Adding my live WordPress site to Dreamweaver – PHP and FTP issues

[amelia_6582]

I’m really stuck here. I’m trying to add my live WordPress site lewisestimating.com to Dreamweaver so I can edit files directly, but nothing seems to work. I set up the local site folder and tried connecting via FTP, but…

• Dreamweaver isn’t showing my WordPress files properly.

• Opening PHP files sometimes just gives me errors or blank pages.

• I have no idea if I’m supposed to work directly in the WordPress folder or download everything first.

• And some CSS changes don’t even show up when I preview.

Honestly, I’m feeling a bit lost. Has anyone done this before? How do you get a live WordPress site into Dreamweaver without breaking everything?

Really appreciate any guidance, thanks!

[Ben M]

Editing a site in Wordpress should only be done if you need to edit the backend of the site whether you are involved in plugin or theme development. All frontend work should be done on your live hosted site.

In order to edit WP in DW, you first need to ensure you have a testing environment setup whether that is a remote testing server, or a local testing environment (ie: MAMP/WAMP). At that point your local testing server needs to be running when you edit DW. Depending on the file you are editing there may or may not be visuals within the individual PHP file for DW to show. If it can be shown you will need to look in Live View which utilizes your testing server to display your pages as it pulls from that web server and database to display your pages as PHP utilizes connections to databases which are required to show your website visually.

If you can explain your goals of editing locally, your local setup, or particular pages/files you are running into issues with editing, we may be able to provide some guidance, but from the sounds of what you have described so far, it sounds as though there is not a testing server running or you are editing code pages that don't display visually by themselves and utilize hooks from other pages.

[amelia_6582]

Hey, thanks a lot for your reply, it really helps clear things up a bit.

So here’s my situation: I’m mostly trying to work on the frontend, tweak CSS, adjust layouts, and sometimes touch the theme PHP files. I’m not doing any plugin stuff. I just don’t want to break the live site while I experiment.

Right now, I’ve set up a local site folder in Dreamweaver and tried connecting via FTP to the live site, but it’s a mess. PHP files either give errors or show blank pages, and Live View doesn’t really render anything. I also don’t have a local server running yet, no MAMP, WAMP, or XAMPP, and I haven’t set up a staging copy.

I’m kind of lost on what I should be doing first. Should I be downloading the whole WordPress install, or just wp content for the theme stuff? And once I have it locally, how do I get Live View to actually show the pages properly? I’ve heard something about using a local testing server, but I’m not sure how to set it up without messing up the site.

Also, CSS changes aren’t showing up in Live View, so I’m guessing it’s caching or maybe the way I’m editing it. Honestly, I just want a simple, safe workflow for editing locally and then pushing changes to the live site without breaking anything.

If you have any suggestions, please do tell!!

[Ben M · Accepted solution]

If you are doing minor tweaks to layouts, you may be better investing in a page builder plugin like Elementor or something similar to make small edits without modifying the overall theme and it will give you some drag-and-drop functionality.

Right now, I’ve set up a local site folder in Dreamweaver and tried connecting via FTP to the live site, but it’s a mess. PHP files either give errors or show blank pages, and Live View doesn’t really render anything. I also don’t have a local server running yet, no MAMP, WAMP, or XAMPP, and I haven’t set up a staging copy.

If you don't have a local server for testing, then you are putting your site more at risk then just editing pages on the server. Without a testing server, whether be it local or in a remote location, then DW will only have access to your live site meaning that you would only be updating your live environment.

In order to have a proper testing environment, you need to move an exact replica of your site including HTML/CSS/JS available via a file manager/ftp, as well as your mySQL database which stores much of the key data for Wordpress to display.

Once you have a testing server setup, you will setup the testing environment, like you do the remote FTP to your live environment, and DW will use that for its Live Preview functionality to pull from your test files and database.

