Getting Started
File and Folder Names:
- Folder and file names must be one word lower case (definitely no symbols, no capitals, also no numbers if possible). If you want to leave a space put a hypen (-) or and underscore (_) between words eg. about-us.html, about_us.html NOT about us.html
- If you leave a space in folder of file names, in the address bar at the top of the browser the symbol %20% will appear which is poor web design.
Folder Structure:
- Try and keep the directory (or folder) structure as flat as possible. By this I mean do not have folders inside folders inside folders inside folders. This makes the address (the URL) at the top of the browser window very long with too many / / / / or folder names. Every time you see another / you are moving inside another folder eg. http://www.abp.unimelb.edu.au/environments-and-design-students/administration/policies-forms.html.
In this example you are moving into the environments and design students folder and inside this folder into the administration folder looking for the policies-forms.html document.
The ‘Home page’, opening or ‘splash’ page is always saved as ‘index.html’ in Dreamweaver and is the first page of any website. Why?
- When the browser goes to a website, say http://www.unimelb.edu.au, the browser looks for an ‘index.html’ on that server and loads the website automatically if there is an index.html page present. If there is no index.html present the site will not load. This is critical. The page must be saved in Dreamweaver as ‘index.html’,
Do NOT save as ‘Index.html’ with a capital ‘I’, not ‘the’, ‘my’ or ‘index1.html’
- Folders can also have ‘index.html’ pages and these act as top level organisational pages for the content of these folders. When links are made to a folder with an index.html page the link is made to the folder hence the address http://www.abp.unimelb.edu.au/environments-and-design-students/. We can read this as a link to the environments and design students folder inside which there is an index.html page that will load automatically.
To Get the Templates Kit
EITHER- Download the templates kit http://www.web.unimelb.edu.au/
- Go to web template
- Click Login to download the templates kit
- Click Dreamweaver
- Enter your username and password, click Open
- Extract the folders to your single web folder on your local or shared drive.
- Set up the site definition and then download an existing site that will already contain the requisite 3 folders (templates-assets, templates-assets-custom and templates) and other pages and images using the FTP function inside Dreamweaver CS3.
Please note that Dreamweaver Training Notes are supplied by Dr Marcus Bunyan August 2008
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