From the course: Dreamweaver CC Essential Training

Basic site structure - Dreamweaver Tutorial

From the course: Dreamweaver CC Essential Training

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Basic site structure

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- [Instructor] When you access a webpage on the internet, everything is presented as a single entity. It looks the same as it might do in a magazine. The main difference being that you're looking at it on a digital screen rather than a printed page. But it's actually a clever illusion. Unlike a printed page where everything is a fixed size and always remains in the same position, modern web pages are flexible, responding to the size of the screen. So if resize the browser window, the main imagine begins to shrink, the text in that heading moves, and when we get to a certain point, the navigation menu is replaced by this menu button. And that's not the only difference. Individual elements on the page are stored in separate files. The text and basic structure are in an HTML file. The images are all in separate files. The instructions for how the page is styled are in an external style sheet. And there's an external JavaScript file to control the navigation menu on smaller screens. When building a site, it's a good idea to organize your files in folders. One for CSS, another for images, and one for scripts. Dream Weaver is a site based program. It keeps tracks of all the files and assets in a site. You build the site on your local computer, and upload pages to your live web server when they're ready. So you need to create a separate folder on your local computer for each site that you plan to build or maintain. This is known as your site root folder. All the folders and files for the site need to be stored inside the site root. This ensures that Dream Weaver creates correct links between related files. In the Landon Hotel site used throughout this course, all the HTML files are at the top level of the site root folder. In a bigger site, though, it's common to create dedicated folders, or directories, for individual parts of the site. For example, you might create directories for events and rules. There's no single right way to structure a website. Each site is different, but you should give thought to making it logical and avoid unnecessary complication. You should also give careful thought to how you name files and folders in your websites, because they become part of the URL. Good names are short, meaningful, and contain no spaces. If you need to use more than one word, separate them with a hyphen or underscore. But you'll usually find that one word is sufficient. Instead of contactors, why not use contact? It's sorter, simpler, and easier to type. And for easy of typing, use only lower case letters. Most web servers are case sensitive, so mixing upper case and lower case letters in file and folder names can lead to broken links Follow these simple rules and you'll create websites with user friendly URLS. Particularly for visitors who might need to type in an address on a small, handheld device.

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