So in your example of CSS not updating, I am suspecting that you have not uploaded the changed CSS file(s) back to your live server to see the updates. In a true testing setup, you would preview the changes on your testing server and if you like them, you would then proceed to push them to your live environment for visitors to see. This keeps your live environment safe while you are testing and allows you to make non-destructure changes to your website. In the case the updates were bad, they would only impact your testing environment and you could either roll back the changes and test others, or pull a new copy from your live production environment.

[amelia_6582]

Got it, thank you! That actually makes things a lot clearer.

So I think my main issue is exactly what you mentioned… I was basically trying to view/edit the live WordPress site in Dreamweaver without having any proper testing server running. No wonder the PHP files were blank and CSS wasn’t updating.

I’ll set up a real testing environment next:

• download the full site + database
• run it locally with something like LocalWP / XAMPP
• connect Dreamweaver to that as the testing server
• make changes there first, then push to live once I’m sure nothing breaks

Before this I was only grabbing wp content, which explains why nothing worked.

Really appreciate you breaking it down. I’ll set up the testing environment first this time. 🙂

[Nancy OShea · Accepted solution]

Wordpress is a dynamic website. There are no actual pages to edit. Virtual pages are created on the fly by the server from PHP & Javascripts with content stored in the MySQL database.

Do not attempt to customize WordPress Core files without expert knowledge of WordPress programming. 

Are you an experienced WP Theme Developer? 

If not, stop now and read about WP Theme Development. 

https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/getting-started/

DW or any code editor is used in preliminary development to change the existing Theme or add site functionality BEFORE the site is deployed online. 

Once the site is deployed, you edit the site from the WP admin panel.  If you're not happy with the current Theme's style options, I suggest you buy a new WP Theme that contains what you need. 

Use optional WP plugins to add extra features that your Theme may be lacking like multilingual support, or online booking/reservation systems, etc... 

You cannot edit an active WP site from Dreamweaver.  You'll just break the site.

[amelia_6582]

Thanks so much for explaining this, Nancy. Really appreciate it.

Just to be clear, I’m not touching any WordPress core files. I just want to do small theme edits—CSS tweaks, little layout changes. I’m still learning, so your advice really helps.

I was trying to use Dreamweaver to see the theme locally, but now I get that without a proper testing setup, it won’t work like I thought.

I’ll set up a safe local copy and work there first instead of touching the live site. Thanks again, this really helps! 🙂

[Nancy OShea · Accepted solution]

Why can't you make theme adjustments from within the WordPress dashboard? 

The WP Theme you're using currently may have more options than you realize, depending on whether it's a traditional or more advanced Block Theme.

Block Themes are the only way to go, IMO.  Block-based themes allow you to build and customize your website visually, removing the need for code-based tailoring. Fully integrated with the Site Editor, block themes provide an unprecedented level of visual control over the layout and style of your site. No special plugins like Elementor needed. 

Block Themes explained in 250 seconds:

https://wordpress.com/blog/2024/03/21/wordpress-block-themes/

For traditional WP Theme users, see this video for more details. This uses a plain vanilla Twenty Twenty-One Theme.

Hope that helps.

[amelia_6582]

Thanks so much, Nancy! The link is super helpful, really appreciate it 🙂

[L e n a]

@amelia_6582 , everything has already been clearly said by @Ben M and @Nancy OShea, so I’ll just add a few complementary notes that may help if you need to work on a WordPress theme more directly.

We’ve often had to edit or restructure WP themes, and over time we kept a set of notes in article form. They were originally written in French, but you can switch to an automatic translation using the blue globe icon at the top of the page.

• Create your own sandbox for WordPress
• Transfer your local site to a production server (or vice versa)
• Create a child theme for WordPress
• Child Theme, managing dependencies
• Going further with a Child Theme
• Child Theme: what has changed since 2017 and what remains essential

More generally, you can find the full collection under the WordPress section of our site.

One last practical point: in Dreamweaver, the menu Site > Site Options > Site-Specific Code Hints can make it easier to work inside your child theme by helping DW recognise your custom structure.

Hope these additions help clarify your own workflow a bit.