Testing/viewing projects

Can’t seem to work out how to use projects. Can someone please help - I have done some trawling but must be miss-understanding some terminology or something.

I want to create a new project eg. a website with a pre-defined CMS package that I’m developing. I usually just copy and paste the template folder structure into a new directory (maybe even just copy the last complete site I built), setup a new database and alias in xamp and then modify those files as needed. The problem is that I am not tracking versions of files and merging upgrades between projects this way. I’ll upgrade one function for one client and another for a different client and then lose track of which upgrade is where so that the third job can benefit from both.

So I thought that using ide projects would be the solution. I imagined I could “link to” files through the project interface, and modify them as needed - ensuring every project that uses these files receives the same upgrades. Of course site specific changes would have to exist as actual new file-system components, not merely new instances. I did manage to create a project and add a linked folder (instance of other existing folder) and then edit files within that structure.

But how do I get Komodo to publish/ export/ view the project I’m working on. I want to make a change to the project by editing say a php script within that project (knowing that I am really changing the linked file) and then switch to my browser where the local version of that site is and press refresh and see the change applied.

Is this what projects are supposed to do? Am I thinking the right way about it? How does one test and publish a project? When does Komodo take the references to template files and write them to actual files so I can upload them to a server?

I looked at the publish tool but it asks me for e a local folder to syncronise with a remote one. But the files I want to test/publish are not real in the project - they are just links.

Hmmm, hope the question is clear and thanks for any help.

I fear you have a false understanding of what a project is, have a look at this screencast.

What we call a project is often also referred to as a “workspace” in other IDE’s/editors. It’s basically a collection of preferences specific to one of your projects.

I think what you may want is the publishing tool.