Updating Templates in Dreamweaver & Keeping Client SideUpdates

[Trisha McDermott]

I have a situation with a website where the client requests a change to be made
within the main menu system of the website, so all of the templates & the
entire site must be updated. I download the latest version of the site, to
ensure the content added is up to date & included, make the necessary changes &
update all pages, everything is fine, until we check the site & find out the
content that has recently been added by the client is missing.

So, when the template is edited, the documents created using those templates
are updated partially - the recent additions made through Contribute by the
client are lost.

This is highly problematic, as it would require the client keeping track of
changes made to ensure they are still available after updating the site.

Has anyone experienced this type of issue with Contribute who can offer any
ways to reduce the impact of this happening? Or at least ensure the client this
is manageable - as in theory, the templates should update the html files as
they are.

Thanks in advance.

Is there any way to stop this happening in the future? It seems quite strange
that

[ThinkInk]

This is not nic, but I had the same problem. I have two answers for you:

Answer 1:

Maybe something went wrong with the communication between Dreamweaver and
Contribute (mistakes in the checking out of files). I've experienced problems
myself with very large websites (never with the smaller ones).

I think the beste solution to try out is:

1. to download the whole site from the server using an ftp program )(and make
a working version and a back up)
2. disable contribute compatibility in Dreamweaver (so no checking in or out
is happening)
3. adjust the templates (put menu's and other stuf that needs to be updated
more often in include files, see answer 2)
4. update all the pages on saving the template
5. check the result and if everything is OK now, upload the updated files
using the ftp program.
6. enable dreamweaver compatibility with contribute

Answer 2:

For the future I would make sure that your menu's and other parts of the
templates that need to be updated more often then the design, are included
using a script language like PHP ( <?php include("file-to-be-included.php"); ?>
).

This way you never have to take so much trouble updating these parts of the
website, since there are all in seperate files.


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