Like everyone else, we have been stunned by the decision to stop supporting and developing Muse. Our little company has relied on Muse as a way for us to develop websites economically for small businesses. We have SOME skills with Dreamweaver, but most of our clients can't afford the $10k sites, they need something quick, appealing, without tons of bells and whistles--Adobe Muse was perfect for this purpose.
Right now our main concern is, what can we migrate our current customers to? We have researched and watched the "Without Code" development, and that isn't an option because we have our own servers, and clients would have to pay separately for email accounts.
All of the other options we have investigated come up short.
As a workaround for now, to be on the safe side, we started trying to figure out how to make things work in Dreamweaver. At some point we may have to reproduce the sites from scratch, however, we are having some short-term success with a sort of migration. I would like to know if others have tried this and what their results have been. So far I have only migrated two sites using this method, and have made minor changes in both by doing some very basic coding changes. It isn't drag and drop like Muse, but I know enough code to be able to move, duplicate, substitute, change colors etc.
Here is the method so far. We found, like everyone else, that using either export from Muse, or Import in Dreamweaver does not work 100%. Very glitchy. So this is what HAS worked--so far:
- Download the files (and file structures) exactly the way they are on the server. (Muse publishes the files and file structures pretty much the same way my files upload from Dreamweaver.
I literally built the file folder on my desktop to replicate the entire structure that Muse places on my server.
2) Check ALL the files to make sure nothing unusual happened in the download process. I had one css file that the downloader added a (1) to the file name, and the associated page was wonky. Fixed the file name and all was well.
3) Create a New Site in Dreamweaver
4) Open files and start working. I did find that I couldn't edit in Live View for the most part, but if I used split (code and live) I was able to locate anything needing changes and make those changes.
I tried adding another div and element, and it was fine. I edited text, all good. I replaced a photo, also fine. The second site I have not tried doing a lot of editing yet, I am anxious to see what happens if I edit the slideshow in the site. I did upload the site to a demo site so I could see if everything works, and slideshow and all are working fine. The only other thing I have noticed is that preview in browsers does not work, which is why I uploaded to a demo server.
So far the greatest advantage I find with this method as opposed to the wysiwyg programs others have recommended as a Muse alternative is that most of them require that you use their servers, there is a monthly fee for each site, many of them do not have email options so you have to go to g suite and again, pay monthly or annual fees for each email account. Using Dreamweaver seems to be our best alternative at the moment since we already subscribe and can use our own servers. Our current plan is to continue to use Muse for quick development, sans plugins (which we can add through dreamweaver) and keep the dreamweaver versions of the sites updated with changes made in Muse. So Dreamweaver will be our backup and at some point may be our primary method for changes after initial developmet.
Would love to get feedback from others who might have tried this method?
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