How to Establish a New Virtual Server in Dreamweaver CS4 (Windows)

 

Establishing a virtual server is one of the trickiest aspects of developing web sites with PHP!  Here is a detailed step-by-step instruction manual:

 

  1. Boot WAMP.  In Windows, WAMP can be booted from the Start Menu, from the desktop, or from the tray icons in the right hand corner of your Windows task bar.  Boot WAMP. Start all services.

  2. Copy your files to the testing folder.  This is critical!  Assuming you have installed WAMP with the default settings, the testing folder will always be c:\wamp\www.  Within the www folder, you can have various subfolders for testing all the PHP web sites you might have.  Let’s say you are testing a new site called anything. You would create a new folder inside the www folder called ANYTHING.  Inside this folder you would copy all your HTML and PHP pages for testing, as well as your images folder (if your web pages require images).

  3. Boot Dreamweaver.

  4. Create a new site.  In Dreamweaver, click on the Site command up on the Command menu on the top of your screen.  Hold down the left mouse button and slide the highlight down to “new.”    The following screen appears:

    5. SNAP1

  5. Click on the Advanced tab (at the very top of the category list) if it is not already active

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