When it comes to building a website it is hard to stay un-interactive, as soon as you want to insert a contact-form, or any php-page, you have to start working with servers.
Offcourse testing this isn't exactly the simplest of things to to, as you have to work with external programs to simulate how the server would react in that particular situation.

Today we will be illustrating in 5 steps how to connect Dreamweaver to an external server with the help of MAMP (or WAMP on a mac).

Step 1: Getting the Servers "online"
If you are working on a Windows you want to instal MAMP
The Mac folks can instal WAMP.

Step 2: Getting The Databases Right
Open phpMyAdmin, the windows-users can do this by clicking on the WAMP icon bottom-right of the screen, the mac-user can open the dashboard or the MAMP control panel and click open start page.
Now we are going to create a database called registration and a table called users, and it should look like this:

Step 3: Defining the site in Dreamweaver
in the splashpage: create new > Dreamweaver Site or Manage Sites > New (in the file manager.
Then Advanced.

Windows:
        Local info: Set a root folder
        Remote info: None
        Testing Server:     
        PHP/MySQL
        Local Network
        Testing Server Folder: Windows—C:WAMP/WWW

On a Mac it's a little more complicated, but taking it step by step should get the connection going in no time

Macintosh:
        Open MAMP from your applications folder
        Click on Preferences > Ports
        Select Default Ports
        Open Dreamweaver and define the site
        Local info:
        Set a root folder
        Set http address to http://localhost

        Remote info:     
            Select Local/Network
            Set http address to http://localhost
            Find the path Macintosh HD:Applications:MAMP:htdocs:

        Testing Server:     
            PHP/MySQL
            Local Network: none
            Testing Server Folder: Macintosh HD:Applications:MAMP:htdocs:

Step 4: Connecting Dreamweaver to the MySql databases
Back into Dreamweaver we go, we go for File > New > Dynamic Page > PHP.

Once we are in our new PHP-page, we take a look at the Applications-window, click on the databases-tab > +MySql Connection and fil in the information that is required!

Step 5: oops, no step 5, that was it!

greets

Glenn

Tags: dreamweaver, php, MySql, phpMyAdmin, blogging, MAMP, WAMP

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Labels: Dreamweaver, Php/MySql