- Defining a New Website
- Using the Site Definition Wizard
- Using the Files Panel
- Editing a Site Definition
- Considering Site Organization
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Using the Site Definition Wizard
The Site Definition dialog box, shown in Figure 3.3, has two tabs at the top: Basic and Advanced. You begin by using the settings on the Basic tab, so make sure that tab is selected. The Basic tab contains the Site Definition Wizard, which walks you through the site definition. Later this hour, you learn how to edit your site definition using the Advanced tab in the Site Definition dialog box.
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Figure 3.3 The Basic tab of the Site Definition dialog box walks you through setting up a site definition.
The Site Definition Wizard has three stages, shown as the section names at the top of the wizard:
- Editing Files—This section enables you to set up the local directory where you’ll store the website. You tell the wizard whether your site uses server-side technologies. The sites and web pages in this book do not use these technologies, which connect web pages, servers, and often databases.
- Testing Files—This section is needed only for sites that use server-side technologies. We can skip over it!
- Sharing Files—This section enables you to tell Dreamweaver how you want to transfer files to a server or another central location to share. You explore this functionality in Hour 22, “Uploading, Sharing, and Managing Website Projects.”
Filling In the Editing Files, Part 1, Section
Make sure that you have the Basic tab selected at the top of the Site Definition dialog box.
Filling In the Editing Files, Part 2, Section
The next page of the wizard, Editing Files, Part 2, enables you to specify whether you will be using server-side scripting to create dynamic web pages.
Try it Yourself: Completing the Editing Files, Part 2 Site Setup Section
Fill in the Editing Files, Part 2, section of the wizard:
Your web pages in this book are regular HTML pages, so you should click the top radio button that says No, I Do Not Want to Use a Server Technology, as shown in Figure 3.4.
Figure 3.4 You indicate whether you will be using server-side scripting in your site.
- Click the Next button.
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Filling In the Editing Files, Part 3, Section
The next page, Editing Files, Part 3, helps you specify where the files in your site are located. The site that you are creating here is your development site, not the final site that other people will view over the Web. You have to move the files in your development site to a server for people to view the files over the Web (doing so is the subject of Hour 22). The website located on a web server and available to the public is called the live site. I always work on an up-to-date copy of a website that is located on my local hard drive. You can store your development files in two places:
- On your local machine
- On a network drive
Try it Yourself: Completing the Editing Files, Part 3 Site Setup Section
Fill in the Editing Files, Part 3, section like so:
- Select the top radio button, Edit Local Copies on My Machine, Then Upload to Server When Ready (Recommended), to elect to store the development files on your local machine; this is where most web developers store their files. If you are working in a networked environment (at your office, for instance), you could use the Edit Directly on Server Using Local Network selection.
As shown in Figure 3.5, the text box at the bottom of the dialog box asks you to enter the location of the site directory. Click the folder icon to the right of the text box to navigate to the directory where you will store your local site, the files you will work on in Dreamweaver. Either use an existing directory on your hard drive or create a new directory for your site.
Figure 3.5 You enter the directory that houses your development files.
- Click the Next button.
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Filling In the Sharing Files Section
The next section in the Site Definition Wizard enables you to configure how you upload files to a server and share them with the world. You can also set up a central location where members of your team can share files. You learn how to configure remote servers and transfer files in Hour 22. Fill in the Sharing Files section in the following way:
Drop down the top menu and select None, as shown in Figure 3.6.
Figure 3.6 To set up the remote connection information later, simply select None.
- Click the Next button.
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Reviewing the Summary
The last page of the wizard displays a summary of your site, as shown in Figure 3.7. You can come back to this wizard at any time to change your site definition by selecting the Edit Sites command from the Site menu (either the one in the Files panel or the one in the Document window). Click the Done button to finish defining your site to finish creating your site definition.
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Figure 3.7 The Site Definition Wizard displays a summary of your site definition.
Building the Site Cache
After you click the Done button, Dreamweaver displays a message, telling you that it will now create the initial site cache. When you click OK, a progress bar like the one in Figure 3.8 appears (and disappears very quickly if you have nothing in your site). The initial site cache is created each time you create a new site. The site cache stores information about the links in your site so that they can be quickly updated if they change. Dreamweaver continues to update the cache as you work.
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Figure 3.8 You might see a progress bar as Dreamweaver creates a cache for your site. This file speeds the updating of links when you move or rename a file.