Creating Templates In Adobe Dreamweaver
Dreamweaver templates are one of the program’s most powerful features. Templates allow you to control and update the appearance of an entire site. They are one of the features covered in detail on our Dreamweaver training courses. This article looks at how to set up, apply and modify templates. Templates facilitate site management by allowing you to modify and update several pages at once. A template is a web document (HTML, ASP, ASP.NET, etc. ) which contains a combination of locked elements and editable regions. When creating a new document, if you opt to base it on a template, the page will inherit all of the elements which the template contains. You individualise the page by modifying the content of the editable areas. If you later modify the template, all of the pages which are based on it can be automatically updated.
Templates can be created from scratch or you can take an existing document and convert it into a template. To create a template from scratch
1. Choose New from the File menu. This displays the New Document window.
2. In the first column of the New Document window, choose the New Template option.
3. In the second column, specify the type of template you want ((HTML, ASP, ASP.NET, etc. ).
4. In the third column, optionally choose one of Dreamweaver’s preset CSS layouts or click None to start with a blank page.
5. If you choose one of the CSS layout, in the forth column, you will need to specify whether the necessary code is placed in the head of the document, in a new CSS file or an existing one.
6. Finally, click Create to generate your new template.
When you create your first template in any site, Dreamweaver creates a special Templates folder which it stores in the root folder of the site. All templates are automatically stored in this folder. You can also take a regular HTML document and convert it into a template.
1. Open the document which you wish to convert into a template.
2. From the File menu, choose Save As Template.
3. Enter a name for the new template and click Save.
Unless you specify otherwise, all of the elements that you place on a template will be locked. They will appear on each page based on the template but will not be editable. To create the locked regions of a template
1. In the templates folder, double-click the name of the template you wish to edit.
2. Create the elements which you wish to appear on every page.
3. All of these elements will remain automatically locked and unchangeable on all pages based on the template.
4. If you save the changes you have made to the template at this point, Dreamweaver will remind you that you have not yet created any editable regions. Click OK.
The author is a trainer and developer with Macresource Computer Training, a UK IT training company offering Adobe Dreamweaver Classes in London and throughout the UK.
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Tagged with: Cascading Style Sheets • computer software • Computers • computers and the internet • CSS • Dreamweaver training • HTML • web design • web development
Filed under: Computers
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