- What You Will Learn
- Approximate Time
- Lesson Files
- Dynamic Web Site Basics
- Choosing a Server Model
- Redefining the Newland Tours Site for Dynamic Development
- Developing with a Local Server
- Setting Up a Local Environment for IIS/ASP
- Setting Up a Local Environment for ColdFusion
- Setting Up a Local Environment for Apache/PHP
- Developing with a Remote Server
- Defining a Dynamic Site in Dreamweaver (All Users)
- Building a Simple, Dynamic Application
- What You Have Learned
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Redefining the Newland Tours Site for Dynamic Development
Configuring Dreamweaver to work with dynamic Web sites is somewhat more complicated than configuring it to work with static Web sites. Either way, you use the Site Definition dialog to configure the site. What makes defining dynamic sites so difficult, then, is external to Dreamweaver: To develop dynamic sites, you need access to (and permissions on) a bona fide Web server, with (if applicable) an application and/or database server.
This may be a new workflow for many readers. In the past, you may have developed a site locally on your hard drive, and then uploaded it to the production (or public) server when you were ready to publish. When developing dynamic Web sites, you can still develop locally on your hard drive, but you also need access to a development server. Only when you have completed the site using the development server do you upload it to the public Web server.
You can connect to servers in two different ways: You can set up servers on your local machine and develop everything on your machine, or you can develop using a remote machine, such as a network server or using FTP to a machine out on the Web, such as at your ISP.
If you want to work locally, then you first need to spend some time configuring your computer (instructions follow). If you want to work remotely, then you don’t have to do any configuration to your machine, but you will need several pieces of information from your server administrator to configure Dreamweaver to work with that machine.
Depending on your setup, you’ll need to work through the lesson as follows:
- If you are developing locally, read the section immediately following, Developing with a Local Server.
- If you are developing remotely, skip to the section, Developing with a Remote Server, later in the lesson.
- Once you have finished the appropriate section, regardless of the server model or configuration you set up, you need to configure Dreamweaver to work with the server and server model you have chosen; this topic is discussed in the section, Defining a Dynamic Site in Dreamweaver (All Users).