Dreamweaver template not updating Contribute pages

Question

Currently I'm trialing Dreamweaver (MX) and Contribute
(3.11), to check
that it's a workable solution for my company, in terms of
editing and
auditing, but right now I'm having a problem.
I have some templates (.dwt files) that I create in
Dreamweaver, for
use with Contribute, i.e. I create the template, other people
create
the content for our site based on the those templates.
The issue is that when I make a change to the template, I
would expect
the pages created in Contribute to be refreshed to use the
new
template, but that doesn't appear to be happening. The only
way I can
get the page to be updated is to edit the page in Contribute,
go to the
Format menu and choose 'Template Properties', then hit OK
again to
close this dialog. I then see the page refresh with the new
template
changes.
Am I doing something wrong? I would expect, as I mentioned,
to have all
pages automatically updated when the template is saved, and
published.
Is there a setting I need to turn on, or a procedure of
publishing the
template that I need to adhere to?
any advice would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Thanks for the reply Mark. While I think I've found most of
the things you mentioned since my first post, it is useful to get
confirmation of my finding, which appears to be consistent with
your post.
Here's what I've found, and later, why I'm not really liking
it:
If I edit the .dwt file in Dreamweaver and try to save it, I'm
prompted to only update those files I have locally that reference
the template.
I can only update those local files that are checked out,
though the saving process will check them out automatically
If I create a new page using Contribute, I must refresh the
templates first
My concerns are:
if I can only update those files I have locally, then do I need
to have the whole remote site stored locally too? My company site
is huge (as it's translated into 6 languages) and has multiple
contributors/editors. It sounds like I will have to download the
entire site before I edit a template, and put it back again
afterwards. Is that right?? it sounds rediculous, so I'm sure I've
got it wrong.
if I have the files locally, I must check them out before or
while saving the template. However, I then have to check them back
in manually. Again, with potentially 300 to 400 pages per template,
that's a lot of manual checking-in. If the saving process can
automatically check pages out, can it also automatically check them
in again??
Like you, Mark, I find it strange that Contribute requires a
manual refreshing of templates. I've searched all the options I can
find, but I don't see an auto-refresh templates setting, which
would be sooo useful. As it stands I will have to instruct each
editor/contributor to refresh before they create a new page, and
pray that they do.
any further advice from Contribute/Dreamweaver users would be
greatly appreciated. How do users with very large website handle
this? Are there any tricks or hints that you can pass on?