Editing an Existing Website

[rdjain]

Hello guys. I am a newbie to PHP and Dreamwever. I am working on editing an existing php / mysql website which was developed and is being currently being hosted on a web hosting server. I have downloaded all the files using the filezilla client and installed Dreamweaver and WAMP Server for php amd mysql. I have no clue as to where do I start.

Do I need to just setup a new site in dreamweaver and open the index.php page and preview in the browser? I tried that, but it does not display a complete page on the browser. The navigation frame included on index.php via another php file does not appear. I have no clue whats going on.

Also I tried to run the website from http://localhost:8080/ through the WAMP server but I just see the blank page. Do I need to setup mysql separately, or all the downloaded files from the hosting website will already include the mysql database?

Do I need to do something to connect WAMP with Dreamweaver? I did go through the tutorial videos posted in various discussions but all of them explain about building a site from scratch, but I need to work on an existing site which was developed by someone else and hence I am clueless.

I really need help to setup the website on my local computer so that I can move further and start editing it.

[David_Powers]

See this tutorial on setting up a PHP development environment in Dreamweaver: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/setting_up_php.html.

You can skip most of the tutorial because you have already installed WAMP, but it should point you in the right direction regarding defining and testing a site.

[rdjain]

Thanks for your reply david. The link you provided helps to setup new site and databases. I am able to setup Dreamweaver and mysql but I am having problem linking the existing php and mysql files from the already hosted website. I have no clue, which files I need to look for mysql, whether .mysql / .my / .myi and how do I look at the already existing database connections and how do I finally setup all and connections and make the site up and running on my local computer?

[David_Powers]

You cannot download a MySQL database in the same way as an ordinary file. You need to export the database as a dump file, which you can then use to rebuild a version of the database locally. If your site uses CPanel, the easiest way is to use CPanel to download a backup of the database to your local computer. If you don't have CPanel, use phpMyAdmin (assumining it's installed on the remote site). Click the Export tab in phpMyAdmin, and save the backup (dump) file to your local hard disk. Once you have exported the database, using either CPanel or phpMyAdmin, use your local version of phpMyAdmin to import it.

To get the connection details, you will need to examine the PHP code to find the username and password for the MySQL database.