Editing an existing remote website in Dreamweaver

You can use Dreamweaver to copy an existing remote site (or any branch of a remote site) to your local disk and edit it there, even if you didn’t use Dreamweaver to create the original site.

To edit an existing remote site:

1. Create a local folder to contain the existing site, then set it up as the local folder for the site (see Setting up a local folder).

   NOTE

   You must locally duplicate the entire structure of the relevant branch of the existing remote site. For more information, see Understanding local and remote folder structure.

2. Set up a remote folder (see Setting up a remote folder), using information about your existing site.

   Make sure to choose the correct root folder for the remote site.

3. In the Files panel (Window > Files), click the Connects to Remote Host button (for FTP access) or the Refresh button (for network access) in the toolbar to view the remote site.
4. Depending on how much of the remote site you want to edit, do one of the following:
   • If you want to work with the entire site, select the root folder of the remote site in the Files panel, then click Get in the toolbar to download the entire site to your local disk.
   • If you want to work with just one of the files or folders of the site, locate the file or folder in the Remote view of the Files panel, then click Get in the toolbar to download that file to your local disk.

   Dreamweaver automatically duplicates as much of the remote site’s structure as is necessary to place the downloaded file in the correct part of the site hierarchy. When editing only one part of a site, you should generally choose to include dependent files.

5. Use Dreamweaver to work on your site.

Related topics

• Editing an existing local website in Dreamweaver