In this tutorial we will show you how to set up a Drupal 7 server that has been set up locally so that you can edit it in Dreamweaver CS6. We will also show you how to get round the “Dynamically-related files could not be resolved because the site definition is not correct for this server” error that a LOT of people have been getting while working with Drupal in Dreamweaver CS6. This appears to be a bug in Dreamweaver that hopefully they will fix soon, but in the meantime it can interrupt your work-flow if you don’t know how to get around it.
Although this tutorial is designed for Dreamweaver CS6 it functions exactly the same for CS4, CS5, CS5.5 as well as CS6 naturally. The sections of Dreamweaver that you need to set up a Drupal server for editing in Drupal 7 remain unchanged through-out all of the above versions.
Three thing you will need to complete this tutorial are:
- DreamweaverCS6
- XAMPP (or WAMPP or MAMPP) installed and running on your computer
- Drupal 7 or greater installed and running on your computer.
We will not be covered the installation process for either of these things in this tutorial. That is a subject for another tutorial altogether. If you have all this done already then its time to open Dreamweaver and begin.
Dreamweaver CS6: Setting up a Drupal 7 Server in Dreamweaver CS6
The actual setup of the server is quite simple as with other common CMS systems, however once done you do get error message that are caused by a bug with Dreamweaver. Once you have worked out how to get round this you will be creating custom themes in no time.
Step one:With Dreamweaver CS6 select Site >> New Site to start the setup of our Drupal site. On the Site setup window that appear we need to give our server a name, this can be anything you like. And we also need to select the folder in which our folder resides. If the XAMPP server is exclusively for the purposes of your Drupal server this would be the htdocs folder inside your XAMPP folder. If you work on numerous site at a time like I do this is very much likely to be a sub folder within the htdocs folder.
Step Two: Now that you have done that hit the servers tab on the left hand side of the site setup window and hit the add new server button.
In the basic server tab we now need to set the Server Name to localhost and set Connect Using to Local/Network. Once you have done that some of the selection will disappear leaving us with 2 more options to fill in. Select your servers folder again. This folder should match the folder you selected in the last step. And for the Web URL should be http://localhost/ if your Drupal site is not installed in a sub-folder. If your Drupal is install inside a folder inside of htdocs folder we need to add the folder name to this, so in my case I need to put in http://localhost/drupal/ .
Step Three: Click on the advanced tab up top of the winder and down the bottom under Testing server you will find Server Model change it to PHP/MYSQL.
Step Four: Hit save and you will now see your server listed. However there are two tick boxes beside your server. One says remote (currently ticked) and the other currently unticked box says testing. We now need to untick the remote box and tick the testing box.
And now click save and wait for dreamweaver to do its thing. When it is finished you will see all your files that make up Drupal in the Files Panel.
Open index.php and you will be asked to discover related files. Click discover and then yes when the dialog box appears. This is when you will like most people get this error message.
Lets ignore it for the moment and go into Live View. When we do this we get a 404 error page not found. Go to your address bar in Dreamweaver.
Lets remove the index.php from the address
Your address should look like this now so hit enter. And now Dreamweaver is displaying the page for you perfectly. So close that error message because there isn’t actually an error there its just playing up.
You may now navigate around your Drupal site inside of Dreamweaver CS6 by Ctr-clicking on links etc. So we may now start editing our themes. However that is for another tutorial some other time as it can be quite involved and we don’t want to be breaking anything now do we.
Hope you found this helpful and see you again soon.
