Dreamweaver newbie - page errors

Trying to add a page to a site built by someone no longer employed with us. I know I'm in over my head, but it needs to be done and I'd like to learn. Am also trying to rename and update another page. Both return a Page Cannot Be Found error.
I thought the rename/update was done the same way (successfully) a few months ago, but evidently not.
This is the first time I've tried to add a page. Documentation is no help. I just duplicated a current page, renamed it and saved it in the same folder as all the other pages that appear. There has to be a step I'm missing, but I don't know what.
Can somebody help?

I'll try and help.

How have you got access to the Web space? Do you have an FTp program such as CuteFTp or SmartFTP which you are using to log into you web server / webspace?

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We host the site in-house. I connect to the web server from my desktop via the network.

I've made numerous corrections on pages, but this is a new task for me. Seems it should be pretty simple, but I'm stumped.

OK well you should be able to simply take a copy of one of the pages, then make some edits and rename the file to something else and upload it to our web server...then access it. It really is as simple as that.

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That's what I had done, which is why I'm so confused.

I went back into it this morning and deleted the files, then re-duplicated a page, made changes and resaved, etc. Still nothing. I then did all of that again, and for some reason it worked this time.

Is there something about the order of checking in and putting that would have created trouble? I don't understand what the difference is between those, but I had been doing both. Maybe this time I did it in a different order?

At one point in this process this morning, it popped up a message about the remote server having a newer version of the page (even though it wasn't appearing on the site yet). Does that remote server have something to do with why the page wouldn't appear? (Maybe I inadvertently clicked on something that made it actually work that last time.)

Can you explain what you mean by this?

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Sorry - Dreamweaver is not a software that I have any knowledge about, so it's probably a stupid question to anyone who works with this program! When I need to update a page, I just double-click it from the File list and make the change. But I don't know what Get means vs. Check-Out or what Put means vs. Check-In. So when I want to upload the new version of the page, I usually Save, then choose Put and then Check-In.

Perhaps I had been doing Check-In and then Put without realizing what I was doing. Or maybe I was assuming Put automatically Saved so I hadn't actually told it to Save. It would show up in my File list and I could even open it correctly straight from the server, but I was getting site errors. Could the Save vs. Put or choosing Check-In before Put be why, on the actual site, the page was returning Page Cannot Be Found errors?

And how could the remote server have a newer version of a page than the one I just made changes to?

Oh OK I see, sorry I don't use those functions in Dreamweaver. I looked in the help file, does this help explain a bit better?

Getting and putting files

If you’re working in a collaborative environment, use the Check In/Check Out system to transfer files between local and remote sites (see Using Check In/Check Out). If you’re the only person working on the remote site, however, you can use the Get and Put commands to transfer files without checking them in or out.

Note: If you select Site > Get or Site > Put while the Document window is active, and if the current file is not part of the currently open site, Dreamweaver attempts to determine which of your locally defined sites the current file belongs to; if the current file belongs to only one local site, Dreamweaver opens that site, and then performs the Get or Put operation.

Using Check In/Check Out

If you’re working in a collaborative environment, you can check files in and out from local and remote servers. If you’re the only person working on the remote server, you can use the Put and Get commands without checking files in or out (see Getting and putting files).

Checking out a file is the equivalent of declaring “I’m working on this file now—don’t touch it!” When a file is checked out, Dreamweaver displays the name of the person who checked out the file in the Site panel, along with a red check mark (if a team member checked out the file) or green check mark (if you checked out the file) next to the file’s icon.

Checking in a file makes the file available to other team members to check out and edit. When you check in a file after editing it, your local version becomes read-only and a lock symbol appears beside the file in the Site panel to prevent you from making changes to the file.

Dreamweaver does not make checked-out files read-only on the remote server. If you transfer files with an application other than Dreamweaver, you can overwrite checked-out files. However, in applications other than Dreamweaver, the .LCK file is visible next to the checked-out file in the file hierarchy to help prevent such accidents.

To enable or disable Check In/Check Out for some sites, see Setting up the Check In/Check Out system. For information about transferring files between local and remote sites without checking them in or out, see Getting files from a remote or testing server and Putting files on a remote or testing server.

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The info above really helps! It might be that I was using Check-In instead of Put, meaning it never really went online. (I'll probably never know for sure what I had or had not done at the time.) Many thanks for your assistance - now I'm at least a little less dumb about this topic!

Your Welcome

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