Making your first web page with Dreamweaver

Open Macromedia Dreamweaver: Apple, Applications, Macromedia Dreamweaver

Type something in the main window, such as your name, your office number, your telephone number, and your email address. This window at the bottom of the screen will allow you to change the text size, font, and style. Also centering and lists. Have fun!

Save it to a disk in a special folder you will always use for all web related things. Call it index.html. This is the default name for your homepage, and it's very important to use this name. Also, don't save it on the hard drive of a computer laboratory computer! Get yourself a floppy or a zip disk; it is much more convenient.

If you want to read about Dreamweaver, try Help, Using Dreamweaver (or just F1)

Now you need to tell Dreamweaver the name of the web server and where your local files are.

Choose the pull down menu Site, then New Site. You will see the following window. You can fill in something for Site Name; I don't think it's important. Click on the folder next to the Local Root Folder box and navigate to the folder where you are saving your web files. Also put the html address of the site; for me it is http://personal.bgsu.edu/~zirbel/591mac for these Macintosh pages.

Next, select Remote Info in the Category box at the left. Make Server Acess say FTP. Then you get a window like:

I wish I knew how to prevent it from saving my password. (When I click on the box, it erases my password.) I worry that the next person to use Dreamweaver will be able to use it. So I will be sure to restart the computer after using Dreamweaver.

Now click OK. It should show you a list of your local files on the right and the remote files on the left.

Now click on the icon that looks like two computer cables coming together, just under the word Site on the title bar. This makes the connection to personal.bgsu.edu. If all has gone well, you can click on the up arrow to upload your files to the server. I would recommend uploading the whole site, rather than clicking on them one at a time. You might forget something.

If you named your file index.html, you can now point your web browser to your web site, and the page you made should appear by default. If not, then you'll probably see an "index" of the files on your website. You can click on any file you see there.

When you make modifications and want to upload them, you'll need to click on the round arrow to refresh the file list. What a pain.