In Dreamweaver the term “site” refers to a local or remote storage location for the documents that belong to a website. A Dreamweaver site provides a way to organize and manage all of your web documents, upload your site to a web server, track and maintain your links, and manage and share files. You should define a site to take full advantage of Dreamweaver features.
Note: To define a Dreamweaver site, you only need to set up a local folder. To transfer files to a web server or to develop web applications, you must also add information for a remote site and testing server.
A Dreamweaver site consists of as many as three parts, or folders, depending on your development environment and the type of website you are developing:
Local root folder stores the files you’re working on. Dreamweaver refers to this folder as your “local site.” This folder is typically on your local computer, but it can also be on a network server.
Remote folder stores your files for testing, production, collaboration, and so on. Dreamweaver refers to this folder as your “remote site” in the Files panel. Typically, your remote folder is on the computer where your web server is running. The remote folder holds the files that users access on the Internet. Together, the local and remote folders enable you to transfer files between your local hard disk and web server, making it easy to manage files in your Dreamweaver sites. You work on files in the local folder, and then publish them to the remote folder when you want other people to view them.
Testing server folder is the folder where Dreamweaver processes dynamic pages.
Understanding local and remote folder structure
When you want to use Dreamweaver to connect to a remote folder, you specify the remote folder in the Servers category of the Site Setup dialog box. The remote folder that you specify (also referred to as the “host directory”) should correspond to the local root folder of your Dreamweaver site. (The local root folder is the top-level folder of your Dreamweaver site.) Remote folders, like local folders, can have any title, but commonly, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) name the top-level remote folders for individual user accounts public_html, pub_html, or something similar. If you are in charge of your own remote server, and can name the remote folder anything you want, it is a good idea for your local root folder and remote folder to have the same name.
Note: The above example illustrates one local root folder on the local machine, and one top-level remote folder on the remote web server. If, however, you are maintaining a number of Dreamweaver sites on your local machine, you would need an equal number of remote folders on the remote server. In such a case the above example would not apply, and you would instead create different remote folders within the public_html folder, and then map them to their corresponding local root folders on your local machine.
When you first establish a remote connection, the remote folder on the web server is usually empty. Then, when you use Dreamweaver to upload all of the files in your local root folder, the remote folder populates with all of your web files. The directory structure of the remote folder and the local root folder should always be the same. (That is, there should always be a one-to-one correspondence between the files and folders in your local root folder, and the files and folders in your remote folder.) If the structure of the remote folder doesn’t match the structure of the local root folder.
Dreamweaver uploads files to the wrong place, where they might not be visible to site visitors. Additionally, image and link paths can easily break when folder and file structures are not in synch. The remote folder must exist before Dreamweaver can connect to it. If you don’t have a designated folder that acts as your remote folder on the web server, create one or ask your ISP’s server administrator to create one for you.
