Dreamweaver & Contribute Administration Problem

Question

I've got an odd scenario for a client site that I
inherited after several other developers were involved over the
past 2 years... I fear that the one who created the Contribute
Administration interface is the one where there are some other
legal problems involved, and there is no relationship left. If I
contacted them, they would not cooperate. Sad but true.
What I want to do is remove the previous Contribute linkage
and then reinstall a new Contribute site administration that I can
drive henceforth. I use Dreamweaver MX 2004 (still) and have no
problem at all in accessing a client site via FTP, but the second
problem is that I don't actually have total access to the hosting
server panel as usually is the case. So, if this is going to
involve deleting specific files, I'll need to know what to look for
(if it's within my view) or what to direct the hosting contractor
to find & delete.
I presently update all content on the existing site design,
but that's not very efficient and it's expensive at my rates for me
to doing the day-to-day content update that the client could easily
manage themselves via Contribute. Every time I first access the
server via Dreamweaver FTP to upload new files, I'm prompted about
enabling Contribute connectivity. I have Contribute, but don't have
this client's Contribute Administration keys or details. Those are
forever lost, I'm afraid.
I've recently redesigned the site, and it would be ideal to
enable my client to use Contribute. However, I'm caught in a loop
since there is no way to access the orignal Contribute site keys.
How can I find and remove the existing Contribute Administration,
then reinstall Contribute with new Contribute Administration of the
site? If I try to administer the site via Dreamweaver (Manage Site
- Contribute tab), once it checks through the cache, I get an error
that says "Could not find a page at the specified site root URL.
Please check the site root URL." I'm wondering if the previous
developer may have actually deleted something just to be nasty...
they were pretty vile and unprofessional about a lot of things.
This is far from the typical scenario I'm used to where I
always have total control over the hosting environment, too.
However, relative to an e-commerce component of their site, when
I've had issues and knew what to ask for, the site hosts have been
pretty responsive. I might be able to ask for specific files to be
removed if I could only know what to direct them to do.
Any ideas? Many thanks.

Answer 1

> open up a third-party FTP client and log into the remote
server.
> Look for a folder named _mm that contains a file named
contribute.xml
>
> delete that file and folder.
Alternative:
download the contribute.xml file and open it in a text
editor.
There is a way to reset the contribute Admin password if you
get this far
and want to leave the setup as-is but don't know the
password.
i can google for the answer i've given in the past, short
version of what i
remember, look in the .xml file for
password="randomcharacters" and change
it to password="" meaning password has no contents.
upload the contribute.xml file to same location on the remote
server.
then login using contribute admin, and when prompted for
password don't type
anything, just hit enter key. Then reset the password.
Alan
Adobe Community Expert, dreamweaver
http://www.adobe.com/communities/experts/