Export Dreamweaver CS4 Site Info

Ninety-nine percent of the time I work on websites for myself and others from the comfort of my home office. I can kick back relax and generally get a lot of work done.  Sometimes, however, I need a “Change of local”… The office gets a little confining.  Instead of copying the site (or sites) I’m working on from desktop to thumb-drive to laptop, I have devised another method.

This may not be the “best” method but, it works quite well for me. (Thank you very much 🙂 )

First, I make use of a free Program/Utility from Microsoft called Live Mesh.  This utility lets me keep files and folders synchronized  between computers regardless of where they are located. I set up my working directory to be synchronized to my storage space in the Live Mesh and my Laptop.  Second, I use the “Export” command in Dreamweaver to copy my sites settings to an XML file. I save those files in a folder that is also synchronized to my laptop. Then I just import them back in when I am working on the laptop.  (I would recommend that you export your site settings regularly so that you have a backup copy if anything happens to the site.)

How do you export the site information in Dreamweaver CS4??  It’s super simple! Here’s what you do:

1. Open Dreamweaver CS4.
2. Select Site —> Manage sites.
3. Select one or more sites whose settings you want to export and click Export:
   *  To select more than one site, Control-click (Windows) or Command-click (Macintosh) each site.
   *  To select a range of sites, Shift-click the first and last site in the range.
4. If you want to back up your site settings, select the first option in the Exporting Site dialog box and click OK. Dreamweaver saves remote server login information, such as the user name and password, as well as local path information.
5. If you want to share your settings with other users, select the second option in the Exporting Site dialog box and click OK. (Dreamweaver does not save information that would not work for other users, such as your remote server login information and local paths.)
6. For each site whose settings you want to export, browse to a location where you want to save the site and click Save. (Dreamweaver saves each site’s settings as an XML file, with an .ste file extension.)
7. Click Done.

See? Super Easy! Now all you have to do is import them back into your other installation of Dreamweaver.  Here’s how you import it all back into the program:

1. Open Dreamweaver CS4.
2. Select Site —> Manage sites.
3. Click Import.
4. Browse to the folder where you saved the exported sites and select one or more sites. Remember, these sites are saved within files with an .ste file extension.
   *  To select more than one site, Control-click (Windows) or Command-click (Macintosh) each .ste file.
   *  To select a range of sites, Shift-click the first and last file in the range.
5. Click Open and then click Done.
6. After Dreamweaver imports the site settings, the site names appear in the Manage Sites dialog box.

© 2009, Robert Owen. All rights reserved.