| Before structuring a site, you'll need to lay a little groundwork. Files from the enclosed CD-ROM must be copied to the local system, and a site needs to be established in Dreamweaver. 1. | Insert the CD-ROM accompanying this book and locate the files in the Lesson_02 folder. Copy these files to a new folder named design_deploy on your local system.
In this first preliminary step, you'll move the files that will be used to establish what's known in Dreamweaver as the local site. The new folder should be created on whichever drive is used for storing your data.
| 2. | Launch Dreamweaver by double-clicking its icon on the desktop, choosing Start > All Programs (Windows XP Only) > Macromedia > Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004(Windows), or find Dreamweaver installed within your Applications folder and double-click the Dreamweaver MX 2004 icon (Mac) inside the Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 folder.
If you previously were working with Dreamweaver and other pages are automatically opened, close them now.
| 3. | Choose Site > Manage Sites from the main menu; or, from the Files panel, expand the drop-down site list and select Manage Sites from the bottom of the list. From the Manage Sites dialog box, select New > Site to begin defining your site.
The Manage Sites dialog box is your entry point for creating new site connections, editing site configurations, and removing site definitions. The Manage Sites dialog box also allows you to import and export individual site definitions. Although Dreamweaver MX 2004 gives you the option to work directly with files located on the server through an FTP or RDS connection, a standard site with local files is necessary to fulfill the lessons in this book.
| 4. | In the Site Definition dialog box, make sure that the Advanced tab is selected. In theLocal Info category, enter Design_Deploy for the name of the site. Enter the path to the LocalRoot Folder by clicking the associated folder icon and locating the directory containing the files copied from the CD-ROM in the "Choose local folder root" dialog box. When you find the right folder, choose Select (Windows) or Choose (Mac).
The local root folder is where you'll be working for the balance of this lesson and many of the lessons that follow. The overall goal of the book is to properly design the site locally before it's deployed remotely, where it can be modified by content contributors.
Note The other options in the Local Info category of the Site Definitions dialog box don't need to be addressed for our purposes. In a normal site setup, however, it's a good idea to include a full URL for the HTTP address to facilitate link checking. Designating a default images folder (if one exists) speeds up development by providing a central location for Dreamweaver to add images that are added to the site using the drag-and-drop method.  Now that the local site is established, you'll define the remote site. Rather than select an FTP, RDS, or other type of connection to a Web server located on another computer on the Internet, you'll use a local Web server as the remote site. This configuration emulates the standard Dreamweaver local/remote site setup on a single machine and doesn't require an Internet connection.
Note If you do have access to a remote Web server and prefer to use it for the lessons, you are free to do so. | 5. | Click Remote Info in the Category list and choose Local/Network from the Access drop-down list. Select the folder icon associated with Remote Folder and create a new folder called Design_Deploy_Web within your Web server's web root folder (typically, C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\ on Windows, or Users:UserName:Sites on Macintosh). Select this folder as the remote folder.
Although there are a great many other options and selections that can be made when defining a site, the settings you've established so far are all you need for now. (You'll revisit the Site Definition dialog box in Lesson 10 when you establish the Contribute administration.)
 | 6. | Switch to the Testing Server category, make sure that the Server Model list is set to None, and click OK to close the Site Definition dialog box.
In these lessons, only static pages are used, although it's possible to use Contribute in a data-driven site. Although Contribute integrates well with data-driven sites, content contributors can only create and edit static elements and/or pages with such sites.
| 7. | The new site is now added to the list in the Manage Sites dialog box. Click Done to close the dialog box.
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