Creating and Editing Dreamweaver Templates

How to use Dreamweaver Templates

You can create templates in Dreamweaver for sites you create and manage exclusively in Dreamweaver.

It's a lot easier to learn to create a site completely in Dreamweaver and you'll have more design control. For small galleries, portfolios, and other small sites (less than 50 pages), Dreamweaver is a great choice.

But even if you're creating a site with only 5 pages, using Templates can save you a lot of time.

By working with Dreamweaver templates, you can set or adjust just about any aspect of a site’s design or functionality, including a header, logo, navigation bar, or sidebar. Whatever you include in a Dreamweaver template you can then apply to any new page that’s based on the template, which automatically applies settings you want to appear throughout your site.

Moreover, if you want to adjust the overall settings in your site, you can make those updates once in the template, update your pages, and voilá -- all pages based on the template are updated automatically.

But not all templates are created equally. Although they all share those basic characteristics, many different kinds of templates are in use on the Web today.

Creating .dwt Dreamweaver Templates

Dreamweaver templates (extension .dwt) offer many advantages without requiring advanced programming skills. When you create Dreamweaver templates with the .dwt extension, you can use XHTML and CSS to create static Web sites that include many of the high-end features found on dynamic sites, such as the ability to create new pages quickly and to update every page in your site with the click of a button.

Although you can use Dreamweaver to create templates that use advanced programming like PHP or Java, the .dwt Dreamweaver template is a much simpler option that is ideal for small to medium-sized Web sites.

You can choose from many different kinds of templates to create Web sites; and you can find many places on the Web where you can buy them or even download them for free. At its simplest, a template is a ready-made page design, usually created in a way that makes it easy to add your own text and images. Some templates are customizable so that you can change design elements, such as colors, images, or fonts.

Keep in mind that many different kinds of templates are available, and templates designed for a program like WordPress or Flash won’t work in Dreamweaver using the instructions in this chapter.

When Dreamweaver templates are best

• Templates are definitely the way to go when you’re creating a number of pages that share the same characteristics, such as the same background color, navigation elements, or logo. I recommend that you use a template anytime you create a site with more than a few pages. For example, you might create a template that includes your logo, a row of links at the top and bottom of each page, and styles for the text colors and fonts. After you create a template with all these features, you can use it as the basis for all the other pages in your site. This approach enables you to quickly and easily create a series of pages that share the same navigation, logo, and so on. If you ever decide to change one of these elements, such as your logo, you can change it once in the template and automatically update all the pages created from the template in your site.
  
• If you want to use different design elements in different sections, you can even create more than one template for a site. For example, if you're creating a Web site for a bed-and-breakfast inn, you might create one template for all the pages where you want to show off the rooms in the inn and another for a collection of pages that features great places to hike in the area.
  When creating multiple templates for a Web site, you may benefit from a nested template, a template whose design and editable regions are based on another template.
  For example, you can create a main template for elements that appear on every page across an entire site, such as a navigation bar. Then for secondary templates, start with the main template and add nested templates that have design variations for a section (or sections) of a site.
  
• Templates are valuable when you’re working with a team of people with varying skill levels. For example, say you’re building a site for a pet store and want to let the employees update their own pet stories without messing up the page design. The fact that templates have locked regions can protect the most important elements of a page, making it easy for sales staff to add new information without accidentally breaking navigation elements or other consistent features.
  

The most powerful aspect of Dreamweaver's template feature is the capability to make global changes to every page created from a template. Even if you’re working alone on a site, this aspect of templates can save hours (or even days) of time as the site grows and changes over time.

Watch a series of video lessons on Templates by Janine Warner on the Layers Magazine Web site.

Learn more about different types of templates in Dreamweaver

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