Setting up FTP Remote Settings In Dreamweaver CS4
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Ok, you have been updating your website manually and you are finding it very hard because it takes a while to login in to your hosting server. It’s time to set up your FTP remote settings in Dreamweaver and save yourself more time than you can imagine. I’m serious, once you set up and know how to use FTP in Dreamweaver, you will never look back. So here’s how you do it. For this example I’m using Godaddys hosting server which is where this website Dreamweaver tutorial is currently residing. I have set up a username and password to access my hosting server. Please bear in mind that it can take 30 minutes for your password to be recognized and set up at Godaddys end. Although I tried it after 5 minutes and it was already set up!
Ok, so in Dreamweaver make sure your site is visible in the bottom right portion of the screen if it is not go to Window>files and that will bring up your files panel. Select your site by double clicking on the site to bring up the site definition dialogue box. Or you can go to Site>manage sites and select it from there which will also bring up the site definition dialogue box.
Now you will need to go into the advanced settings of your website and click on the option for Remote Info.
Once you have selected remote info you can then choose from the drop down menu ‘FTP’ and that will bring up a lot more options for you to choose from. But don’t worry we are only going to but a small amount of information in which is why setting up FTP in Dreamweaver is so easy. Dreamweaver will want to know the name of the FTP host and in that box I have put the name of my website like this;
www.dreamweavertutorial.co.uk
For the host directory I am going to leave blank because Godaddy does not require it and by leaving it blank it will revert to a default Godaddy directory. Please check with you web host if you need to put information for that as the information varies from host to host. I’m now going to put the username and password that I set up with Godaddy into the spaces provided and I’ll leave all other information blank. There are some options that you can check if you are working on a site with other people which will allow you to keep track of changes that they make to files but as an individual working on a website project you are probably not going to need to do so.
Now I’m going to test the connection by clicking on the Test button and if successful you will get a message telling you so; We are done with this page now so click ok. 
Well done! So far so good. If you have the successfully tested your connection, you are good to go. So how do we upload our files using Dreamweaver to make sure the connection works ok? The best way to test the FTP settings is to upload a page of your website so, open up your index.html file and make a small text change. Make sure to save the file afterwards and then we can proceed to upload that file to test the Dreamweaver FTP connection.
Now if you go back into you files panel, and select the ‘Up Arrow’ icon which should turn blue once you hover your mouse over it. Click on this button and Dreamweaver will attempt to make a connection with your hosting server. You may at this point get a box asking you if you want to put the dependent files with this file also. Well, that refers to images and other media associated with that file. If you are using a generic template and you have previously uploaded the images then you want to click No. If it is the first time you have uploaded that file then you will want to put dependent files with it.
Good luck and I hope you can set up your FTP settings in Dreamweaver as easily as I have.
For a Video Tutorial explaining how to set up your FTP. see the following link:
How to set-up FTP Remote Settings in Dreamweaver CS4 Video Tutorial.
