[Resolved] Dreamweaver CS5 and WordPress

Yep, I just discovered this too. Funny how not a single person at Adobe support knows about this issue. Their forum mod, a PHP/CS5 DW expert, had me going in circles (making system changes, user profile permission changes, xampp configuration & location changes, etc.) for a full week, right on their forum, before I discovered the real problem. I wanted to reach through my monitor and punch him. I even moved WP to the root of my C: drive as a vhost, at his recommendation, because he thought the nested folders & security within XAMPP may be the problem with why DW couldn’t find includes. I didn’t think that was the problem but I gave it a shot anyways, and ended up spending several days (with little sleep) trying to fix all the Vista & Apache security blocks that I encountered by moving the WP folder outside of XAMPP. On the bright side, I have successfully setup multiple vhosts outside of XAMPP and they are fully functioning WP sites with their own domain names now. However, I went to their forum because DW couldn’t find dynamic includes. It still couldn’t find them after I switched to vhosting. I even made Apache a local user on my pc with full control and access to the file system, so DW could find the includes. Of course, none of these changes were necessary. There was a very simple explanation for DW being unable to resolve dynamic includes — WP permalinks.

BTW, this *just* happened to me on Adobe’s forum. At this point, they should know that DW doesn’t understand/support WP permalinks.

One other thing – As a semi-workaround, try using taxonomy & post type whenever possible. You can then switch those to permalink on your production site, and maintain some sort of word-based structure on your development site. DW can follow dynamic urls. It just can’t follow the url structure of WP permalinks because it can’t logically resolve the location or directories to physical files. It can follow mod_rewrite, that’s done with your .htaccess file. So, basically, if you give it directions and a starting querystring in the url, it can follow the logic behind the url and pull includes. At least, that’s what I’m doing

Hey Y’all,

We all know how to set up the WP site in DW CS5 locally, but how do you take that site and connect the site remotely and to the remote root directory, which you created?

The Lynda.com video for explaining “transferring files” did a weak job in assisting with this task.

And, I have yet to find helpful information on this. Apparently, you need to have a B.S. in Code to know how to navigate these final steps. AHHH!

If you can do set up a local site and create a remote site using the local site using DW CS5 I will pay you to do this for me. I’ve spent the past week failing at integrating WP & DW.

Or, if you can give me a 30 min. tutorial of how to utilize Live View & Inspect Mode to see all the dynamically related css styles, I will pay you to do that.

If you can refer me to someone, that would be awesome!

I received this email from a good-human being. The human states,

” * WP needs to dynamically access all the various files that make up the WP site. It is not a traditional page based arrangement that you may be accustomed to in DW. There are many elements – or should I say, fragments of code that get assembled on-the-fly to produce a web page – all inside index.php. As a result, you will not see and traditional tags in the index.php file. They are all loaded dynamically. To see the site running in DW You need to run it in Live Mode, but you wont be able to edit the code without understanding where the fragments are that get dynamically assembled in the index.php file.

* If you set up your site initially on a remote server then copy it down to your local server, the application will be wanting to access the database in order to run. If that database is not local, and you have not edited the wp-config file and database to accommodate the local server then you can expect problems. Same goes for transferring the site to a remote production server. The wp-config file and the db need to be edited so that he site will run as expected on the remote server

It has been my experience to set up a local site for test and development and a seperate site in DW for the “production” site. That overcame some of the difficulties I experienced setting up a common DW site to run on both a local server and a remote server.

Unfortunately, Adobe has not done a good job of educating the traditional DW user on what is needed to get familiar with using the product with web apps such as WP. Joomla or Drupal. It is a quantum leap from the old DW page based model to today’s modern web apps.
Wish I could be more helpful. Good luck !! “

So, That info is helpful to know and it raises some interesting feelings considering the Dreamweaver Marketing that you can “edit css visually”. How in the world ‘am I going to be able to set up a DW site locally and make MySQL database and .php config modifications if I need to “visually edit css”?

I guess one can argue that Live View & Inspect are there primarily to help one locate all the different files, but they do sell the point, at least in Lynda.com, that live visual editing is what it is Great for.

I would greatly appreciate some expert DW help on being able to use this revolutionary product in the way that it is advertised!

If they are not going to help educate the necessary details for use, Why don’t they just include a pay for service where they will set up the system so that the tools will be able to do what they are advertised to do?

In the past 2 weeks, All the online tutorials that I’ve researched and the hours of Lynda.com that I’ve watched have not taught me how to resolve the issues that I have encountered in this $900 investment!

I am not giong to go get another $80,000 degree in order to learn how to modify php, mysql, apache, java, etc.; so if you know someone who has the Specialized skill sets to accomplish DW & WordPress Integration; please let me know so I can help them pay off their $80,000 degree in software engineering & design And actualize my vision for managing my website.

Cheers!

I also am having very similar problems with no solution in site. I really wish I hadn’t done all the stupid lynda.com training videos since they show all the great things you can do in the new dw cs5 supposedly with wordpress sites. I have gotten everything to work with exercise files but cannot get my existing site working. I have tried what seems like everything. Can someone please show the many of us with this problem a solution or at least tell us it is not possible so I can quit trying with a good conscience.

I know there are probably some very specif wordpress files that need to be modified to make it work locally (and very carefully not uploaded to the remote site) just wish i knew which ones.

