Unit 3. Defining a site (I)

In this section we’re going to see what a web site is, how to create one and to manage it.

Also we will see how to modify the document properties.

A web site is a Set of archives and folders, related to each other, and with a similar design or common objective. It’s necessary to design and to plan the Web Site before creating the Pages that are going to be contained in this Web Site.

The traditional way of making a site consists in creating A folder in local drive. HTML documents are usually created in this folder, whereas to contain the images, the animations, the style sheets, etc. new folders within this one are due to be created with the objective to have a better organization of the archives at the time of working. This is what is known as a Local site.

Then we will be able to copy the archives in a web server, in the named Remote site, which is equivalent to publishing the site, so that people will be able to see it in the Internet.

The organization of the archives in a site allows the administrator to share archives, automatically check the links, and use FTP to load the local site onto the server, etc.

It’s convenient that the home Page of the site has the name index.htm or index.html, because the browsers look for a Page with that name when they try to access a generic URL.

For example, if we wrote a generic direction like http://www.teacherclick.com in a browser, this one would try to load the Page http://www.teacherclick.com/index.htm, and so an error would take place in case any Page with the name index.htm doesn’t exist.

Once the folders that compose a local site are created, it’s possible to define the site in Dreamweaver.

So, go to Site menu, and select the Manage Sites… option.

Remember that through the Files panel, in its Files tab, it’s possible to access each one of the created sites and the Manage Sites option.

In the case of having selected the Manage sites option, a window will appear containing the list of local sites previously defined.

Of course, several local sites in a same computer can exist.

If the New option is chosen, or if the Edit option is chosen, it will show the same window where the characteristics of the site will be defined.

The characteristics of the site are grouped in different categories located on the left.

To visualize the characteristics of a Category you just have to select it by clicking on it.

Let’s look at the data to edit for the Local Info category.

Site name has to be defined, and also a Local root folder, which is where you find the site in the local hard drive.

Then, if it’s required, through the Site Map Layout category you can define the home Page of the site, of which the rest of the HTML documents inside the site will depend. If there is a Page in the root folder of the site with the name index.htm or index.html, Dreamweaver will select it by default.

These three characteristics are essential when you are defining a local site.

We’re not interested in the other options at this stage because we’re focusing on defining the local site, and it isn’t necessary to establish the server data located in the remote site.

After filling in all the data, click on the OK button and open the site.

If we would rather use the Wizard to create the web site, we just have to select the Basics tab instead of Advanced tab.

To open a site previously defined you have to go to the Site menu, then click on the Manage sites... option, then select the site out of the site list and click the Done button.

We could use the Files panel too. Look for the site in the drop down menu of the Files tab and select it to open it.