Using TortoiseGit and Dreamweaver

We have bee using Git to some extent at work (Mannix Marketing, Inc.) for a while, and I though that it was high time that I start to do the same at home on personal projects.

Git is a FREE an open source, distributed version control system that is designed to handle everything from small to extremely large projects with speed efficiency.

First of all I installed Git (http://git-scm.com/) for Windows.   It is pretty simply on Windows, as you just download the installer.  Other operating systems may or may not have an installer, so you should google "GIT [operating system]" or just go to the main Git site.  End result is that I now have Git running on my machine.

Next, I intalled TortoiseGit (http://code.google.com/p/tortoisegit/).  This is a Git revision control client.  There are many other clients, but using TortoiseGit allows me to install the Dreamweaver Extension called gitweaver (https://github.com/ChrisMcKee/gitweaver).  This extension allows the integration of TortoiseGit and Adobe Dreamweaver.  Nice!

So, once I have Git, TortoiseGit and gitweaver installed, I'm ready to get this going.  For the most part, you can simply have a local repo (repository), but if you are colaborating on a project, then Git hosting is a must.  There are sites like BitBucket.com, Github.com, BeanStalkApp.com, Unfuddle.com and many more.  Setting up an account on most is a pretty simple task.   I have used BeanStalkApp.com and Unfuddle.com - both have pros and cons compared with each other.

After setting up your repo you can not interact with Git directly from Dreamweaver.  This is huge in both regard to productivity and project management.

I have started this on BounceHouses.com, F1Weekly.com and this site (blog.tobyandjoann.com), and I'm thinking that I may start adding other sites to, for the simple reason that version control, even for an individual on a single project, is a smarter way to work.