NETWORKING MACS--How do we network between 2 cities?

Question

...for purposes of Web Site Design and accessing files.
We have a small web design company in New York. My staff person is moving to New Jersey and we both want to access our web site files from one hard drive, located here in New York, so she can continue to work for our company while now relocating to New Jersey.
We are using G5's/hardware, and Dreamweaver and Photoshop.
Timbuktu does not work for our purposes. Does anyone know how my staff person in New Jersey can log into our information here directly connecting to our hard drive to make changes and updates to files?
We thought about her just downloading the files, making changes and then reuploading them again to the Internet; however, the problem we encounter is that as soon as the files are uploaded using FETCH, the Dreamweaver/HTML file turns into an I/E (Internet Explorer) file, and the Photoshop file, turns into a Quicktime file. This makes it so that if we download the files from the Internet to make changes that way, we can then no longer double click on them from the Photoshop and Dreamweaver programs, because they are no longer Photoshop and Dreamweaver files.
The only way to access files after they have been uploaded, and then downloaded again, is to do a FILE > OPEN while you are in Dreamweaver or Photoshop, and go down through the levels of files to open the file in that particular program. This takes forever when you are working on 100 or more files per day. It also does not remember the folder you are in, so if you go to open a second file using the FILE > OPEN procedure, it starts back at the top; does not go to the folder you were just in when you opened the previous file. This process is very tedious and cumbersome, and does not work in production environment.
Any suggestions on what work would work well for her to access the files in our office here in New York, while she is in New Jersey? We have tried every Mac Support Rep listed on the Apple Site within 50 miles and no one can come up with anything for us.
Thanks for anyone's suggestions or help!
-Kathy
Poughkeepsie, NY

Answer 1

A VPN is certainly the way to go here. The issue is going to be bandwidth at each site.
The latency and bandwidth is not going to be practical for the user to edit files directly on the server, but they should be able to download files to their system, work on them, then upload them back to the server - you'll just need to watch out for people in both locations trying to work on the same files at the same time.
In any case you need to examine the network connectivity availability at each end, bearing in mind that the upload speed is more relevant here - for the New Jersey user, the upload speed at the office is going to be critical when it comes to then downloading files, and their local upload speed is going to be critical when it comes up them uploading back to New York.
For example, if the New Jersey user is on a DSL, they might have something like 3mpbs download and 384kbps upload - this means they can only upload files to New York at 384kpbs (about 40KB/sec). For a 1mb file that will take 25 seconds. That's probably OK for web files, but will be excruciating for multi-megabyte Photoshop files.