was just a faint hope. Do make sure that Dreamweaver isn’t open when you restore and, if you have another version of the backup, you could try that (I’m grasping at straws here).
Thanks a million! Saved my butt! Can’t believe this info was not easier to find out there.
Thank you, thank you, thank you! I was so afraid that I was going to have to rebuild all of that info, and I am so thankful to you for providing this info!
worked a treat! thanks saved me a bundle of time
Is there any way to recover my lost site definitions if it’s not in Time Machine?
Steve, as far as I can determine, the only way to recover the definitions file is from a backup. It doesn’t have to be a Time Machine backup though.
just a big thank-you for helping me save an hour or two of my day!
After re-building Mac OS X 10.5 on a new system hard drive, thanks to your advice I was able to restore my 47 website definitions. I have done that before, manually, one at a time. One less pain after 16 hours of work getting my computer running again. Thanks!
Really appreciate this post. I searched everywhere to try and find the location of where DW stored site definitions. Finally from this post I was able to locate it and up back-up site definitions though time machine. Definitely Buggy, though happy I have got my definitions back. Thanks heaps.
wow, you have saved my life! thanks very much!
Hi John,
Thanks for this article. I mentioned this issue on my Facebook Biz page this morning (and linked to this page) as I do inexplicably lose my Site Definitions from time to time! It’s a major headache which Adobe needs to fix!
Today’s solution (even though I do Export each Definition after I learned my lesson) was to use the Preferences file backed up to my external hard drive (after backing up the corrupt one).
Worked fine but as I say, a MAJOR flaw in DW.
All the best,
Paul Mycroft
p.s. I now follow you on Twitter.
Paul, I’m glad it worked for you.
I’ve seen the issue reported often enough that I agree Adobe should be looking into it. Although it’s often hard to tell how much blame goes to the program, the OS or something else.