Dreamweaver

Set up and edit a local root folder

After you plan your site structure, you set up (define) a site in Dreamweaver. You should also define a site in order to edit a website that wasn’t created in Dreamweaver. Setting up a Dreamweaver site is a way to organize all of the documents associated with a website.

The local root folder is your working directory for your DW site. This folder can be on your local computer or on a network server.

If you want to start editing files on your computer (without publishing them), set up only a local folder, and then add remote and testing information later.

You can use Dreamweaver to edit an existing website on your local disk or to edit a remote site (or a branch of a remote site), even if you didn’t use Dreamweaver to create the original site.

Note: You don’t need to specify a remote folder if your local root folder is on the system running your web server. This implies the web server is running on your local computer.
  1. Select one of the following:

    • To set up a new site, Select Site > New Site.

    • To edit the setup of an existing site on your local disk or a remote site (or a branch of a remote site), whether it was created in Dreamweaver or not, select Site > Manage Sites and click Edit.

    Note: If you haven’t defined any Dreamweaver sites, the Site Definition dialog box appears and you don’t need to click New.
  2. Enter the setup information:

    • To set up a site using the site setup wizard, click the Basic tab and follow the prompts.

    • To set up local, remote, and testing folders (for processing dynamic pages) directly, click the Advanced tab, select the Local Info category and set the options.

  3. Click OK and Done to create the site (displayed in the Files panel).

Local root folder setup options

If you choose to set the local root folder options directly instead of by using the Basic tab of the Site Definition dialog box, click the Advanced tab and enter the information.

Note: Only the first two options are required to set up a working site on your computer.
Site Name
The name that appears in the Files panel and in the Manage Sites dialog box; it does not appear in the browser.

Local Root Folder
The name of the folder on your local disk where you store site files, templates, and library items. Create a folder on your hard disk or click the folder icon to browse to the folder. When Dreamweaver resolves root-relative links, it does so relative to this folder.

Refresh Local File List Automatically
Indicates whether Dreamweaver should automatically refresh the local file list every time you copy files into your local site. Deselecting this option improves the speed of Dreamweaver when copying such files; however, then the Local view of the Files panel does not automatically refresh and you must click the Refresh button in the Files panel toolbar to manually refresh the panel.

Default Images Folder
The path to the folder where the images you use in your site are kept. Enter the path or click the folder icon to browse to the folder.

Links Relative To
Changes the relative path of the links you create to other pages in the site. By default, Dreamweaver creates links using document-relative paths. Select the Site Root option to change the path setting and make sure that you specify the HTTP address in the HTTP Address option.

Changing this setting does not convert the path of existing links; the setting will only apply to new links you create visually with Dreamweaver.

Content linked with a site root-relative path does not appear when you preview documents in a local browser unless you specify a testing server, or select the Preview Using Temporary File option in Edit > Preferences > Preview In Browser. This is because browsers don’t recognize site roots—servers do.

HTTP Address
The URL that your website will use. This enables Dreamweaver to verify links within the site that use absolute URLs or site root-relative paths. Dreamweaver also uses this address to make sure site root-relative links work on the remote server, which may have a different site root. For example, if you are linking to an image file located on your hard disk in the C:\Sales\images\ folder (where Sales is your local root folder), and the URL of your completed site is http://www.mysite.com/SalesApp/ (where SalesApp is your remote root folder), you should enter the URL in the HTTP Address text box to ensure that the path to the linked file on the remote server is /SalesApp/images/.

Use Case-sensitive Link Checking
Checks that the case of the links matches the case of the filenames when Dreamweaver checks links. This option is useful on UNIX systems where filenames are case-sensitive.

Enable Cache
Indicates whether to create a local cache to improve the speed of link and site management tasks. If you do not select this option, Dreamweaver asks you if you want to create a cache again before it creates the site. It is a good idea to select this option because the Assets panel (in the Files panel group) only works if a cache is created.