How Dreamweaver Works with Remote Sites

[ LiB ]

Before delving into the remote site functions and features Dreamweaver provides, you need a basic understanding of how Dreamweaver thinks about your remote sites.

As you've undoubtedly wandered about on the Internet, you're sure to have noticed that the web page addresses typically follow a basic and, hopefully, intuitive naming scheme. For instance, many home pages, or default documents, are called index.htm. If you click to view a certain company's products page, more often than not, you'll be directed to the product's subdirectory. Not only does this allow for better organization and maintenance, but it just makes sense.

When you upload, or put , your website, Dreamweaver mirrors its structure as closely as possible (always with few exceptions) on the remote site. If you have a file called widgets.htm in the products subdirectory on your local site, after the site is published, you'll end up with a widgets.htm file in the products subdirectory on your remote site. Although this might seem rudimentary, this mirroring helps out in a few ways:

• Assists in making updating and maintaining your site easier.

• Helps prevent broken, orphaned, or otherwise incorrect links.

• Helps prevent multiple copies of a web page or image file. This conserves server space and, in some cases, the amount of bandwidth used.

• Adds to the level of professionalism your page exhibits.

• Makes it easier to understand and follow document-relative links.

In fact, to use many of the Dreamweaver remote file features, the local and remote site must mirror one another. Maintaining the file/folder structure is vital to maintaining all your links. This really isn't an issue, however, because Dreamweaver does this for you (including creating the required subdirectories) automatically with commands such as Synchronize, Get, and Put. Next, you will learn how to properly configure your remote site in the Site Definition.

[ LiB ]