Dreamweaver Site Setup
Dreamweaver topics:
- Dreamweaver Site Setup
- Dreamweaver Text and Links
- Dreamweaver Adding Images
- Dreamweaver Using Styles
- Dreamweaver Using Layers (divs)
- Dreamweaver Using Templates
- Dreamweaver XHTML Code
- Dreamweaver Frames
Contents
Introduction
A website is really a collection of various files: text (web pages), images, etc. It's important to structure this collection of files and keep it that way. Therfore you should tell Dreamweaver where on your computer all of the website's files are or are to be stored. This location is refered to as Webroot.
Defining a Site
You'll find the Files panel at the bottom of the column at the right of Dreamweaver's window. By clicking 'Manage Sites' you can create a new Site.
Click New and choose Site.
- Enter a name for your website.
- You can specify whether to use a 'server technology'. For a plain and simple website, you can choose 'No'.
- Select the location where the files of your site should be stored. A folder in the 'My Documents' is a common location.
- Dreamweaver can take care of publishing your website to a webserver. Choose 'None' if you don't have an account on a webserver. You can always 'publish' your website manually.
This concludes the Site definition.
Continuing an existing Site
If you want to continue working on an already existing site, choose the folder where that site is stored in step 3 of Defining a Site.
If you're working on multiple sites, you can use the Site Manager to switch between various Site definitions. Dreamweaver can't work on multiple sites at the same time. It's perfectly possible however to work on multiple pages within the same website.
You can verify your working within a 'Site' definition by the green folder icon in your Files panel (right). If you see a default file browser there without the green folder icons, you're not working within a Site definition. Problem may the arrise when, e.g., creating links.
Saving and importing Site configurations
When the files of a Site are always in exactly the same location, you can export the settings for a Site. This allows you to use this settings on a different computer without having to set them all again manually. To do this, use the Export in the Site manager. The settings are saved into a file, which you can save on your memory-stick or personal network-drive. Use the Import option to load the settings stored in such a file. Be sure that all settings are correct, especially the location of the folder that holds the files of your Site.
File Management
To minimize the chance that problems occur, caused by incorrect filenames, it is advised to:
- Only use lower case characters: some webseres are case-sensitive.
- Avoid using spaces or special characters.
- Use descriptive filenames, so you're less likely to be confused which file contains which information.
- Organize your files into directories (folders). It will be difficult to keep track of all files in large websites when they're all in one directory.
Commonly images are put into a directory 'images'. If a website consist of several main parts (each with many pages), you can organize the files of each part in it's own directory.
