Using Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004

Site Management

Before you begin editing web pages that go together, you should set up a folder for them to go into and create a 'site' for them. (If you are only doing one page in passing, you can skip this step.)

Before you begin, use Windows Explorer or the My Computer Icon to create a new folder to put your site in, if you don't already have a folder with documents for the site.

Setting up a 'site' in Dreamweaver allows you to do things like search and replace across the entire site, list and open documents from the directory, and (for advanced users) use templates and other advanced features.

When should I set up Site Management?

As soon as you start work on a new site, set up a separate directory for it and a site for it.

How to do it:

• From the Site menu, choose Manage sites:
  
• Click on New in the Manage sites dialog
• Type in the name for the new site.

• Type in a name for your site (this should be something you will remember; you will need it to refer to the site). Click Next.

• Choose "No, I do not want to use a server technology" and click Next.

• Choose 'Edit local copies on my machine'
• Use the yellow Browse folder icon to select the folder you will store your web page files in.
• Click Next.

For 'How do you connect to your remote server?' choose FTP.

• For FTP host, enter ws2.cc.lehigh.edu
• For Host directory, enter webspace
• For Login, enter the userid for the account you are uploading to
• Click the check box next to Use Secure FTP (SFTP)

Click Next.

Click No, then click Next.

• Click on Done

The site files window is displayed on the right side of the screen:

If you already know the filename of the main page (index.html? userid.html? etc) for the site, you can set up the Site Map.

Go to the Site menu, and choose Edit Sites.

Select the site you just created, and click 'Edit'.

Click on Site Map Layout in the left column of the window that appears.

• Use the yellow browse folder to select the filename of the main page in the Home Page: box.
• Click on Display Dependent Files
• Then click OK at the bottom of the window.

The site window will be displayed:

You can open files in the site folder by clicking on them; once you have some interlinked files in the folder, you can see a map of them by clicking on the Local View drop down, and choosing Map View:

This is useful to see how the pages you have are interrelated/interlinked.

To see what the subsidiary pages link to, click on the + sign next to the page:

To change the definition of a site, go to the Site menu, choose Manage Sites, select the site whose definition you wish to change, and click Edit. Make the changes you wish, click OK, and then click Done in the Edit window.

Other site management features:

Check links sitewide

Dreamweaver can check the links on your site to be sure they don't try to point to non-existent pages in the directory. (It won't check links to other servers, though.) To do this, from the Site menu, choose Check Links Sitewide.

The Link Checker Results will come up below the Properties panel:

On the left, under Files, you will see the names of the files that contain 'broken' links; on the right, you will see the filename that the broken link points to.

If you change the Show drop down to External Links, you will see the list of external links used in the site, and which files point to those links.

If you change the Show dropdown to Orphaned Files, you will see a list of files (including graphics files) that are not linked from/used on any of the pages in the site. To view one of these files, double-click on it.

Rename Files

Dreamweaver makes it easy to change the name of a file and have the links to that file throughout the site updated. To change a filename, right-click on the file in the files window and choose Edit, then Rename, or press the F2 key.

Type in the new name, then click outside the name box to have it take effect.

If any page has links to the page under its old name, you will see an Update Files dialog box:

Click Update to have the links updated to the changed name.

Change Links sitewide

To change the address links across the entire site point to, choose the Change Link option from the Site menu.

• In the first box, type in the address currently used in the site.
• In the second box, type in the address you want to change those links to point to.
• Click on OK.

You will be asked to confirm changes to all the sites, then the changes will be made.

Jennifer Heise, Last updated February 1, 2005