Building Websites - Website Building

Dreamweaver and HTML is such a massive subject that I couldn't possibly cover it all here and I'm sure that if you choose this method to build your site then you can find some good resources to help you.

However this is the concept that you need to know to build your content site. If you get started doing it this way then you won't get in a tangle further down the line.

Dreamweaver has four main components or "building blocks" that you need to use. You need these because you are building a reasonably large site and you won't have the time to edit each page individually.

The four building blocks are:

Templates, editable regions, Library Items and CSS.

In the download I gave you, you should be able to see how this works.

First of all build your header and save it as a library item. Then build a footer and save this as a library item also.

Then make a new page and save it as a template. Create a three column design with three rows. Then merge the cells in the header and footer so that you have a table design that looks like this:

Now, in the header table you insert your header.lbi library item and then insert the footer.lbi in the footer table.

This now becomes your master template for your site.

Once you have this template you create all new pages from it. When you update and save the master template it subsequently updates all pages that have been created from it.

When you update the header or footer library item it automatically updates all of the headers and footers on all pages that use them.

In a sense this is similar to using a php include to do the same job. However without clever programming if you use a php include as "header.php" for example then you can't have an individual page title for each page which is a major drawback.

Lastly you need to use a css file to control all of the fonts that you use on the site.

A CSS file simply contains all of the information for how fonts and other objects should render on the screen. So if you keep all of this information in one central repository (the css file) then it makes the job of managing your layout much easier.

If you follow these principles then it will save you a huge amount of time as your site grows and expands. Create library items for your header, footer and menus. Place these library items in your master template anjd create an editable region to contain your text. Finally control all of the text output using a single css file to manipulate the look and feel of your site.

There is a lot to learn here but doing it this way will save you a heck of a lot of time when you want to remove a page or rename a link.

That's the basics of using dreamweaver and sitebuilding. Let's see why I don't recommend using a content management system.