Preview before committing

After making a set of changes, it is a good idea to preview them before committing them to the Subversion server. You can do this with the following steps.

Step 2

Ruby Install icon

Find the Ruby Install icon in the top-level folder of your working copy.

Step 2

Run Ruby

With the mouse pointer over this icon, run the Ruby interpreter, using the right-click mouse menu as shown in the illustration to the right.

Step 2

Build the website

Ruby will build the website for you. While Ruby is running, it will show a black window like that shown in the illustration to the right. It may take a minute or two for the build process to complete; when it is done and shows the message shown to the right, you can preview the site using a web browser.

Step 2

Start a browser

Start a web browser and enter the following into the browser address field:

http://localhost:8080/

The browser should display the top page of the site, as shown in the illustration to the right.

Step 2

Explore your pages

You can navigate in the preview of the website in the normal way. In our examples, we have made changes in the Admissions folder, so we navigate there to check that our changes came through okay.

That’s it!

If the changes are satisfactory, you are now ready to commit your changes to the Subversion server as explained in the next section.