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Expression Web and Broken .DWT's

Last Updated on Wednesday, 27 January 2010 18:54 Written by Johnny Samsky Wednesday, 27 January 2010 18:20

This article will hopefully give some insight into Expression Web's finicky dynamic web template(.dwt) system.

I work with a good amount of sites that use the DWT system and for the most part they work alright. I have come across a few instances though where they have broken and I had to do some research to fix them. I will describe in detail how I resolved some of the issues that came up while using the .dwt files.

Issue 1: When I save my .dwt master file, it does not update the pages connected to it!

Solution 1: The first thing you should try when your .dwt file is no longer connecting correctly to its child pages, is to go to Site > Recalculate Hyperlinks. This will refresh the meta data that Expression web uses to connect all the pages to the .dwt master page.

That should generally take care of the issue when it first appears. I had used this solution successfully until recently, and had to yet again research what to do to get the pages to connect to the master .dwt

Issue 2: So you tried to Recalculate the Hyperlinks and it STILL would not bind your .dwt to its child pages!

Solution 2: Go into Site > Site Settings. Under the General Tab should be a check box that says, "Manage the Web site using hidden metadata files...." This should be enabled when using .dwt's Check the box if it is unchecked and you are using the .dwt master pages.

Note: My site files had been transferred from one pc to another during there lifetime, which may have caused some of these meta data files to become mismatched or corrupted. One thing I noticed when publishing through Expression Web, was that the Author of the files I had worked on reflected that of the old PC that had modified them.

In order to correct that you will need to go into Site > Site Settings, on the General Tab, uncheck the "Manage the Web site using hidden metadata files...."check box. When the window pops up, click Yes. The Author of each file should now reflect that of your current PC. Go back into Site > Site Settings and Check the box again, Select Yes and it should be good to go.

I hope this will help out some people using Expression Web. It isn't a bad program for beginners or basic website editing.