Dreamweaver + Wordpress Integration

[ElysianCreative_Cas]

Hi community! 

Brand new to Dreamweaver and I'd like to know this: 

I have recently started designing a WordPress website with a theme I bought and want to know if I can copy that theme's code and 'paste' into the Dreamweaver platform and edit through there? 

Is this the best way to go about it? I already bought the theme so I would like to use it and would like to start using Dreamweaver too. 

Thoughts? 

Regards, 

Cas

[BenPleysier]

Have a look at https://theblog.adobe.com/establishing-a-dreamweaver-cc-and-wordpress-workflow/

[Nancy OShea · Accepted solution]

I am not going to sugar coat this.  Unless you know how to work with WordPress code (PHP, HTML, JS and CSS) and more specifically, WordPress child Themes, you shouldn't be making changes to your purchased Theme except through the WordPress Admin panel. 

https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/advanced-topics/child-themes/

A WordPress installation consists of about 800 folders and 1,500 files but not one of those files is a complete web page.  They are all bits and pieces of code that get assembled by the server and populated with content from the MySQL database.  So while you can certainly edit your Theme's code in Dreamweaver, you're not going to get a WYSIWYG experience.  And once the site is deployed on your server, you MUST maintain it via your online Admin panel.  You cannot use Dreamweaver to edit the site because as I said above, there are no actual web pages to edit.  WordPress is all dynamically driven.

[AM_Dave]

I've had the same question for years now.  In the last few weeks, I've revisited and have come much closer.  I'm still looking for more, but I'll describe what works and doesn't, so far.  Hopefully someone else can get us the rest of the way there or Dw developers are watching and will "make it so".

First, some philosphy on the right tool for the job... which should be Dw:

Nancy O'Shea's post is correct, but could go further.  Yes.  Child themes are a good way to go until you develop your own WP theme.

Dw is an IDE for web programming.  To say that there are 100's and 1000's of files in WordPress and stop there I think misses the point of using an IDE.  I expect Dw to be smart enough to connect all the dots.  I expect it to give me a GUI and, because we're in this day and age and we're talking about web design, what a site looks like fully rendered is really important.  Adobe is all about the visual and design.  I expect Dw to be really good at this.

Not only that, but WordPress is the most common CMS on the planet.  In short, I'm not letting Dw off the hook.

To fully render a WP page in Dw today, here's what you'll need:

1. Work directly on a live server.  I think for most of us, that means a local server running on your development machine.
2. Installation of WP on the local server
3. Dw set up to view the dev site on the local server.
4. Tell Dw to follow dynamic links to all the necessary files.  Live view will then fully render the page.

I've found that most of the links in forum posts refer back to the same few posts that are now showing their age (2009, 2013, 2015, etc).  They all describe a similar list as what I've just given above.  The devil is in the details.

For step 1, I've tried a handful of local servers (XAMPP, MAMP, etc.).  None of these worked as advertised on my system.  Usually it had to do with a port conflict.

Finally, a friend recommend Laragon (https://laragon.org/ ).  What's really nice is it has a WP installation shortcut which takes care of step 2 very nicely.  It also is portable within a file structure.  The other servers seem to put down too many roots.

For step 3, I'm still not sure I have this right as Dw still throws a flag on the field, but it doesn't seem to be meaningful.  As near as I can tell, I'm seeing the fully rendered page, so I'm not sure what would be missing and the error message isn't very helpful.

For step 4, even though Kristin Long's video is for an older version of Dw (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHWdbhQDbQo ), her setting recommendations for following dynamic links and other Dw tips were useful.  She was even able to view the back end of WP in Dw which allows her to do content changes directly within Dw.  I've not yet been able to get that to show.

Limitation that I would like to overcome:

I have not found a way to develop in-page or in-post content for WP using Dw directly.  I want this because I do a fair amount of HTML structure work within a page.  It doesn't all fit in a template wrapping.  Right now, I have a WP folder structure that allows me to at least link up images, makes CSS changes and DOM structure changes.  I can then, at least, copy and paste without further code or path modifications from within the <body> to the WP page or post using the WP web editor.  What I still want is to be able to create WP content directly in Dw, then upload it.

Hope this helps.  I'm also hoping someone can improve on this so that we have a straight-forward sync between local WP development and uploading to the live server for the world to see.