Dreamweaver is a wonderful program for webmasters on any level. The synchronization, or “sync” function is a tool that has helped many. When you have established your site, and feature a number of pages, you may find updating can be tedious. You only make changes on a few pages and finish your updating. But, you lost track of precisely what information was updated and which files you need to publish. You are working with two copies of your web site, one on your hard drive, and one on your server.

Dreamweaver comes to the rescue. If you have an especially large site you can also benefit from this function. The best way to initial sync is to do so when you first start building your web site. When you are configuring your site definition you have a box to check under the “Remote Info” section. This will maintain your synchronization.

The sync feature uses the standard Get/Put functions that are in all of Dreamweaver. It will check to see which files are newest, those on your server, or those on your hard drive. If you are the sole proprietor of your web site, and there are no other individuals working on your web pages, you should avoid the “Check In/Check Out” function. There is a chance that the software will download an old file by mistake and overwrite your new pages.

“Check In/Check Out” is a function reserved for when a number of people work on the same site. This is a service that ensures everyone in the group has the most recent files from the web site. If your coworker uploads three changed web pages, when you use this function, Dreamweaver will download those new pages into your computer’s site.

To synchronize your site at this moment, right click anywhere in your “Files” panel. This should be to your right on the screen. You will then select “Synchronize.”

A menu box will appear for you to work with. You can either publish your entire site or just the sites you specify. Next, you will need to chose where you want to copy the newest files.

Selecting “Put New Files to Remove” tells the software to put the newest files on your computer onto the server.

Selecting “Get Newer Files from Remote” does the opposite. It looks for newer files on your server that will be downloaded onto your computer.

There is also a function called “Get and Put Newer Files” that will do both.

Your next step will be the “preview” area where you can see what files will be affected. If you have any doubts about deleting files you should act now. Once Dreamweaver overwrites or deletes web pages or graphics, you will likely not be able to reverse it.

When you are through you can click “OK” or “Cancel” to approve or stop the action. Once it has completed you are done.