Building a Website Using Dreamweaver CS6 – Part 1

Learn the basics of building a basic website using Dreamweaver CS6 – Part 1.

Creating a Local Root Folder

Before we begin building a website, we need to create a local root folder and put it on our desktop. This is where all the files and subfolders will be saved as we work on Dreamweaver CS6. Though Dreamweaver can do this for us using the default folder and location, it’s better to create our own folder so we can easily find and manage it.

As an example, we’re going to create a website called Springs Park. So we named our root folder Springs Park in the image below.

Creating a New Site

1. On the Menu Bar click on Site and a drop down menu will appear. We can also do this on the Application Bar since there is specific button there for Site as well.

2. Choose New Site to bring up the Site Setup Dialog Box.
3. By default, the name of the site is Unnamed Site 2. Change the Site Name by typing in the name of the site that we will be working on.
4. By default, Local Site Folder is assigned to C:\User\Username\Documents\Unnamed Site 2. Browse the root folder by clicking the open folder icon.
5. Double-click the root folder, then click Select.

6. Click Save once the Site Name and Local Site are all setup.

After we save our new site, a Files Panel with Assets Panel will pop-up. The Files Panel keeps track of all the files we’re going to use in our website. We can either close it or click the little double arrow to collapse it into icons. When it collapses into icons, it becomes a smaller panel which allows us to move it anywhere we want to keep it out of the way.

Creating a New Document Using a Blank Page

Let’s put some content in our website using the File Menu from the Welcome Screen.
1. On the Welcome Screen, go to the File Menu and click on New. This brings up the New Document Dialog which contains many options for creating New Documents in Dreamweaver.
2. Select Blank Page on the first column and then pick a Page Type.

Choosing a Blank HTML Page

There are many Page Type options for the new document in our website in Dreamweaver CS6. Our first option for Page Type is HTML. Keeping HTML selected, we have numerous page layouts we can choose from.
1. Click on HTML in the second column of the New Document Dialog.
2. In the third column named Layout, select one of the layouts for your page.
3. When done selecting Page Type and Layout, click on Create.

Now we have the first page of our website. You’ll see that the first page already has content on it.  At this point, we have to save the page we created. We’re going to talk about that in the second part of this article.

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Simon Calder

Chris “Simon” Calder was working as a Project Manager in IT for one of Los Angeles’ most prestigious cultural institutions, LACMA. He taught himself to use Microsoft Project from a giant textbook and hated every moment of it. Online learning was in its infancy then, but he spotted an opportunity and made an online MS Project course - the rest, as they say, is history!