Setting up Sites

A Web Page is an element of a Site. Dreamweaver allows you to put all your web page files together for easy access and editing. It will help you create a new folder in which all the files will be located and referenced from.

It is important that you review the UW Web Publishing Services page from the Web Publishing at the UW online curriculum. In particular, it will tell you how to activate your web publishing services if you have not done so already. It also covers which server you’ll connect to (e.g. Dante or Homer) and which folder on that server you’ll put your Site in (e.g. public_html or student_html).

Getting Started

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This tutorial is designed for students, staff, and faculty of the University of Washington, but can be used to work with any similar web host server.

The first step is to create the Site. There are two methods to do this. One method is at the Splash Page and the other method is from the Menu:

1. At the splash page under the ‘Create New’ column select ‘Dreamweaver Site’.

2. Select the ‘Site’ menu and select ‘Manage Site’, when the dialog box appears select ‘New’.

Whichever method you used, you should be at the same point and from here all the steps will be the same.

Settings Part 1

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Now give your web site a name. This name is arbitrary and will not be seen by anyone else other than those working on it. It is generally a good idea to name your site in a way that describes what your site will be about.

After giving your site a name, input the URL you will be using. The URL is the address that you type in to access your site from the web. (Note: MX 2004 users will have to click the advanced tab at the top of the dialog box to input the URL.)

When you are finished select the ‘Next’ button to continue.

Settings Part 2

The next screen asks if you want to enable server technologies. Server technologies are usually for specific scripts like PHP, MySQL, Perl, etc. Unless you know what these are and intend to use them on your site, you should avoid them and select No. Click ‘Next’.

Settings Part 3

Now you have 2 options for where you want to work on your web site:

1. Edit local copies on my machine…
   This is the first option and the recommended option. What it means is that your documents will be stored on the local computer to begin with and they will not be uploaded to the web server until you decide to. This is the recommended setting.

2. Edit directly on server…
   This is the second option. Working off the server means that you are saving your data directly to the server removing the need to upload, but depending how you have it set up, your documents might be displayed live on the web. If chose to work locally, below you will have to specify what directory you want to use.

Select ‘Next’ to continue.

Settings Part 4

Here we can setup our connection to the web server. The values that are used here a designed to be used by University of Washington students, staff, and faculty. If you have a different web server that you want to connect to contact your web host to find out what those values are.

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(Note that your values for hostname and folder may well differ from what is depicted in the screen shot.)

The first drop down menu lets you choose how you want to connect to the server. Click the drop down menu and select FTP. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol and is the method to connect to your server account with your UWNetID.

Essentially Dreamweaver acts like an FTP (or in our case an SFTP program) to connect to your UW file space and put files into your web site’s folder on your Dante or Homer account. Which server you connect to and which folder you select to put your Site into are covered on the UW Web Publishing Services page of the Web Publishing at the UW online curriculum. The server is usually either dante.u.washington.edu or homer.u.washington.edu.

In the next field, “…hostname…”, you will choose where on your server you want to save the document when you do upload it. Just like above there are different naming conventions to use when using different servers. Again, this is covered on the UW Web Publishing Services page of the Web Publishing at the UW online curriculum. This field is usually either public_html or student_html.

Now in the ‘FTP login:’ field you want to enter your UWNetID as the username.

Just below that enter your UWNetID password. Only leave the “Save” checkbox selected so that you will not have to re-enter your password when you upload and download your files from the server.

Then MAKE SURE YOU CHECK “USE SECURE FTP” (SFTP) The UW servers are encrypted and you must use some Secure FTP connection in order for them to work correctly.

Now click ‘Test Connection’. You should get confirmation if you connected successfully. If not carefully check your steps, make sure words are capitalized or not where appropriate. If you are still having difficulties connecting and have checked your settings, you should contact your host to ensure you have the proper connection information. You could also send an email to Catalyst for a fast response via email. Please see the bottom of the Help Center for the email address.

When you are finished, click ‘Next’.

Settings Part 5

The next page is about checking in and checking out. This tells Dreamweaver to treat the files on your Site like library books. When you open a file for editing it is “checked out” and nobody else can edit it until you close it or “check it in.” This is useful if there may be more than one person working on the Site at once as it prevents two people from editing files at the same time.

All Together Now

Here all your settings are shown. If you are not satisfied with your settings, simply click the back button to redo that step that you want to change. When you are done click ‘Done’.

Now you are ready to start creating pages for your web site!