Adobe Dreamweaver has brought the business of web development within the reach of everybody. However, it is still a sophisticated piece of software with numerous floating palettes which can be a little off-putting for the new user. So, in this article, we aim to show you how to find your way through the maze of features and create a basic Dreamweaver web site.
It’s always a good idea to sketch out a plan of how the site will work and what kind of user experience it will offer. Dreamweaver will not give you any assistance at this stage, so just use pen and paper. Start by building a basic site, one that you know you can complete without getting bogged down in technologies that you do not understand.
Next, create a folder somewhere on your hard disk or desktop which will contain all of the files which will make up your site. Dreamweaver refers to this folder as the “local root folder”. It should contain nothing but the files pertaining to your web site and will become a mirror image of your actual site when the site goes live.
You should also add an images folder inside the “local root folder”. It can have any name you like but later, when you set up the Dreamweaver site, it will be designated as the default images folder and will help to ensure that your visitors don’t see any blank image icons on your pages.
Now we can open up Dreamweaver and create a new web site. To do this, find the Site menu and choose New Site. When the New Site window appears, be sure to click on the Advanced tab at the top of the screen. Ironically Advanced mode makes it easier to select only the key options you need to enter. Of the categories displayed on the left, we will need to enter Local Info and Remote Info.
In the Local Info window, enter a name for you new site then specify the location of the local root folder and default images folder you created earlier. The easiest way of doing this is to click on the browse icons next to each of these two boxes (the yellow folder icons).
The second piece of information is Remote Info. In this section, you tell Dreamweaver how to connect to the server hosting your web site. Set you Access Method to Local/Network if you are working on an intranet site then browse to locate your intranet server. Choose FTP if you are working on a public website for the internet and enter your FTP login details in each of the boxes. This information will be supplied by your web hosting company.
Before actually putting any content in your pages, you should ensure that all the pages you mapped out in your original plan have been created and saved. So, instead of creating and completing a page at a time, you create and save every single page. This will prevent the creation of links that don’t work properly because, when you come to create a link, the page you are linking to will already exist; you point to it and ask Dreamweaver to create the link.
Naturally, you will want to ensure that there is some consistency within your pages with some elements that remain the same as visitors move from page to page. One of the best ways to achieve this is to create at least one Dreamweaver template. Templates contain the basic design and layout that you want each of the pages to have as well as editable regions which can be modified each time you apply the template to a page.
Once you have your template(s) in place, you are ready to start putting the actual pages. Open each of the pages, apply the appropriate template then add your content. To test our page at any time, just press F12 on your keyboard.