Dreamweaver, F12, and PHP

[JackMason-jAMiaL]

Does Dreamweaver CS4 not provide full PHP capability using the F12 key?  On our website the page performs correctly, but using F12 in Dreamweaver, it appears Dreamweaver only supports very rudimentary PHP capability.  Is there something I need to do to enable more complete functionality using F12?

[mhollis55]

The best way I have found to provide php capabilities to test is to use a testing server. You should consider downloading MAMP or WAMP (Mac and Windows respectively) to create a testing server.

To the extent I find a testing server problematic, I'll build on the remote site in a /test subdirectory, then move everything to the host's root once everything checks out. In that, Dreamweaver really shines, updating moved links in moved subdirectories.

[JackMason-jAMiaL]

Thanks.... I was trying to avoid having a testing server as I have

never been able to get PHP to run with Apache and got tired of trying.

I have been using a subdirectory of our website for testing, as you

suggested, but the F12 option was much faster for quick checks.

[mhollis55]

This is one of the reasons why I tend to write my pages and save them as regular xhtml, then change their extension to .php once I had everything figured out and ready to upload. Your local computer won't care unless you're testing php code, which I tend to leave until last. If I have a lot of php code, I'll do that testing on the final day of the build, testing everything else first.

I did successfully do a Cold Fusion testing server on my Mac and it worked until the first reboot. Then it never worked again. So I resolved at that point to never use Cold Fusion. I don't use Windows, so ASP and .NET is not interesting to me at all. So php is the only game in town. I did set up a testing server using MAMP on a G4-400 and it runs great. I still have to push to the testing server and it's just a little tiny bit faster than pushing to a remote server. So if I have a lot of stuff to test, I'll push the entire site to the testing server and check it out there. Then it gets uploaded and I have to check things out there all over again.

So I'm thinking that, since your config file can be slightly different on your remote host, it may be more efficient to have your remote host act as your testing server. [Command]-S then [Command]-[Shift]-U then [return] can be your friend (Save the document, upload the document, don't upload associated files).

[JackMason-jAMiaL]

Thanks! I'll try that.

[David_Powers · Accepted solution]

Thread moved to the Dreamweaver Application Development forum.

Details of how to set up a PHP development environment can be found in the following tutorial: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/setting_up_php.html.

[JackMason-jAMiaL]

Thanks.  That prompted me to look for a better solution than Dreamweaver and I found one with PhpED.  It works great.