How to use WebDAV plugin of jEdit to edit web pages

If you do not already have jEdit and the DAV plugin, then get a java VM from http://java.sun.com/  ("hint: Java VM, Get It Now") then get JEdit from http://www.jedit.org/ (hint: run the installer) and finally get the DAV plugin from http://www.webdav.us/ (hint: you download the DAV.jar and save to the "jars" directory of the place where you installed JEdit.

Start JEdit

 For windows users this will be by icon on desktop or menu. Linux users will type "jedit".

Open using DAV

Use the jEdit menu "Plugins/DAV/open from DAVServer"
A login dialog will popup. Enter "http://www.terrarustica.co.uk" as the remote host and "yourusername" as your user name and "yourdavpassword" as your password. (These webdav usernames and passwords will have been issued to you by the administrator).

Navigate to the remote file you wish to edit

A file open dialog will show as follows:-
JEdit WebDAV open dialog

You can use the purple scroll bars to see all the files. In this case the home index page happens to be  marisolversionhome.html so scroll and select the file by left click. The screen now looks as follows:-

The file open dialog with homepage selected

Click on the "Open" button. The source code text for the page will be shown in the editor as follows:-
home page source text opened in JEdit editor pane

Edit the black text


You can now edit the text. Unless you know what you are doing it is best to restrict your edits to the places where the source text shows in black. This is the text that is shown when the page is browsed by the normal web users. The rest of the text is markup which tells browsers what the text means and gives hints on how it should be positioned and styled. The standards for markup are listed at http://www.w3c.org/

Save your changes


When you finish your edits you can save the file to the same place using the menu "File/Save" or the pencil icon. If you wish to save as a different file on the server, you can use "Plugins/DAV/Save to DAV server" and then login as before and choose a (new) filename to  save to.

Viewing the result

You can load the web site page in your web browser as normal. You will probably not see the change since your browser will usually show you a cached, out of date, old copy. Press the "refresh" or "reload" button of your browser and the changed page should appear.

[Cycom]