You guys are going to have to do this at least twice in Web Design, at least twice in Interactive Design, and GOD KNOWS how many times after graduating, so, without further ado – here’s the magic recipe to setting up a Site in Dreamweaver.
Step 1: Gather up your files for the Web site into a local root folder. This folder will store everything that will eventually be uploaded to the server, so don’t clog it up with a bunch of extra files, such as high-resolution scans that have no yet been “Saved for Web.”
Step 2: In Dreamweaver, go to Site/New Site, and click on the “Advanced” tab at the stop of the screen. You will need to fill in the following items on this (the LOCAL INFO) screen:
- Site name (which can be anything, including any characters)
- Local root folder: use the blue folder (browse) button to select the local root folder from step 1.
- Default images folder: OPTIONAL – create a folder called “images” inside your local root folder and select it here.
- Links relative to document (yes, unless you are an advanced user and know how to set site relative links for your own domain name)
- http address: OPTIONAL – provide the actual URL of this website (for this blog, it’s http://joel.creighton.edu/blog/
- Use case sensitive link checking (yes)
- Enable cache (yes)
Step 3: Set up your Remote Info screen (selected in the left column of the advanced view). Again, go through the following settings:
- Access: FTP (I’ve never used anything but FTP)
- FTP Host: people.creighton.edu (or another URL used by your own server – if you have purchased space and a custom domain name somewhere else)
- Host directory public_html (this is for people.creighton.edu, this will almost certainly be different if you have a different server)
- Login & password (either your Blue user/pass, or your user pass for another server)
- Other settings: Some servers require Secure FTP (people does) and some require Passive FTP. I have found the only way to discover this if you haven’t been provided the information about the server is by trying the different settings and clicking “Test”
- click Test, and if it connects successfully, you are ready to go.
Step 4: Finish and be smart with your site. Remember, Dreamweaver will be able to track changes to links, locations and file names ONLY if you make the changes in the Files window. If you do ANYTHING outside of the Files menu (F8), Dreamweaver will not update links, and you’ll end up with broken links, pages, and missing images.