Cocked up Dreamweaver templates

[tantronics]

Just installed V9 trial on another PC (currently running V8.5.2.... on live site)

After installing I copied over our site 1 directory to the trial machine and let it do its updating.

Had a little play around, then went back to my main machine with the live site.

After making some minor changes to the live 8.5.2 site I went to upload, but got a message about lots and lots of coding errors. After a bit of digging round it looks like these relate to new Actinic variables and other alterations, for example:

<actinic:variable name="GoogleAnalyticsMarkup" value="Google Analytics Tracking Code" />

has appeared at the bottom of the main outer page design, which I believe is new to V9.

There are also lots of other changes including changes to the editable zones which screws up other documents based on the template!

So it looks like installing V9 when you have external Dreamweaver pages stored on a central server results in butchered templates that no longer work with V8.5.2

Guess what I'm doing tonight!

[Goz]

Not sure that just copying over the site1 directory will work. A snapshot records the contents of site1 plus registry settings and probably other stuff.

I'd be tempted to do this via a snapshot.

[tantronics]

Hi Goz,

Thanks for the reply, I've done it this way lots of times before (from V4 onwards), and Actinic Support" tell me a snapshot is just a compressed version of the Site 1 directory.

The V9 works fine, but it just cocked up the Dreamweaver templates that were still being used by V8.5.2.

Probably my fault for not thinking about the possibility.

Just found last night's backup, so shouldn't take too long to fix, but others should beware of the possibility.

[pinbrook]

Thanks for the reply, I've done it this way lots of times before (from V4 onwards), and Actinic Support" tell me a snapshot is just a compressed version of the Site 1 directory.

in v4 days the snapshot was too flakey to be reliable and many of us chose to use the site1 approach. Since v7 the snapshot has to be the preferred method as the import of the snapshot will trigger the DB upgrade and template upgrades.

Templates are now in the DB in v8,9. In 7 and under they were separate html files.

However it is not advisable to go from 9 to 8, as there are extras in 9 (GA code for example) that wil lnot be recognised by 8.

[tantronics]

Hi Jo,

I agree entierly, but Snapshots take ages and as I was only having a look at V9 the copy was easiest, and it worked fine, there was no problem with the upgrade and I could have a play with V9 no problem at all.

The problem was that I only wanted a look/play with V9 whilst still using V8.5.2 for our live site. So to play safe, I used a different machine.

Unfortunately this other machine is on the same network and our DW templates are stored on a central server. So when the trial machine updated the site for the V9 trial it also went to the server and changed the DW templates, so cocking them up for our live V8.5.2 site.

Backups restored now, so all is well, but anyone else thinking of having a play with V9 (who may not be backed up so recently) should just be aware of this possibility.

[jont]

Take a look at Sandboxie which allows you to run multiple versions and patches of Actinic on the same machine in a safe and protected environment.

[tantronics]

Hi Jont,

Thanks for the pointer, installed and running - Great piece of software, wish I had it years ago!

Many tanks.