Instead, as you will see in the tutorial below, Dreamweaver will automatically create the necessary markup for you. That way, theoretically, you can put together an entire website by hand and upload it to your server. This might also be the reason why big names out there trust Dreamweaver. According to BuiltWith , it boasts a number of high-profile users. From the official website of the city of Phoenix, Arizona over the FCC to Goodwill , well-known names rely on the software to design their websites.
On the other hand, if you are capable of coding, Dreamweaver has all the necessary tools for that too. The second part of Dreamweaver is a fully-featured code editor.
It comes equipped with all the standard functions, including:. The best part: if you change anything in your code, Dreamweaver will automatically display it on the visual side as well. That way, you can see it without having to upload your files to a server or fire up the browser. There are a lot more features and you will see many of them in action in the upcoming Dreamweaver tutorial for beginners.
As a first step, you need to acquire Dreamweaver from the official Adobe website. You can use the Free Trial option to test out the software.
Note that you might have to install the Adobe Creative Cloud to get started. Then, when the program is done installing, click Start Trial. When you do, Dreamweaver leads you through a setup wizard. The first step is to pick whether to use the workspace for developers or a standard workspace.
Since this is a Dreamweaver beginner tutorial, select the standard version. After that, you can pick a color theme for your workspace from four different options. The final step is choosing whether to start with a sample file, a new or existing project or watch a tutorial.
Choose to start with a sample file and you are done with the setup process. Good job! The first step is to start a new site. It will get you to this screen:. The first step is to give your site a name. Then, you need to choose where to save it. You also have the possibility to associate your new project with a Git repository. This can be a good idea since it gives you version control but you can skip it for now. We will deal with everything under Servers on the left side later.
Same with CSS Preprocessors , which is only important when you use that kind of thing. What is important to us is Local Info under Advanced Settings. Be sure to click on the folder icon on the right where it says Default Images folder. Then, go to your newly created site folder, open it, create a new folder called images and select that as your default folder.
That way, Dreamweaver will save images associated with your site automatically in this place. We will start with the homepage. You can either create a completely new file or use an existing template. The program comes with a few of those see Starter Templates. Right now, however, we want to create a new and blank HTML document. HTML is set by default and you can leave that as is. Pick index.
This will get you to the following screen. This is what we mentioned in the beginning: a live view of what your site looks like blank, at the moment and the code behind it.
You will also notice that Dreamweaver has automatically created some basic HTML markup that you can build on. To insert an element into the page, you first need to choose its location. After that, you need to go to the Insert tab in the upper right corner.
This gives you a list of common HTML and site elements that you can add to your page. Scroll down until you can see Header as an option. You will soon understand what this means. In this case, we will use class named site-header.
After you type it into the field, click on OK inserts the header into the page. You will also see it appear inside the HTML document. As the next step in this Dreamweaver tutorial, you will change the text inside the header and also turn it into a heading. For both — first mark the text in the code editor at the bottom. After that, go back to Insert , click on the arrow next to Heading, and choose H1. For more information on heading tags, read this article. After that, you can also type in a title for your page.
In your real website, you would choose something descriptive with keywords and not just Dreamweaver Test Site as in the example. Alright, you have just created a page header! In case you are not familiar with it, CSS is the part that provides all the styling on a web page. It allows you to define colors, the dimensions of elements, font types and sizes, and a whole lot more. We want to use the markup to spruce up our page title and also learn how to change CSS in Dreamweaver.
Once you're satisfied with your web page, save it by clicking "File Save As A dialog box will appear. Type "index. Do not use any other name. Files with the name "index. Before we move on to polishing the page up so that it looks at least half-way decent, you will need to publish the page to your web host. That is to say, you will now learn how to transfer your web page and its associated files to your web host so that the page becomes "live" on the Internet.
Although you are probably embarrassed to do this at this point, because the page is incomplete, there is actually no cause for worry. If you have not advertised your website's address "URL" to anyone, no one will ever know your site exists. As a result, this early version of your page will be seen by no one but you.
