Why not develop your site on the testing server?

Hi,

With the excellent help from some forum-members here, a few Lynda.com tutorials and some insight from other websites, I am slowly starting to understand how to make the PHP/MySQL thing work. I finally got my testing server working and it is displaying first results.

There are still a number of things that confuse me. I would appreciate any insight you might give...

1. What is the logic behind developing your site in one folder, then uploading it to a testting server (using the 'preview in browser' function? Why not develop your site straight away in the folder that is the testing-server? I think this is what I did on the ASP side of things (probably not the proper way there either). It would seem to me that in transfering files from your 'sites directory' to the testing-server folder, you are just duplicating the files. What's the use? Why not develop the sites on your testing server straight away?

2. When I first start developing my site, I use the 'Local/Network' option in the dropdown box on 'Remote Info' in the Side Definition Window. When I want to put my site online (on a proper server), I change Access to FTP. Are the Local/Network definitions still retained?

3. The DW Help file distinguishes between local computer, a development server, a staging server, and a production server (see "Set up a Testing Server". I know what a local computer is - but when is a server a development server, when a staging server and when a production server?

Any help to these three questions will help me get fursther ahead in developing dynamic applications.

Thanks in advance!

Sincerely,
Rogier