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The purpose of this tutorial is to help the webmaster
define a site, in preparation for maintaining a school
or office web site using Dreamweaver. This process
gives Dreamweaver the information it needs in order
to manage the elements in your web site.
Defining the
site is the first step of using Dreamweaver. It should
be done prior to working on the first page. It needs
to be done one time on each machine you use to maintain
your web site.
Users of this tutorial are webmasters with
Dreamweaver installed on their workstation for maintaining
their school or office web sites.
Begin by creating a local “root” folder
for your web site files. This “root” folder
will contain all the text, graphics, style sheets
and other resources needed for your site.
- Root folders should be named something like myschooles (no spacing, punctuation, or capitalization in
any file or folder names.)
- Where should we make this folder to keep our
local files? In the MCPS school environment, you
will only be able to make folders and save files
in your assigned H:homedirectory.
In a less restricted environment, you will likely
save files and folders into the My Documents folder.
- We recommend that your graphics be stored separately
from the web pages in an images or gr folder
within the “root” folder. Create one
as needed. This folder will help you keep your
files organized.
We are now ready to define our
site using Dreamweaver.
- Start the Dreamweaver application.
- Make sure the Files panel is open or open it
from the Window menu.
- From the Site menu select Manage sites. This
will open a dialog box as seen below.
- Choose New to create a New Site. This will open
a set of dialog boxes for Site Definition. Make
sure you are using the Basic tab as shown below.
- The first frame asks you to give your site a
name. Enter a name that is meaningful
to you. Click on the Next button.
- Choose: NO when asked, “Do
you want to work with a server technology?” This
is the first option listed below. Click on the
Next button.
- Choose: Edit local copies, then upload… Again,
this is the first option in the upper part of
the frame.
- In the middle of the same frame (above)
click on the file icon. This will allow you to
browse in your local files and select your newly
created "root" folder.
Now we see the path to your "root" folder
in the form field for “Where
on your computer do you want to store your files?” If
correct, click on the
Next button.
- How do you connect to the remote server? Select: None. Then,
click on the
Next button.
- Dreamweaver will give you a summary of your
responses. Click Done.
- You will be able to return to Manage Sites and
change any of your settings using the Edit function
when needed.
Assuming that you are not starting
your site from scratch, you’ll
now want to download the entire site from the MCPS
server. This can be done using WS_FTP or SmartFTP.
There is an internal FTP client in Dreamweaver. Once
you are comfortable with the process of maintaining
a site, you might prefer to use it.
The easiest way to maintain a web site is to keep a complete copy of the live
site on a local machine or file server (H:homedirectory). This local copy ("Root"
folder) should mirror the structure and have the same file and folder names as
those on the Web server. This ensures that graphics and links that work in
the local preview will work when uploaded to the corresponding folder of the
MCPS Web server.
Contact the Web Services Team at webmaster@mcpsmd.org
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