People will not visit your site out of the blue just because you happened to sign up for a web hosting account today.
Neither will the search engines even know your site exists. As you will discover over time, it's not that easy to get visitors. The main reason that we're publishing your page at this time is that you can get familiar with all the major stages in the design of a web page: that is, creating a web page involves not only crafting the page, but it also involves getting the page from your computer onto your web host's computer.
Once you get this hurdle out of the way, you will have mastered what is one of the largest technical challenge a newcomer is likely to face. Don't let this scare you, though; it's actually quite easy! Note that you should not skip this step if you want to follow this Dreamweaver CS4 tutorial series. All my subsequent chapters will assume that you have already done this step. If you miss out this step, some of the things described in the next few chapters may not work the way they are supposed to.
Start up the Site Manager again. This can be done by clicking "Site Manage Sites A dialog box entitled "Manage Sites" should open, with your website's name highlighted in the box in the main part of the window. If it's not highlighted, click the name to highlight it. Then click the "Edit The Site Manager wizard that you encountered earlier in this chapter will pop up.
Click the "Next" button until you arrive at the screen with the message "How do you connect to your remote server? In the first part of this tutorial, you selected "None" for this answer. You will now have to change this to the actual values that you will need in order to publish your web page. In the drop down box for the question, select "FTP". When you do so, the blank section underneath will be populated with a number of additional questions.
Essentially, you will need to enter the information that your web host provided you when you first signed up for a web hosting account.
Web hosts typically send you a lengthy list of details about your account when you first sign up. Among these is something known as your "FTP address".
FTP, or File Transfer Protocol, is the usual means by which you transfer your web pages from your own computer to your web host's computer. This act of transferring your files from your computer to your web host's computer is variously known as "uploading" or "publishing".
If your web host sent you the information in an email message, either print the message out or open it in another window so that you can refer to it. Personally, I think opening it in another window is better because you can then cut and paste the necessary information from one window to another and avoid typing errors. However, everyone has their own way of working, so do what suits you best.
If you have your own domain and are hosted on a commercial web host , this address is typically your domain name prefixed by "ftp". For example, if your domain is "example. Check the email you received from your web host for this information, or ask them if you cannot find the details. If the address is indeed "ftp. Note: not all web hosts follow the "ftp. Some web hosts ask you to simply use your domain name ie, "example. Others provide you with a hostname that is totally unrelated to your own domain.
Make sure you really read the information given by your web host instead of randomly guessing a value to enter here. The next question from Dreamweaver that you'll need to answer is "What folder on the server do you want to store your files in?
Basically, you cannot simply upload publish your files into any folder you like on the web server and hope that they end up in the correct directory for your website. Some web hosts tell you that you need to place your web pages in a folder called "www". Still others say that you should place them in the default directory that you see when you connect by FTP. If your web host tells you to simply upload the files when you connect via FTP, leave the box blank. Otherwise if they tell you that you need to publish your files in a "www" directory or some other folder name, enter that folder name in the box given.
If the host does not mention this at all, chances are that you can simply leave the box blank. As before, this information has to be supplied by your web host. Obtain this password from your web host if you don't already know it.
If you don't want to have to keep entering your password every time you publish a page, leave the "Save" checkbox activated it automatically becomes checked when you type your password. If you are sharing your computer with others, and don't want Dreamweaver to save your password, click the check mark to uncheck it.
Otherwise leave it blank. If you don't know what to do, and your web host didn't say anything about it, leave it unchecked. Note that if you check the secure FTP option, make sure you re-look at the information provided by your web host to make sure that the default folder to publish your files is still the same.
As such, you may have to adjust the folder name to account for this if you use the SFTP option. In general, if you are confused or not sure, just leave the box unchecked to use normal FTP. You can always experiment with this option in the future when you've become more experienced and confident with publishing using Dreamweaver.
For now, let's just get everything working first. Click the "Test Connection" button to check that you have entered all the information correctly.
