This tutorial will show you how to manage your department's website within Dreamweaver 8 and how to easily update them.

Step 1

Creating a Sitemap

Dreamweaver allows you to acess and manipulate a mulititude of different websites within a server. At Calvin, all of our websites are stored on the W: drive, and they are acessible through Dreamweaver's manage site's option provided that you give Dreamweaver the correct information to find and define the specific site.
To do this, you must first click the Manage Site option found in the drop down menu on the right hand toolbar or the link right next to the drop down menu.

Step 2

The manage sites control menu will have popped up. Click New, and you will be given the choice of Site or FTP or rds server. You are only interested in working with a site so choose Site.

Step 3

Site Definition

In order for Dreamweaver to properly find and define the website you want to acess, you need to provide Dreamweaver with some information about the website. The site definition splash screen has popped up now after selecting new site from the manage sites menu. In this example, we will be using the Engineering Department's website to demonstrate this. Mimic the following information making sure the advanced tab is selected.

Site Name
This can be whatever you want it to be (it is only used within Dreamweaver), but it is helpful to name the site what it actually is to avoid confusion.

Local Root Folder
The local root folder of the desired website can be found by selecting the browse icon. All of Calvin's websites are stored on the W: drive. Note: you do need special permission to be able to access this drive. In this example, the Engineering Department's website is located by following this sequence My computer > W: drive > academics > engineering. Click Select

Default Images folder
The defualt images folder is found using the browse icon within the parent folder of the desired website. In this example you would follow this sequence.
My computer > W: drive > academics > engineering > images. Click Select

Http Address
The http address is the same as the url of the website (what you would type in a browser to find this particular page). Calvin's file structure is set up in a way that it reflects what the url will look like. eg. W:drive > academic > engineering = http://www.calvin.edu/academic/engineering

Make sure case the sensitive link checking and enable cache checkboxes are checked. Click OK

Step 4

Managing Sites

You now have defined your site and Dreamweaver has saved these settings. Once again we see the manage sites menu, but now your website will show up.

Dreamweaver will then load the website and display the file structure onto your right toolbar so you can edit, create, and manipulate the defined site.

Dreamweaver allows you to define mulitple sites and once defined they are all accessible through this menu.

Update Your Website (The Web Update Button)

Normally, in order to transfer files from the local root folder to a web server, you would need to use FTP to transfer them. However, Calvin's web server contains an auto-update feature. Once you are done editing, creating, or manipulating the website, and you have saved it (ctrl - s), use the Web Update Button (http://www.calvin.edu/cgi-bin/webupdate.pl) and search through the list of websites till you find the corresponding one. Select that website and click Update