Professional Documents
Culture Documents
COMM/CISS 271
Instructor: C. M. Sturgeon
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Table of Contents
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 2
Dreamweaver Preferences ........................................................................................................................... 2
Site Creation .................................................................................................................................................. 3
Defining Your Site...................................................................................................................................... 3
Managing Your Site ....................................................................................................................................... 4
Creating New Folders / Files ..................................................................................................................... 4
Moving Folders / Files ............................................................................................................................... 4
Uploading to the Server ............................................................................................................................ 5
HTML File Naming Conventions .................................................................................................................... 5
Introduction
Dreamweaver is a powerful web page creation and web site management tool.
It contains numerous sophisticated functions that can be used to create professional quality
web sites. Because of this, it is one of the most popular web authoring tools among web
designers.
This handout is designed to complement content that is presented in the Advanced Web
Design class. The handout focuses on the basic and some intermediate information in order
to assure that all in the class are up to the same speed in using this application.
The handout is divided into several sections with a header dividing them.
Dreamweaver Preferences
One of the major changes that came about with version MX 2004 and up to CS3 is the
intense use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to format page elements and text.
Cascading Styles can be extremely useful; however, beginning web designers may find the
use of them confusing and or clumsy.
If you prefer to not use CSS in Dreamweaver, you can follow the procedure below to “turn
off” the option of CSS.
Turn Off CSS Formatting:
Mac
1. Go to Dreamweaver > Preferences and choose General
2. Uncheck “Use CSS instead of HTML tags”
PC
1. Go to File > Preferences and choose General
2. Uncheck “Use CSS instead of HTML tags”
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Site Creation
To create and manage a website in Dreamweaver, you must first “define” your site.
Dreamweaver has built in tools for managing your site. The beginning user might be
tempted to ignore these tools and go straight to making a web page. However, after a little
use, the power of these tools becomes apparent. To take advantage of this power, all pages
should be created and accessed through the Dreamweaver Site Files Management Window.
Defining Your Site
1. From the menu items located at the top, choose Site > Manage Sites
2. In the Manage Sites window, click on New and choose Site
3. Fill in the dialog box(es) beginning with Local Info
4. Enter a site name (this can be anything you would like just to recall the site)
5. Click on the folder icon and Browse to and Select your local root folder
You have now defined your site (local site) – within the same window, you may now
specify the web server where you will be uploading your web files.
6. Select Remote Info (on the left)
7. Set Access to FTP
8. At FTP Host, enter the address of your server (in this case leeu.edu)
9. At the Host Directory, enter the name of the server directory (e.g. public_html)
10. At Login, enter your account login name and password
11. Click on the Test button –
12. Click on OK in the site definition box
13. Click Done in the Manage Sites dialog box
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Manag
ging Your Site
Figure 1: Screen shot of Dreamweaver MX 2004 connected tto server
Creatin
ng New Follders / File
es
1. Select the follder at the ttop of the “L
Local Files” sside of the w
window (in the illustraation
Figure 1) ; w
which would d be the pubblic_html follder not alwways visible,, yet root.
2. Choose Site > Site Filess View > Ne ew Folder ( Mac) or Fille > New Fo older (Win))
3. Type the nam
T me of the folder and preess Return or Enter
Moving
g Folders /
/ Files
You can easily movee files and fo olders within the “Site Files” wind dow
1. Click, hold an nd drag you ur files and ffolders to an
ny new locaation withinn the “Local
Files” side of the “Site” w
window
Draggingg and dropp ping your filles between n the local an nd server w
window is no ot difficult, bbut
there is p
potential off misplacingg files when using this m method. Thhe alternativ
ve method fo or
attainingg files or uploading files is using th
he “Get” and d “Put” butto
ons. These appear as aa
green arrrow / blue arrow on th he toolbar aand on the riight side jusst above thee local files.
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Uploading to the Server
With the proper settings, a correctly defined site and a connection to the internet, you can
upload your files within Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver has its own built‐in FTP function.
There is no need to use a separate FTP application such as Fetch or WS_FTP.
1. With your site window open, click on your connect button:
This connects Dreamweaver to your web server. When successfully connected you
should see content on both sides of your site window.
2. Select your local root folder e.g. public_html
3. Click the Put (up arrow) files button
‐ You will be asked if you want to put (upload) the entire site
4. Click OK
HTML File Naming Conventions
These are a few things to remember (rules of thumb) when naming html files:
Rule / Suggestion Explanation
Avoid using upper case text Unix and Linux servers are the most
common for hosting sites. This OS is case
sensitive. It is simpler for users to
remember all in lower‐case than to try and
recall what is upper and what is lower‐case.
Don’t user spaces Spaces within names are simply against
standards of good file naming for the web.
For example it is much better to have a
name such as about_us.htm as opposed to
using about us.htm. A reason among many
is because spaces are read by browsers and
converted to %20 – just ask yourself if this is
part of the name you want to give someone
to “remember” as part your URL.
Avoid using special characters Special characters such as / & ; and periods
will only cause trouble later. Keep it simple.
Make sure your HTML file have the You can use either .htm or .html ; however,
appropriate extension for your homepage (if on the LeeU server)
name it with the complete .html (index.html)
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Keep filenames short Users do not like to type out long URLs and
the more letters, the better chance for a
mistype, therefore not viewing your site.
Keep the names of pages short such as
programs.htm
Create your own name formatting style When naming files your folder can become
confusing and the difficulties of finding html
files emerges. When naming files for specific
purpose, it is good to have a style that helps
you recall. For example; pages on
merchandise of some sort may be
merch_toys.htm / merch_hats.htm /
merch_cars.htm – note how they will all be
alphabetically organized together making it
simple to find the specific page sought after
during the site building process.
In addition, it is simple for those that may be
viewing your site and detect the consistency.