Using CC on a local testing server with DreamWeaver

[Guest diana777]

Hello Forum Members,

I have DreamWeaver MX2004 configured as a testing server (Apache 1.3.31, PHP5, MySQL database, PHPmyadmin and SQLitemanager) to assist with the editing of the design of a local install of CC v3.05. After the install of CC, I renamed the installation directory, rather than removing it, so I could save it for study.

When in DreamWeaver, I've noticed that the some of the pages within the installation directory (e.g. index.php) actually display in the design view of DreamWeaver. However, the index page of the cart storefront itself, located in the root directory (index.php) does not display in DreamWeaver's design view. When comparing the two pages, I see that the install index.php contains the html coding in the bottom part of the page that allows DreamWeaver to display the page in design view.

I was wondering if anyone might know of a way to include the php coding of the of the cart's index.php within html tags to allow DreamWeaver's design view to display its contents? I don't yet know enough about php to understand if this is possible...

Thanks,

Diana

[markscarts]

Hi Dianna, I doubt that the dreamweaver problem resides in reading php files. Instead, I believe the problem is that it does no know how to read the XTemplate files, with the .tpl extension, because this system is less common on the web. It is cutting edge codework.

The front-end CubeCart html is contained in the .tpl files found in skins directory files. The html is separated from php by means of XTemplate system in CC frontend.

I am one of those who has always coded html and css by hand rather than with a wysiwyg editor, so I can't really give advice on dreamweaver itself, but I believe you would have to tell the software to treat the .tpl extension as XHTML document. This may or may not solve you problem, depending on whether the software will then follow the php XTemplate assignations to the correct .tpl files in skins folder.

[Guest diana777]

Hi Dianna, I doubt that the dreamweaver problem resides in reading php files. Instead, I believe the problem is that it does no know how to read the XTemplate files, with the .tpl extension, because this system is less common on the web. It is cutting edge codework.

The front-end CubeCart html is contained in the .tpl files found in skins directory files. The html is separated from php by means of XTemplate system in CC frontend.

I am one of those who has always coded html and css by hand rather than with a wysiwyg editor, so I can't really give advice on dreamweaver itself, but I believe you would have to tell the software to treat the .tpl extension as XHTML document. This may or may not solve you problem, depending on whether the software will then follow the php XTemplate assignations to the correct .tpl files in skins folder.

Hi markscarts,

Thank you for the reply. What you've described makes sense. I'm going to work on it tonight and let you know the results. If the conversion of the file extension doesn't work, I probably won't seek other solutions, since I can still modify the template by hand and view the results on my local browser. At present, I'm using CubeCart as a PHP learning tool, and in the future may use it for a shopping cart for my design clients.

Best wishes,

Diana

[markscarts]

I think you've made a good choice, Dianna. I am using CC as a php learning tool as well. My past experience has been in HTML and CSS coding. I really like the way CubeCart developershave striven for clean coding, and a separation of php and XHTML. Looking forward to hearing the results. If you could get Dreamweaver to load CubeCart like that you will make alot of people happy :(