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Setting up a Site in Dreamweaver

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Besides being a web design/development tool, Dreamweaver provides you with a file management features for the occasions when you have to rename, FTP and move files. But to take advantage of this tool you need to set up a site.

To access Dreamweaver's site management, you can:

1. go to Site-> New Site.

2. click Dreamweaver Site on the Start Page

3. via Files Panel, by selecting "Manage Sites"

This brings up the Site Definition dialog box. The default is Basic site setup which provides a
walk-through wizard to lead you through the basic steps of setting up your site.

After giving your site a name and defining the URL click next. Now you'll a question asking if you will
be using server technology to set up your site. Most of the time you can check "No". If you select "Yes",
a drop-down menu with different types of server-side technologies appears.

 

In this example we will select "No".

In the next screen you are asked "How do you want to work with your files during development?". The recommended
option is to edit files locally and then upload to server when ready. This option basically allows you to see your
work before it's published.

Next question is "How do you connect to your remote server?. There are several options and the most common
one is FTP. Other options are: None, Local/Network, RDS, WebDAV and Microsoft Visual SourceSafe.

  • If you have access to your web space over a network choose "Local/Network".
  • Choose RDS (Remote Development Service) if you work on Web files in conjunction with a Cold Fusion application server.
  • WebDAV (an open-source program) basically provides a solution that prevents more then one person working on the
    same file at the same time.
  • Microsoft Visual SourceSafe does the same thing as WebDAV. In addition, it tracks different versions of files and lets
    an administrator "roll-back" to previous version of the a web page. While WebDAV works on both IIS and Apache, to
    take advantage Microsoft Visual SourceSafe you need a Visual SourceSafe serve and VSS database already set up.

Once you fill in the fields click on the "Test Connection" button. If Dreamweaver can not connect, you'll see a dialog box with
a message saying what may have gone wrong.

Always, double-check the username and password. Once connected you are good to go.

Go back to Dreamweaver and you are ready to add files to your site. Here is a screen shot of a sample site with an image folder
and couple of files.

By right-clicking on any of the files or folders in the File Manages, you'll get access to many file management options.

And there you have it, a Dreamweaver site set up in just couple of steps.