When accessing a Windows server via Panic’s Coda you may run into a hiccup where all of the files on your server appear as aliases. Yes, I know, it sounds really weird. Ran into this issue last week at work and really had no idea what to do. I tried rebooting my machine as well as the server, no change. Google’d it…nothing. The weirdest part was that I would take the same computer home and it would connect just fine. That’s when I turned to Panic’s Coda email support.
Within a few hours I heard from some suggesting I access Coda’s “Advanced Preferences.” What? Why didn’t I know about this? To access it you simply hold down Option and select the Preferences option from the Coda menu. It sends you straight to the Advanced tab where you need to add the IP/Host address of the server and select Windows NT. Restart Coda. Voilá.
Let me just start by saying that I love a challenge, especially when it comes to computers or networking. I like them more when it’s something that I’m somewhat familiar with…but when it’s not then it just becomes more of a challenge.
I was given the assignment of setting up and sharing an ACT! 2011 Database on a Local Area Network and allow multiple clients to connect to it. So here are the steps for those that need them. One word of warning, ACT! 2011 (and I’m sure the others versions as well) had some MAJOR speed issues when I set this up using a wi-fi only connection—so make sure that you’re wired or your speed may vary throughout the day!
And the steps:
- Install the database on the computer that will contain the main database. Install the database in a directory outside of the users folder. The suggested place is on the C drive in a directory called “ACT.” This will make sharing the database and files easier.
- After ACT! is installed and the database is setup properly it’s time to share the database. Go to the Tools menu, then Database Maintenance and select “Share Database.” If the option is greyed out then you need to quit ACT! and right-click on the ACT! icon in your Start Menu and select “Run as Administrator.” Launch ACT! again and follow the instructions above.
- Add users to the main server computer that the database will be on for each person that needs to access it.
- Go to your C:\Act folder and give the new users Read/Write access to the folder and all of it’s contents.
- Find your .PAD file and copy it either to your network, a flash drive, or email it to the users that will need to access the ACT! database. This .PAD file is simply a pointer file with information about where the database is.
- Install ACT! on each workstation computer.
- Connect to the server’s ACT folder where all of the database files are and make sure that it is set to reconnect on restart.
- Place the .PAD file that was copied from the server into the workstation
