[thelist] issue with templates in dreamweaver

[Fortune Elkins]

hiya!

well, sometimes DW will resolve links to your local drive if the page you're
working on hasn't been saved.

here's how i do my templates & links to get everything correct. you probably
know all this already. . . so forgive me. . .

first, i make my architecture of folders in my explorer:

mysite
 |
 \services
 |
 \solutions


or whatever

then i define the site in DW4 using the site window features.

then in the site window i click on a right-click on a folder, in this case,
services, and i use the new file feature to create all my file names:
consulting.htm, projects.htm, etc. then i do the same for the solutions
folder.

great, now my architecture is set up and DW knows about it.

then i go ahead and make my page layout. i leave room for where my nav bars
and links should go, saving the layout as a template. DW automatically
creates the template directory, and puts the file there. great.

then i design my nav bars and links in a new page, and i make the links page
relative or site relative, according to the need. this i save as a library
item. DW makes the library folder, and puts the files there. i usually make
a library item with footer links, too. 

i then open the template, insert the library items, and my template is
complete. i save it again.

then in the site window i open the empty page files and apply the templates.
and i save the page. boom! the templates appear and DW will create the
links, etc. correctly for the page's position in the site because it knows
about all the pages and their locations already. everything's already been
saved in its place, you know?

so i cut and paste the content into my editable areas. then of course, the
client wants to change all the graphics, which is no problem, since i can
just re-arrange my templates to my heart's desire and enjoy automatic page
updating with no content hassles -- as long as i keep the editable areas
named the same.

this is how DW keeps me from breaking links or killing my clients. <Grin> if
you're using a lot of javascript in your site, you might want to consider
making the scripts library items too, unless you're going to offload them
all into a linked .js file. 

hope this wasn't too basic for you!

hth,

f

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