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.

Another problem often experienced by Dreamweaver noobies is:

I’ve updated my site in Dreamweaver and it looks fine when I preview it but after I upload it the changes don’t show up on the site.

1. Let’s eliminate the easiest solution first. Did you refresh your browser window? When you view a page on the web, your browser stores a copy of that page (and it’s dependent files) in it’s cache. Then, if you return to the page, your browser shows you the cached version rather than the “live” version. This speeds up  browsing but also might prevent you from viewing the latest version of your page. Refreshing the browser window by clicking the Refresh button in your browser should guarantee  you’re looking at the current version of the page.
2. Another possibility – if you are viewing the home page of your site through a URL such as www.yourdomain.com – is that you have multiple index files. As you should be aware, servers are set up to display a default page for a directory if no file name is specified in the URL. The default file is usually index.htm, index.html, index.php or something similar. The server can even be configured (and often is) so that any of those file names can be used for the default file. A problem arises when more than one of the possible default files is present.Say, for instance, a file index.htm pre-exists on your server and, when you create your new site, you use index.html (note the “l”) as your default file name. When you upload your site the existing index.htm file will not be overwritten. So when you visit www.yourdomain.com you may continue to see the old index.htm and not your new home page, index.html.The solution is relatively simple, delete the index.htm file on the server OR change your default file to index.htm (remove the “l”) so that when it uploads it will replace the exiting home page.
3. Another possibility is that you have defined your Host Directory incorrectly in your Remote Site definition. If this is the case, when you upload your files they are placed in the wrong directory on the server. So you won’t see the new pages when you visit the site with your browser. More information on defining your site is available in my tutorial, Define Your Site at the Dreamweaver Club forum or in my Let’s Get Started with Dreamweaver mini-course.

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.