why can't I edit my dreamweaver content???

[lsilberman1]

Hi,

I'm late to the dreamweaver party, as I preferred another HTML editor. Now that I've loaded it on to my computer and set up a site, every file that I get from the site and try to open has all of the main content area grayed out, and an asterisk next to the file name.

How can I get editable content?

Thanks

[beck]

The asterisk appears next to the file name after edits have been made and not saved, once the file is saved it should go away.

As for the commented (grayed out) main content, dreamweaver uses those special comments such as:

Code: Select all

<!-- InstanceBeginEditable name="maincontentarea" -->

<!-- InstanceEndEditable -->


to block off certain aspects of the templates' code to prevent editing. You can kind of get around it by doing a search/replace which will ignore the comments' restrictions but that may take an exuberant amount of time.

If with your previous editor, which most likely ignores the editing restrictions of dreamweaver, you put your maincontent either above or below these comments, importing into dreamweaver will cause those previously available areas to become "blocked off". Do you have a sample page of which we could take a quick look at the source to see if anything sticks out?

Bryan

[lsilberman1]

Try http://entomology.unl.edu/announce/whatsnew.shtml

The only thing I can see is that somehow I got the "this is the main content area" statement in there twice. If that's the problem, how do I get rid of it if Dreamweaver won't let me change content?

thanks!

[beck]

First - I'd make a back-up of your site somewhere in case this ends up destroying a bit of your data, but this got me to be able to edit your maincontent.

select a folder/or your whole site, and do a search/replace.

choose, "selected files" or "entire current local site" put this in the search for box:

Code: Select all


            <!--THIS IS THE MAIN CONTENT AREA; WDN: see glossary item 'main content area' -->
            <!-- InstanceBeginEditable name="maincontentarea" -->

<!--THIS IS THE MAIN CONTENT AREA; WDN: see glossary item 'main content area' -->
<!-- THIS IS THE MAIN CONTENT AREA; WDN: see glossary item 'main content area' -->


And leave your replace with box empty.

Hit "replace all"

You'll get a warning saying something like, "this operation cannot be undone in unopen files" (which is why you should backup to be safe) - click ok/proceed, and it should get rid of the duplicated comments.

If all the pages have this same duplication, you should be able to edit your whole site, if not, find the duplications and do the same steps for each.

You have to have the files unopened for the search/replace workaround to work - its the only way to really trick dreamweaver into editing the non-editable sections - or you could go back to your old editing program and make the changes and import the site back into dreamweaver.

Just make sure your pages only have one:

Code: Select all

<!-- InstanceBeginEditable name="maincontentarea" -->

in a row before each "end editable" - that's where the problem was.

Hope it works, and if there are any other pages you need looked at, let me know.

Bryan

[lsilberman1]

Thanks for your help!

Lisa