Special Note:
Due to many responses to this how-to, a user notes Wiki has been started here:
http://www.zope.org/Members/ike/dreamweaver/Dreamweaver-Zope-notes/FrontPage

Document Version: 1.0
Date: January 13, 2002

Copyright (c) 2003 by Isaac Levy. 
This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions 
set forth in the Open Publication License, vX.Y or later (the latest version 
is presently available at http://www.opencontent.org/openpub/).

Commercial redistribution of Open Publication-licensed material is permitted.

Introduction

It is at this point fairly common in the Zope world to use WebDAV to connect to a Zope application server for remote editing.
It is also at this point fairly confusing to those new to Zope how to connect to it using WYSIWYG web design tools. As these tools are becoming more and more advanced in their ability to deal with web application development, they constantly become better for use with building Zope websites and applications.
This Article is aimed at web designers/developers who have a basic understanding of Dreamweaver, and want to simply connect to a Zope. It does not at all attempt to get into any sort of development using Zope, aside from connecting to a Zope instance. Though screenshots were taken from DreamweaverMX running on MacOSX, the instructions should directly apply to Windows users as well.

Why WebDAV over FTP?
Briefly: WebDAV stands for "Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning". It is a set of extensions to the HTTP protocol which allows users to collaboratively edit and manage files on remote web servers. - http://webdav.org
WebDAV is a fairly new and advanced protocol, largely designed to replace FTP. It has several serious improvements over FTP:

1. username/password is transported in a http basic auth hash, which is a simple and signifigant improvement over FTP (where passwords move across the web in plaintext). While HTTP basic auth is still lightweight security, it is MUCH better than plaintext! It is also simple to run DAV through advanced secure channels, SSH tunneling, for example.
2. Files can have maintain states of being, locked and unlocked, as well as passing rich mime-type information between machines.
3. It's less chatty- it works by using basic HTTP calls, whereas FTP maintains a persistent socket- zapping available bandwidth.
4. It's firewall friendly, since it rides across HTTP, where FTP historically has lots of problems.

Setup Part 1

From the sites menu, create a new site in DreamweaverMX. In the 'RemoteSettings' configuration pane for the Site, insert the information for your Site folder by clicking on the 'Settings' button:



These settings are explained as follows:

• http://myzope.com:9800
  The qualified domain name pointing to your site area, as well as the port which DAV is running, are necessary. 9800 is the default/common DAV port on most Zope installations, but you may need to ask your site administrator what port Zope's DAV is on.
• username/password
  These are defined by the acl_users objects in your zope.
• email
  Setting your email address enables you to lock files on the server when checking them out (covered below).
  

Setup Part 2 Caution!

Checkout Basics

Simple Troubleshooting

Simple Troubleshooting:
If you should run into problems and a file is permanently locked on the server, there are 2 methods of fixing this-

1. Download the file in Dreamweaver, then from the ZMI, delete the file, and from Dreaweaver re-upload the file.
2. Unlock the file using the Zope System Control Panel (server administrator access only).

Further Reading:

More on FTP veunerabilities:
http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-2001-07.html

WebDAV home:
http://webdav.org

More on WebDAV in Zope:
http://www.zope.org/Members/glpb/dwhowto Dreamweaver over ssl
http://www.zope.org/Documentation/Articles/WebDAV more generalized

SSH Tunneling Basics:
http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/weblog/view/wlg/499

Zope -> DW use wiki:
http://www.zope.org/Members/ike/dreamweaver/Dreamweaver-Zope-notes/FrontPage