Chapter 2. Developing Site Structure

What You Will Learn

In this lesson, you will:

• Set up a local and a remote site in Dreamweaver

• Create folders to make a new site structure

• Bring existing site elements into the new organization

Approximate Time

This lesson takes approximately 45 minutes to complete.

Lesson Files

Media Files:

None

Starting Files:

LessonFiles/Lesson_02/All files and folders

Completed Files:

None

The underlying structure of a site often develops organically. As the developer creates the various pages and subsections of the site, files are stored in a variety of folders; as more sections are needed, any new folders created are placed wherever it seems appropriate at the time. Often, the site organization reflects the designer's own preferences (which is fine if the designer is the only one who ever modifies the site).

Macromedia Contribute, of course, changes the playing field. A site intended for use in Contribute is potentially modified by many people. More importantly, it's often vital that content contributors be restricted to their own area of interest: You don't typically want administrative assistants in human resources updating press release announcements. Contribute gives you the power to define who can edit which pages, but you need to structure the site with these requirements in mind. An organically organized site is no longer an option: The overall site must be laid out as carefully as any individual page. This lesson describes one structure that can be adapted to a variety of situations.

Dreamweaver has some real power features to help you bring an existing site into a Contribute-ready structure.

Frequently, Contribute capability is added to an existing rather than a new site. Designers are then tasked with modifying the site structure to accommodate the new features and restrictions of Contribute. Web pages within a site often use relative links to connect to one another, and changing the location of a file can alter the link required. Another goal of this lesson is to demon strate how you can restructure a site without tediously fixing a vast number of broken links.

Effective Site Structures

When architecting a Macromedia Dreamweaver site for use in Contribute, the key visual concept to keep in mind is the folder hierarchy . Without additional administrative setup, Contribute users can edit only files found within their root folderand this applies to files within subfolders of their root folder. If you envision a particular folder and all the folders and files underneath it, you'll have a clear picture of what anyone working with those files will be able to affect.

Note

Contribute works hand in glove with server-side network permissions settings and never overrides permissions established by the network operating system. Any files or folders hidden or otherwise made inaccessible by the network remain off-limits to Contribute users, regardless of a user 's root folder.

The various roles assigned to the Contribute users of a site or intranet are, for the most part, related to their job responsibilities. A content contributor who works in the human resources (HR) department will be concerned with modifying pages pertaining to HR. Likewise, the manager of the finance department is focused on intranet pages devoted to finance. The most effective site structure from a Contribute perspective is one that's constructed with the Contribute users' roles in mind. If you consider structuring your site according to the organization's general structure, you'll be well on your way to optimizing the site for Contribute.

For example, let's say we have a site for an organization that wants a Web presence for the overall organization and various departments: HR, press relations, and marketing. One approach is to separate the materials for each department into its own folder while keeping the company-related pages in the root. Contribute-wise, this arrangement will certainly work for a relatively small site, but it doesn't allow for much growth; if more than a few pages are used to cover the company information, the root section will get unwieldy. More importantly, anyone given the responsibilities for editing the company pages would also be able to modify pages in any of the other departments. This type of situation should be avoided because it either unnecessarily ties up administrators, forcing them to modify the company pages, or opens the door to users who might be qualified to edit general organizational material but shouldn't have access to other areas.

A far better solution is to regard the organization-oriented pages as a separate category and create a separate folder for those pages. Content contributors to the company pages can then be restricted to working in just that folder and any subsequent subfolders, such as those devoted to annual reports or other company-wide issues. As you'll see in Lesson 11, any roles that require access to more than one department can either be given access to the entire site or targeted to specific folders.