Disappearing files

[DrDebi1]

My students were working on a MAJOR project in Dreamweaver. One student went to access his website today [that he's been working on for weeks] and all that seems to be there are the original pages before he started adding content. [last saved date of 4/21]. We tried Open>Recent. We tried looking in All My Files. We tried searching by name, but NONE of the current files are on the computer any more. As you can imagine the student is devastated as the project is due today. I'm stressed because I'm wondering when it's going to happen to the rest of the students.

Any ideas? Has anyone run into this before? I'm of the opinion that the files got relocated, but I'm stumped and it takes a lot to stump me.

Best,

DrDebi

[Jon Fritz]

Sounds like a possible User issue on the computer.

Are they logging into the machine under the right credentials?

I could imagine them logging into the machine under a different user account and having all of their files essentially hiding there under that account where the account they now have logged into only has the original default files.

I can't think of any other way for DW to revert files to an earlier state. The program currently has no versioning functionality what-so-ever.

[Rob Hecker2 · Accepted solution]

Are the development files are stored on a school server that each student logs into? If so, does that server not have nightly backups?

If not so, describe the working environment.

Where is the web server located? Is the development environment a web server located on the schools servers?

and all that seems to be there are the original pages before he started adding content

DW is not a content management system, so there is generally not a separate stage where content is added. So are these static pages or dynamic pages? The answer to that is very important to understanding and solving the problem. If the pages are static, do they use any templating or includes?