Hey jlynn,

It sounds like you are struggling with setting up the local host. The Lynda DW tutorial for setting up your DW/WP site locally is very accurate and helpful. If you have to scratch it and start over, then do it. I wouldn’t use their exercise files unless you are extremely clear on your folder structure; they have nothing to do with setting up your local site properly and this step may be creating un-needed confusion for you.

I set up my site locally 3 different times so I understand your frustration. Take a breather, and start clean with the mindset that setting it up will work.

What I found difficult was integrating my localhost info and the remote host. This process is not illustrated well on the Lynda videos because they don’t walk you through installing WP on your remote host. And, it involves a little MySQL database set up.

I hope this helps!
I’ve pasted the post below that I made in response to a fellow frustrated starter on the DW forum: https://forums.adobe.com/message/3404707#3404707 regarding using DW only remotely. I have since properly set up my localhost and remote host to reflect most of the same info. Due to Database syncing difficulties, one must be careful on which files you “put” to the remote. I am only making some css style changes locally and then putting the “index.php” file to the remote. The “index.php” file contains all the different information that is found on all the different css, html, php, etc files.

Not setting up a local server/site has many limitations when using the DW tools to edit.
You can use live view/inspect to edit your site based on the remote file directory only. However, because php files and commands are dispersed throughout the WP theme and framework you are limited in seeing all the data on a single page. For example, if you view your home page in live view and inspect you will probably only see the div tags/parts which are found on a single file, like body.html. So, you would have to select specific .css files and other content files in order to find the bits and pieces which WP organizes together. Thus explains the benefit of using a local server.

As of now, DW CS5 can only utilize the power of the local server to enable you to see ALL the WP bits in real time-“live view”.

Lynda.com has a great video on setting up your local server, installing WP and establishing WP on your DW cs5 site. Search for Dreamweaver CS5 & WordPress In addition they have sections related to DW/WP integration.

Setting up a local server & DWsite is really easy. Connecting that site to the remote server is another story. Which is where I ran into difficulty. I made it as far as setting up a MySQL data base on the remote server, then I had to call an expert for help because those who know how to finish the problem and willing to walk you through it are rare.

What I did learn was that it is very helpful if you name your MySQL databases the same and you give them the same username and passwords. This pertains to the part where you edit the config.php page, so it holds the same data.

I did find a great coach who walked me through it during a Skype session. His name is Jeff Lambert and his site is: WebPhysiology.com

I actually found him on a LinkedIN group called, WordPress Experts.

In addition to helping integrate my local and remote directories, he helped me change some data prefix tables in my data base so that I am less vulnerable to hacks.

And, he helped me organize my theme files so that I am editing the child theme rather than the integrated parent theme. (my theme is pageLines and it’s a frameworked theme, which is really not the best type of theme to be editing in DreamWeaver).

So, Jeff helped me beyond my expectations and taught me more about DW and site setup/structure than I ever wanted to know:)

I was so relieved after his help because I spent the last month failing at this DW setup and constantly feeling anxious because I thought that I was doing something wrong.

If you’ve connected to your site remotely, you are doing nothing wrong, DWcs5’s live/inspect tools are somewhat limited when it comes to that type of setup.

Although you can setup a local server after you have setup the remote server, Jeff has said that this type of setup is not 100% fool proof; so, it’s best to set up just like DW and the tutorials instruct.

You’ll make it!

And, you can check out my site: https://www.5ing.us although, I am still developing it.

All the Best,

Dustin

Dustin,
Will you marry me?

Ruth – sleepless over Dreamweaver WordPress Synchronicity

I don’t know if this helps but the reason I like to use DW for wordpress is for the inspect mode so I can alter the CSS, that is so handy. Also for creating a child theme, function.php, header.php, etc.. for a child theme. I don’t know how many 12hour chunks I’ve taken off my life trying to figure out the whole hosting, remote server, integration with DW, fatcow(hosting), Godaddy, connecting the database, error connecting to database, ooooh!! enter your hosting db info into the config file, ya like that works. Anyway, that connection problem was the database side of this whole equation. The way I deal with it now is that anything I have to do with the database, post, page, user, form, field etc… I just do it from the live control panel in wordpress on my live site, doing that of course puts everything in the proper database. Anything that has to do with css or files I can do in dreamweaver and then upload to my ftp. like a regular site. So in conclusion since WP separates stucture(use DW) from content(database/use wordpress). NOTE: I’d pay $300.00 a month for Lynda.com instead of a year. (well maybe not that much) But there is no other teaching tool out there like that.

I hate to say but reading all this information sounds like you need to know
ROCKET SCIENCE!! I am also having issues with WordPress Themes in DW CS5 Mac.
I keep getting the “Dynamically-related files could not be resolved because of an internal server error. RYTRY!!!!!!!” OMG spent about 2 months trying to research how to edit a wordpress theme in DW. I set up MAMP and Mysql sucessfully and also did a “Todays Date” php echo test which works just fine. But when I try to open up wordpress theme index.php it asks to “Discover” then once again the DREADED “Dynamic” error.
I’ll Paypal anyone $50 to help me resolve this issue so I can edit the wordpress theme
that I have purchased and make it work in DW CS5, Mac and OS X Lion.

Easy money for anyone who is gifted to understand all this Rocket Science set up.
You can email me at: [email protected] if you are up for the challenge.