How to Create a Website in Dreamweaver

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. Create design layout for your website

2. Setup your website in Dreamweaver

3. Design the page structure for your main.html file

4. How to view your website in Dreamweaver

5. Add test content to HTML

6. Create page presentation – CSS

7. Finalise the css formats

8. Formatting elements

9. Formatting with a CSS style file

10.Add pictures to the front page

11.Positioning Adjustments

12.Additional page designs

13.Create templates for your website

14.Linking all the pages together

15.Linking Rules

16.Creating a links page

17.Building the About page

18.Create pages for dropdown menus

19.Setup the navigation menu dropdowns

20.Create a gallery template file & gallery.css file

21.Create a video page

22.Setting up a contact form

23.Setup CSS styling for the form

24.Data validation for our contact form

25.Some final tidy up work

26.Adding SEO – get your site indexed by the Search Engines

27.Page heading tags & SEO

28.The Alt tag & SEO

29.The title attributes & SEO

30.Publish your website

31.Other things you can do with a website

32.Sitemaps & search engine indexing

33.Conclusion

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Introduction

Let’s get straight to the point. Why do I use Dreamweaver and not some other platform like WordPress or Joomla to build my sites?  Afterall, WordPress alone apparently powers about 30% or so of the world’s websites. Well the answer is easy. For me it is an issue of control.  Control over my content and more importantly control over the code.

When I first decided to build a website, I did so using WordPress, which is built on open source architecture where anyone can use and modify the WordPress software.  It was relatively easy to use.

The problem I had was when some of my websites got hacked, I had no knowledge of where the hack was and how to fix it.  This meant that months of hard work in selecting templates (which were created by multiple different authors) and content went up in smoke.  Because I had not written the code, little alone understood how to get to most of it I was lost.  Not even my Host company was prepared to assist.  The only thing they wanted from me was to correct the problem.  So, I was left with no choice but to delete all the website content from the server and start again.

With Dreamweaver I know the code because I wrote it.  I have a copy of all my html, css, javascript and image files on my own machine.  Once built it takes a few minutes to upload to my Hosts servers.  If I make an update or alter some of the content, I can also push it up to the same servers in less than a minute for the whole world to see.

The best thing is that if my site did get hacked, I can simply upload the site again in no time without searching for and fixing any malware.  I believe that because WordPress powers about 30% of the worlds websites that hackers see it as a challenge to do damage to the websites associated with it.  If it happens to you, you will know the frustration that I have felt at becoming the victim of such behaviour, as clever as they are.

With that in mind you now understand why I believe a program like Adobe Dreamweaver is a blessing to the would-be website creator.  This guide does not explain all the ins and outs of Dreamweaver, but I hope it has enough information to enable you to build a website and more importantly arm you with enough tools and knowledge to be able to go out there and learn more in an easier manner.

So, let’s get started with the guidelines that I have