Basic Site Structure

If you are brand new to web design and brand new to Dreamweaver you are probably egger to open it up and get started. However before we start using Dreamweaver is symphonic over some of the more fundamental concepts and best practices of web design. That way you ensure that you are using  Dreamweaver coreiclick. And you understand why Dreamweaver operates the way it does when building websites.

The first concept I want to discuss is basic site structure. To those new to websites the thought of creating an entire website can sometime be intimidating. The truth of the matter is the most websites are in fact quite simple. Websites at their core are merely a collection of files and folders, just like any other project on your computer. Although every websites are different some standard have emerged when structuring your site. They can help keep your site organized and running smoothly. To create your website you will first need to folder on your hard drive to put it in. This folder is referred to as the root folder and later when you define your site this is the folder that you point Dreamweaver towards. Inside the root folder, you will structure your files and folders based on how they need to appear online. If you have a small size for example all your HTML files might go right into the redirectory as your sites get larger or more complex. It’s not a common to create a subdirectory to create more structure within your site. You can easily see the structure when browsing online. If you go to Lynda.com for example and look at the about us portion of the website, we can see that the URL is lynda.com/aboutus/mission.esp. This means that inside the root directory the folder named about us and inside that folder there is a file named mission.esp. In addition to structuring pages this way, most web designer will site assets into their own folders as well. It’s a good way to organize the site and make additional assets easier to find. Images, CSS, external scripts, videos and other assets are routinely placed within their own folders. For our groundswell site, our assets will also within the _ “underscore” placed in front of the folder name. This helps to move these assets folders to the top of any directory structure and makes it easier to identify them as assets rather than mistakes.