Note: If you use Windows Vista, the Windows firewall may issue a message asking you whether to block or unblock the connection. By default, FTP connections are two-way, requiring the server to which you're connecting to make a connection back to you, hence the warning by the firewall. This is normal, so don't panic when you get that message from Vista. The interference by the firewall may also cause your first test in Dreamweaver to fail, leading Dreamweaver to issue a dialog box telling you to use Passive connections.
Just click OK to that message, and click the "Test Connection" again. To do this, look at the top of the dialog box to locate the "Advanced" tab. Click it. Somewhere in the middle of the page is a checkbox for "Use passive FTP".
Click the box to activate it. Then click the "Basic" tab at the top of the dialog box again, to return you to the wizard view. Finally, click the "Test Connection" button again. If the test continues to fail, it is possible that you've entered some information incorrectly earlier. Recheck everything. If in doubt, contact your web host and ask them what information you need to enter for each field.
Only your web host has such information. If the test succeeds, click the "Next" button until you get to the final Summary page again. Then click the "Done" button. Do not click the Cancel button for a shortcut out of this dialog box or you may have to re-enter everything you typed in earlier.
Now that you've properly configured Dreamweaver for your site, it's time to finally publish your web page. To do this, click "Site Put". Dreamweaver will issue a variety of messages to let you know the progress of the upload. When Dreamweaver pops out a message asking you whether it should "Put dependent files? This merely means that it is to upload things like your images and CSS files that are required by your web pages. Now that you have published uploaded your web page and its associated files to your site, you will need to test it by loading it in a web browser.
This will let you know whether you have made any mistakes when entering your details earlier such as uploading the files to the wrong directory. Start up your web browser, and type the web address "URL" of your site. If you have entered the FTP details correctly, you should see the page you designed earlier in the browser.
You can use and edit files that are in other languages, but the code support features will not be available. Cloudways or Bluehost are your best bet when it comes to web hosting for html built sites.
Overall, Dreamweaver helps to simplify the process of designing and building your website. While being flexible enough to address both the beginner and advanced levels of the market. This makes it easy to build out the foundation of your site in record time. Then, you just upload these files to your server and your website is ready for the world.
This makes it useful for beginners to see how the code and design interact as you place different elements of your site. It all happens automatically! Even though the commands will be different than say, a tool like Photoshop. The layout and interface carry a consistency across the board. So, if you love Adobe products and are already using tools in the rest of their creative suite, then this builder might be a solid investment.
Dreamweaver offers you a ton of possibilities. It would be nearly impossible to break down all of its features here.
But here are a few of the unique advantages that Dreamweaver offers, as well as a few reasons you might want to stay away and find another website builder. Dreamweaver is an intuitive and flexible tool that does a lot of things right.
Here are some of the biggest advantages this software can offer you:. A lot of other tools have this feature. But, with Dreamweaver, all it takes is a single click to preview and adjust your site on the fly. With Dreamweaver, you can quickly find and fix these errors quickly.
Included Font Selection Designing your site can be a lot of fun. Especially when you start tweaking things like color, layout, font choice, and more. Dreamweaver has a massive font selection built right into the software.
This makes it easy to find the perfect font for your headers and body text. Instead of having to search across a variety of stock photo websites you can do it right within the tool. Interface Personalization When you first start using Dreamweaver you might be overwhelmed with all the different tools and options available.
But, you can actually streamline the appearance and use of the site builder by changing the preferences. Here are some of the biggest drawbacks of Dreamweaver:. There are other site builders solutions like Squarespace , Wix , and WordPress , that make it incredibly easy to build out your first website.
Some users prefer this, but others would prefer a simpler solution that requires absolutely no coding skills. You can do a lot with Dreamweaver, and a lot of experienced developers prefer using this software for the flexibility it provides.
Luckily there are plenty of tutorials available online, so you can grow your skills quickly. But, it will take some time and initiative on your part. Or at least troubleshoot until you can fix the problem. You can grow these skills in time. But, if you need to get a site online quickly there are better options out there.
0コメント