I always warn my Dreamweaver students not to save their FTP password with their site information if they are working a public computer. If they do, anyone with access to the computer will have access to their website. In addition, the password encryption that Dreamweaver uses isn’t very secure. So a stranger could not only access your site but also “borrow” your password and access your site later from a different computer.

While that seems like an oversight on the part of Adobe, it can also be a convenience if – like me – you ever need to recover a password and the only place you’ve saved it is in Dreamweaver. To make the recovery process easy, Apptools provides an easy to use recovery tool on their site. Here’s how to use it:

1. Export your site settings
   1. Select the Site>Manage Sites… menu option
   2. In the Manage Sites dialog, click the Export… button
   3. Make sure the “Backup my settings” option is selected and click OK
   4. Save your definitions as a .ste fie
2. In a text editor
   1. Open the site definitions (xxxx.ste) file
   2. Locate the text string: pw=”encrypted password here”
   3. Copy the letters and numbers between the quotes
3. Go to http://apptools.com/password.php
   1. Paste the code into the Encrypted Password field at the bottom of the page
   2. Click the Get Password button

That’s it, you should be looking at your recovered password.