Cornerstones of Dreamweaver Design: Setting Up Your Site Support

Recently, we sought out reader opinion on premium content. And, many of you emailed me and DMXzone that while you have found the information very helpful, the tutorials often assumed complex knowledge when most folks reading are just beginning to work with Dreamweaver as a pro tool, and many of you are even fairly new to web design. You clearly expressed that you wanted helpful tutorials that take you right from the very start of using Dreamweaver on through to using it in more complicated ways. This way you can begin building professional sites in a sophisticated manner, tapping into the workflow that Dreamweaver provides. This way, you can build a sturdy foundation of Dreamweaver knowledge upon which to grow your skills.
 
The series will cover the real how-to about the Dreamweaver program from a no-nonsense, step-by-step, practical perspective. Whether it’s something seemingly simple as today’s topic, “Setting up Your Site” to more involved topics such as collaboration and site testing, the point is to lead you through Dreamweaver so you learn it from the bottom up.

In order to work most effectively with any given site in Dreamweaver, it's important to define the site. Defining the site in Dreamweaver means that you first gather all of your materials (HTML pages, images, media, and so forth) in one place, create a directory structure for the materials that makes logical sense, and in many cases, set up remote server access to the server where your site will reside. Then, you can begin working on your pages in an organized way as well as tap into many of the useful tools Dreamweaver provides in terms of file protection and collaboration (which we'll address in future Cornerstone) topics.