Define a local folder using the Site Definition Wizard
You'll create a site definition and define a local folder using the Site Definition dialog box. You can fill in this dialog box in either of two views: Basic or Advanced. The Basic approach guides you through site setup step by step. If you'd rather edit site information without guidance, you can click the Advanced tab at any time.
The following procedure describes how to set options in the Basic version of the dialog box, which is also known as the Site Definition Wizard. For details of how to set options in the Advanced version, click the Advanced tab and then click the Help button.
If you already have a website on a remote server and you want to edit that site instead of using the sample files, see "Editing existing websites in Dreamweaver" in Using Dreamweaver Help (Help > Using Dreamweaver).
To define a site:
Start Dreamweaver.
Select Site > Manage Sites (that is, select Manage Sites from the Site menu).
The Manage Sites dialog box appears.
In the Manage Sites dialog box, click New, and select Site from the pop-up menu.
The Site Definition dialog box appears.
If the dialog box is showing the Advanced tab, click Basic.
The first screen of the Site Definition Wizard appears, asking you to enter a name for your site.
In the text box, enter a name to identify the site within Dreamweaver. The name can be anything you want. For example, you could name the site Trio Motors.
Click Next to proceed to the next step.
The next screen of the wizard appears, asking if you want to work with a server technology.
Select the No option to indicate that for now, this site is a static site, with no dynamic pages.
To set up a site to create a web application, you would need to select a dynamic document type--such as Macromedia ColdFusion, Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP), Microsoft ASP.NET, Sun JavaServer Pages (JSP), or PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP)--and then supply information about your application server. For more information, see Tutorial: Developing a Web Application.
Click Next to proceed to the next step.
The next screen of the wizard appears, asking how you want to work with your files.
Select the option labeled "Edit local copies on my machine, then upload to server when ready (recommended)."
There are a variety of ways that you can work with files during site development, but for the purposes of this lesson, select this option.
Click the folder icon next to the text box. The text box allows you to specify a folder on your local disk where Dreamweaver should store the local version of the site's files, but it's easier to specify an accurate folder name if you browse to the folder rather than typing the path.
The Choose Local Root Folder for Site dialog box appears.
In the Choose Local Root Folder for Site dialog box, start by navigating to the Sites-Local folder on your local disk, the folder you copied the sample files into in Copy the sample files. Select the GettingStarted folder inside the Sites-Local folder. Open the GettingStarted folder, and click Select (Windows) or Choose (Macintosh).
Click Next to proceed to the next step.
The next screen of the wizard appears, asking how you connect to your remote server.
For now, select None from the pop-up menu.
You can set up information about your remote site later (see Define a remote folder); for now, the local site information is all you need to start creating a page.
Click Next to proceed to the next step.
The next screen of the wizard appears, showing a summary of your settings.
Click Done to finish.
The Manage Sites dialog box appears, showing your new site.
Click Done to close the Manage Sites dialog box.
The Files panel now shows the new local root folder for your current site. The file list in the Files panel acts as a file manager, allowing you to copy, paste, delete, move, and open files just as you would on a computer desktop.
You've now defined a local root folder for your site. You can follow the rest of the tutorials in this guide to create the Trio Motors sample site, or you can work on your own pages. When you're done creating and editing pages, proceed to define a remote folder on a server and publish your pages. See Define a remote folder.
