Dreamweaver: Getting Started

Getting started making web pages with Dreamweaver is relatively simple. Below are a few steps you'll need to take before you make your web pages.

Define your Site

Dreamweaver New Site Dialog (click for enlargement)

When you first open Dreamweaver, it asks you to define a "site." This site is the place from which Dreamweaver will assume all your pages spring. Depending on your network connection, you will want to define your site differently.

If you have logged on to the Novell Netware server, you can set your site to stem from a folder in that server.
If you are not logged into network space, we suggest making a folder on the desktop with your name and the date the folder can be removed visible. This is not a good way to save your data -- the IMAGE lab takes no responsibility for data saved in this way.

To define a site, click the Site menu and choose New Site. The new site dialog window will open. Type the path to the folder in which you're going to store the documents for this site, or click the folder icon and browse your way to it.

Feel free, also, to enter a name and an appropriate URL for your site.

Edit Preferences

Now that you've decided on a site area, you need to make sure the program's preferences fit your preferred style of HTML coding.

To edit your preferences, click the Edit menu and choose Preferences.... The preferences window will open and give you a variety of choices. From this menu you can set your default background color, text color, link color, etc. You can also choose what extension to use for web pages (.html or .htm, for example). Peruse the options to see other things the program does.

Make a homepage

The last thing you need to do to get started on your site is to make the first page and designate it your homepage. As you make your pages, Dreamweaver will make a 'map' of the pages, a heirarchical display of your site. You can always look at this by choosing the Window menu and selecting Site Map.

To make a new web page, choose the File menu and select New.... Be sure to fill in a title and then select Save As... to save your document. (If you want it to be the homepage for your document, you should call it index.html (do you know why?).

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