Introduction to Dreamweaver CS3

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Creating and Editing Web Pages

Once your site is defined in Dreamweaver and your account configured in the Server, you are all set to create/edit web pages. Dreamweaver will display the working area for the site that you have created as follows.

The table below describes the major menu items.

The first drop down menu allows you to select the current site from those you have defined in Dreamweaver. The second drop down menu allows you to work with files in your local PC (local view) or Remote server (Remote View).
	Indicates no connection to the server. Clicking it will connect to the server.
	Indicates connection to the server. Clicking it will disconnect from the server.
	Refresh the view. This updates the window in case any files have changed since the window was first displayed.
	Download (Get) files from the Server to your local machine.
	Upload (Put) files from you machine to the server.

New Site:
If you are starting a new web site with no files on the server, you can create new files by selecting File > New from the menu. Dreamweaver will ask you to choose the appropriate file type, select HTML for regular web pages.

Note: If your site is an official College web site, create new pages by using a template.html file provided for you by Web Services. Select the file in the working area, right-click and select Edit -> Copy. Then right click the new file (probably called Copy of template.html) and select Edit -> Rename and type the new file name, followed by .html.

The homepage (starting page) for your site should be named as index.html (case-sensitive). This is the default file name for most servers on the Internet, including the server for personal web pages and official web pages at The College at Brockport. By convention, file names should be all lowercase, contain no spaces (use underscore _ ), and end in .html, not .htm.

Once you've completed and saved the index.html file, select the file and click on the Put button to upload it to the server.

For personal web pages, if your e-mail address is jdoe@brockport.edu and you've uploaded your index.html file to the root folder, you can access the page by simplying typing the following URL in you web browser (note the ~ symbol before the NetID):

http://www.acs.brockport.edu/~jdoe

For official web pages, it will typically be http://www.brockport.edu/dept_name/ . Check with the Web Manager for details specific to your site.

Existing Site:
If your web site already exists in the server, you can connect and download your files to your local computers selecting Remote View and Get button. Once your files have been downloaded to your local PC, you can switch to Local View, open the files and edit them.