Dustbintown

Ok, I’ve been looking for a way to do this for a little while now.

I have 3 macs all running Dropbox, depending on how I feel, I work on whichever Mac is closest to me. This is great for creativity, not so great for organization.

I keep all my projects in sync between each Mac by working out of the Dropbox folder on each Mac. This keeps all the project files in sync and is the simplest way I’ve found. I actually don’t even notice it except that my ‘work’ folder is one level deeper. Like, whatever, y’know?

But… If the project is a website, which requires a database, I have to create a database for it in MAMP. MAMP is not in the Dropbox because it will only run from the Applications folder. I can easily change the Apache document root to the root of my ‘websites’ folder inside Dropbox in the preferences. But no such luck when I want to change where the db’s will reside. Each database is created in Applications/MAMP/db/mysql.

The solution seemed to be to create a symlink using Terminal inside Applications/MAMP/db/. But, as my Unix is about a good as my German, this was proving to be a bit of a problem! Then I found a great little plugin called SymbolicLinker 1.3v2

All you need do is:

• Download the plugin and follow the installation instructions inside the ‘read me first!’
• Move the contents of Applications/MAMP/db to a location inside your Dropbox folder ie: /Dropbox/Work/Databases
• Using SymbolicLinker create a symlink to the folder inside your Dropbox (ie: /Dropbox/Work/Databases) drag it to your desktop and rename it db
• Replace Applications/MAMP/db with your symlink from the desktop
• Have a cuppa, and check out Nicks Software page you’re done!

Caution! You’ll need to do this on each machine, so you’ll have to decide which one is the master version of each database you have (most up to date) or you may lose info. If (as in my case) they’re just test entries etc you may not have too much to worry about. But ‘measure twice, cut once’ as my grandad used to say!

Hope this helps, if you don’t use Dropbox, send me an email and I’ll send you an invite. This way we both get extra space!

;p