Preventing overwriting others' work

[Erica C.]

Hi,

I am one of three people who will be maintaining a site. We're looking for suggestions on making sure that we don't end up making changes to the same files at the same time.

We plan to send each other sign on email messages when one of us is working on the site and we'll probably create our own sign in/sign off page. Is there some aspect of the CNC that would help us though? Would the Change Mode button allow one of us to set permissions and lock out the others temporarily?

Thanks!

Erica (if someone's already invented this particular wheel I'd love to know about it) :smile:

[kitchin]

Dreamweaver has it.

[Erica C.]

One of us is using Dreamweaver but the other two are hand coding.

Thanks though.

[kitchin]

I guess handcoding in Dreamweaver would be annoying. I've done it, but not recently.

[johnfl68]

Hmmm - maybe a different solution, a In-out board?

There is this online version that is free but uses a MySQL database (don't know if you have one to spare):
http://www.aces.edu/~richardf/outboard/

This way you could mark each of you as in or out and in the remarks section you could put the page/file that you are working on.

There were several on sourceforge with different features, and others/pay versions around the web.

Just a thought.

John

[Matt]

I guess handcoding in Dreamweaver would be annoying. Not sure why. It has syntax color coding and is pretty good about leaving code alone. DW8 even has an auto tag closing feature which is pretty handy.

We're looking for suggestions on making sure that we don't end up making changes to the same files at the same time. My suggestion is to use the chmod functionality built into most FTP software (as well as Dreamweaver). When someone is working on a file, he/ she would set the file to be non-writable by everyone. Once that person was finished, he/ she would set the file back to writable, upload the changes, and now others can modify the updated file.

-Matt

[Erica C.]

Thanks! I can show the others these suggestions. It's very helpful.

Erica

[Erica C.]

I guess handcoding in Dreamweaver would be annoying. I've done it, but not recently.

Not sure why. It has syntax color coding and is pretty good about leaving code alone. DW8 even has an auto tag closing feature which is pretty handy.
From what I've seen of it, I would find handcoding in Dreamweaver annoying. It seems limiting to me. It interrupts your work to tell you what your choices are and I know there are more options than it provides in standard lists.

Besides, I'm one of those people with a non-technical background who started web design because I needed a site. The part of brain that holds my knowledge of CSS and XHTML doesn't have room to learn a program that does (some of what) I already know how to do. :wink:

Erica (hopefully, down the road there will be brain space for XML) :wink:

[Slim]

Hi,

I am one of three people who will be maintaining a site. We're looking for suggestions on making sure that we don't end up making changes to the same files at the same time.


This goes a little beyond what I think you are asking, but have you considered using revision control software (sometimes known as version control or source control)? It can not only prevent you from overwriting each other's changes, it saves all the versions of the file, so you can revert if necessary, and see what changes were made when.

[Erica C.]

This goes a little beyond what I think you are asking, but have you considered using revision control software (sometimes known as version control or source control)?

That's a good suggestion but I don't think we'll be making a sufficient number of changes to warrent that. We're looking at regular monthly updates mostly with some additional changes in between as needed.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Erica