I am getting ready to set up a new Dreamweaver site to work with Contribute and
am hoping to avoid the problem I have with my current site. Right now, the site
definition points to an "off-line" copy of the site on a local network drive. I
make all page changes, template changes, etc. within that site. When I'm ready
to make the changes live, I tend to use Windows Explorer and just copy from the
site to the live server (I know that I could just check 'automatically upload
files to server on save" and avoid this step ). However, Contribute is set up
to connect directly to the live site. It seems that was the only way to do it -
otherwise even when I (as Contribute Adminstrator) click "publish" for a draft,
it would only be published to the off-line site - and I would still have to
copy to the live server. But with the current set-up, there's a version
mis-match as soon as I publish a Contribute file, unless I immediately go and
copy the updated page from the live server back to the off-line site and that
means that some site changes will copy an old "off-line" version of a page over
a new, edited Contribute page.

How do I set up a site to ensure that I can still have an off-line "work"
environment, and yet not have to worry about Contribute-edited pages? I do
understand that I can define the site as the "live" site - but then if I make
site wide changes that don't work, and blow something up - I don't have that
back-up. It just makes me nervous to work with the live files.

I've read (and am still reading) everything I can find about setting up a
site, and setting up a site to work with Contribute, but this is still
confusing me.

thanks for any help.