Publishing A Web Page
*Information in this tutorial was taken from the Using Dreamweaver MX help tutorials.
After you plan your site structure, or if you already have an existing site, you must designate a new site in Dreamweaver before you start developing.
A Dreamweaver site is a way to organize all of the documents associated with a website. You can think of it as a project. You need to set up a site for each website you develop. Organizing your files in a site enables you to use Dreamweaver with FTP to upload your site to the web server, automatically track and maintain your links, manage files, and share files. You cannot take full advantage of Dreamweaver features unless you define a site.
A Dreamweaver site consists of as many as three parts, depending on your environment and the type of website you are developing:
- Local folder is your working directory. Dreamweaver refers to this folder as your “local site.” For more information, see Setting up a local folder.
- Remote folder is where you store your files, depending on your environment, for testing, production, collaboration, or so on. Dreamweaver refers to this folder as your “remote site.”
- Folder for dynamic pages is the folder where Dreamweaver processes dynamic pages. For more information, see Specifying where dynamic pages can be processed.
To get started, you can set up a Dreamweaver site completely or you can just start with the first step, setting up your local folder. You must at least set up a local folder before you start using Dreamweaver.
There are two ways you can set up a Dreamweaver site: use the Site Definition Wizard, which steps you through the setup process, or use the Site Definition Advanced settings, which enable you to set up local, remote, and testing folders individually, as necessary.
To set up a Dreamweaver site:
- Select Site > New Site. The Site Definition dialog box appears.
- Click the Basic tab to use the Site Definition Wizard, or click the Advanced tab to use the Advanced settings.
- Complete the Dreamweaver site setup process:
- For the Site Definition Wizard, answer the questions, and click Next to advance through the setup process.
- For Advanced settings, complete the Local Info category, the Remote Info category, and the Testing Server category, as necessary.
Converting From WS_FTP
Settings from WS_FTP can be used in setting up your Dreamweaver Remote Site. See the following:
How do you connect to your Remote Server? Choose FTP from the menu.
What is the hostname or FTP address of your Web Server? This will be campus.murraystate.edu for the Racernet server and ftp.murraystate.edu for the Murray State server. If you are not sure which you have, look at the 'Host Name/Address:' window in the WS_FTP properties.
What folder on the server do you want to store your files in? It is not necessary to specify this.
What is your FTP Login? This is the same as your WS_FTP 'User ID'.
What is your FTP Password? This will be the same password used for WS_FTP.
