Migrating to new computer from DW MX to DW8

Question

I bought a new computer in the last year. I'm a graphic designer who does a little web site work. My old machine is a Mac G4 MP with DW MX. My new machine is a MacBook Pro intel with DW 8. I haven't bothered to migrate my sites from my old machine to my new one, but the G4 is getting buggy so its time. My question is this: Is there an easy way to migrate my sites from my old computer to my new one? Ideally I'd move my sites file from my old comptuer to my new one and the viola -- I can open them up on my new machine with all the database intact.
Any help would be great.
thanks,
John

Answer 1

The .ste file is what you need.  But you also need to bring over the files (HTML, CSS, JS, etc.).  Dreamweaver's .ste file just stores your FTP settings, local paths, etc.  The HTML files can just be dragged from one computer to the next.  And by the user folders I mean that inside each users "Home" are a bunch of folders named Desktop, Documents, Sites, Library, Music, Movies, etc.  I said user's because if you have more than one user on the machine you only need to bring over the one user's set of folders and because if your old username was johndoe and you are now johnadoe then the path will have changed from the first computer to the second.  In which case, your .ste file would load in DW, but you would need to set up the local path of the site to match the new location.
My original impression of your situation was that you bought a new Mac recently with no data on it, and the Mac wizard can actually move your user home folder and settings from one computer to another.  But since this computer has been in your possession for an extended period this is no longer a valid point.  So you are correct that you don't just want to overwrite folders, but rather just bring over the files you need and place them on the new computer.
The Application Support folder you mention will not be necessary to bring over.  Typically the data stored in there is specific to the application and a specific version. This data includes the layout of the program (ie: did you drag windows to certain locations or in later versions did you save the workspace layout).  Because you are changing versions in the process these files may not serve any purpose as Dreamweaver will typically create a new set of files in the Application Support folder during the installation for the newer version.