How to Set Up a Site Definition in Dreamweaver for a Personal UMass Site

At UMass, most web sites come in two general classes: Official UMass sites, and Personal Sites. Official UMass sites usually start with the URL: http://www.umass.edu/xxxx with xxxx representing some school or department at UMass. The URL for a personal site takes the form http://people.umass.edu/xxxxx, where the xxxxxrepresents your NetID. Here I want to demonstrate how to use Dreamweaver to connect to a Personal site at UMass. This consists of going into Dreamweaver and setting up a site definition. The site definition contains all the information Dreamweaver needs to help you keep track of your web site files.

In all cases, your web site will consist of a single folder, the “root folder” containing all of the files that make up your site, hosted on our server, webadmin.oit.umass.edu. Using Dreamweaver, you will maintain a mirror version of your site on your computer. Your site on your computer should be maintained the exact same way as the live site on the server: it should all be contained in one “root” folder. By setting up the site definition properly, you ensure that Dreamweaver will maintain that mirrored structure correctly for you.

In Dreamweaver:

1. Click on the Site menu. Choose New Site.
2. Provide your site with a name by typing the name into the field labeled Site Name:
3. Click on the folder icon next to the field labeled Local Site Folder. Navigate to the folder where you want the local copy of your site to reside on your computer.
   Here’s a shot of the Site Setup dialog in Dreamweaver, with the Choose Root Folder dialog open on top of it. Note that I have named the site after the fictitious Alex Jones. The root folder is called abjones, the Alex’s fictitious NetID, which I have chosen to indicate the contents of the folder, to reduce later confusion:

   

    

4. Click Select to close the Choose Root Folder dialog box.
5. Click Servers in the panel on the left, the the Plus sign in the panel on the right to open the dialog box where we enter the server settings. This is where we set up the connection to the Web server, where your files must be in order to be viewable on the Web. This dialog has seven values that may be set. The first one is the Server  Name, and it is up to you what you want to name it. It will not have an effect on the connection to the server. I recommend Webadmin. The final value is also optional, and I will describe it below. Steps 2 through 6 must be correct. If you don’t know your NetID and password, contact the OIT Help Center and they will help you with it.
   1. Server Name: Webadmin.
   2. Connect using: SFTP.
   3. SFTP address: webadmin.oit.umass.edu
   4. Username: [your NetID].
   5. Password: [your password].
   6. Root Directory: public_html.
   7. The final field is Web URL. What Dreamweaver automatically fills in here is invariably incorrect when connecting to Webadmin. It is not essential in most cases. You don’t have to correct it, but if you care to, the correct value is http://people.umass.edu/[your NetID]
   8. Once you have filled in Numbers 2-6 above, you can click on the Test button to see if your are correctly connecting to Webadmin. If you get an error, check very closely the details of the information you have entered above. It’s easy to miss a comma instead of a period, for example.
   9. Finally, hit Save, to save your settings, and close the dialog box.
6. Hit Save, to save your Site settings, and close the dialog. This brings you back to the main Dreamweaver window. To the right, among the panels of settings, is the Files tab, which lists the files in your site. This is circled in the screenshot:

   

    

7. Now you are ready to:
   1. Download any files you may have previously posted on your site, make changes to them and upload them agin, to update your site.
   2. Create new HTML files, and/or a whole new site, using Dreamweaver.

All of the management of the files is done via the Files Tab, circled in the photo above, and seen up close in this photo:

• Click on Local View to see the files on your computer.
• Click on Remote Server to see the files on your sever.
• Click on the Up arrow to copy selected local files to the server.
• Click on the Down arrow to copy selected remote files to your computer.
• Click on a file to select it.
• Double-click a Local file to edit it in Dreamweaver.