Thank you for your quick reply - I have done all of that, and when I try connecting to the database in dreamweaver *either locally or remotely* I get errors each time saying "error 500 cannot connect" or that theres a problem connecting to the database etc...
It seems that setting up the site dynamically causes issues as I can't preview anything correctly and it doesn't load up to the server as well. I also am using site import and each time it stalls and crashes dreamweaver. I have a client waiting days now for their content management system so design extender is the priority for me to get working. Thank you again.