Hello Janine,

I am almost all the way through your Dreamweaver videos on Kelby Training, and they are great. Thanks.

One thing I have not seen yet (and don’t see in the lesson titles I have left) is how to create a dropdown or flyout menu in Dreamweaver.

I have searched online and found a lot of conflicting information on how to do it. Since you are such a good instructor, I thought it would be great if you presented that technique somehow/somewhere. Thanks for any help you could give to the rest of us on that topic!

Thanks,

Doug

—–

Hi Doug,

Thank you so much for your kind words about my videos at KelbyTraining.com.

How to create and edit drop-down menus with Dreamweaver’s Spry feature is a topic I want to address, but I haven’t had a chance to get into those advanced features yet in my videos yet (there is just so much to cover when it comes to Web design, but I do hope to add some video lessons on these features in the future).

I do have a couple of written tutorials on the topic that may help you  – these URLs will take you right to them.

How to create a drop-down menus (or fly-out menus)  in Adobe Dreamweaver

Tips for editing a drop-down or fly-out menu in Dreamweaver

Two things to keep in mind.

First, these tutorials were done with Dreamweaver CS4, but the features did not change in version CS5 so they should work with either program.

Second, drop-down menus combine XHTML, CSS, and Javascript, which make them considerably more complex to work with than many of the other features in Dreamweaver, especially when it comes to making sure your pages look and work well in many different Web browsers.

The Spry features in Dreamweaver offer a great shortcut to creating Javascript, but they’re not perfect, and if you run into problems, they can be complex to troubleshoot (I tell you that not to scare you off, just to warn you). In general, if you keep the drop-downs at the top of the page, they seem to work better than if you try to integrate them in the middle of a page design. Also make sure that you don’t have any flash files that may overlap with the drop-downs or the menus will get lost behind the Flash file.

Finally, to make sure you drop-down menus work well across different computers and browsers, consider using the services in this tutorial on my site:

I sincerely hope that helps you and I wish you all the best with your Web designs,

Janine

Hi Janine,

You seem to be one of the most reputed experts on Dreamweaver that I have come across so I would very much appreciate your advice…just some suggestions on my next steps would be great.

I have done a couple of sites which I am pleased with but  I really want to take it to the next level and now want to be able to design  e-commerce sites and integrate a CMS into my CS3 Dreamweaver sites for  clients so I can develop a web design business for small businesses in my local area.  I have a potential client asking me for this right now so need to find out how to do this a.s.a.p. if possible! Any advice you could offer on my next steps, products you could recommend (software plus training manuals), would be great. In fact, do you have a product of your own that would help me?

Many thanks in advance for your advice

Lucy

Hi Lucy,

Thanks for the kind words about my book and congrats on building your own Web design business.

You’re wise to be thinking about developing more advanced skills so you can handle CMS and ecommerce, but you should know that things get a lot more complicated with these advanced of web site features, and the liability risks go way up as soon as you’re dealing with credit card processing.

Google Checkout is easy and works for many sites, but you’re right, if your client has lots of products or wants to do their own credit card processing you’ll need a more sophisticated service.

Here are some of the most popular ecommerce options I’ve found:

Magento – a very high end solution, lots of advanced features, but very complex to set up (they offer a 19-hour basic training program) and prices range from $3,000 to $12,000

Yahoo Store is used by big and small sites, it offers great features, but some restrictions, and  a monthly fee of $39

ZenCart and OSCommerce -  these open source shopping carts are free, and popular, but they require complex customization. To set these services up, you’ll need PHP programming skills as well as CSS and HTML, and you’ll need to do the integration with a backend transaction service, such as PayPal to make them work. You’ll also need to set up a secure server, which you can do buy purchasing an SSL Certificate through your service provider, but options differ, so make sure your hosting service has what you need before you get started.

As for CMS options, these days I don’t recommend that anyone create a custom CMS unless they’re working on a huge site like Amazon. Instead, start with WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal (the three most popular open source CMS options) You can customize these programs to create almost any kind of site and you’ll save yourself reinventing the wheel. There are lots of resources for all of these services, especially WordPress and Joomla.

That list of CMS and ecommerce options should get you pointed in the right direction, but here’s my best advice. I took a look at your first two sites and you’ve done a lovely job, but setting up a client with a full-featured ecommerce site is a LOT more complicated than what you’ve done so far.

Even with my experience, I prefer to hire a programmer to set up ecommerce features and help with CMS configuration. Most CMS and ecommerce tools are built with PHP or some other advanced programming language, which is much more complex than HTML and CSS to learn.

Even small web design firms are often run by at least two people – a designer and a programmer, because it’s incredibly rare for one person to have good design skills and master the advanced technical skills for a CMS or ecommerce.

Since it seems you have some design experience, I’d recommend you look around for a programmer who has already successfully done an ecommerce site, ask him/her what it would cost to just do that part of the job, add what you need to do the design and other development, and go to the client with the total for both your services.

With time, I’m sure you could master the more advanced skills if you want to, but setting up an ecommerce site yourself is not something I would recommend you take on while you’re still learning. Not only is it a lot to learn under pressure, but you can really get into trouble if you don’t set things up properly and the ecommerce system breaks, costing your client sales, or worse, compromises the credit card numbers or other personal data of customers because it’s not set up securely…

I sincerely hope that helps you and I wish you all the best with your new web design business.

Janine

Hello Janine,

I read your Dreamweaver book but didn’t find anything about adding a search engine to my website. Can you direct me to make this element in my website?

Sincerely
Hossein from Norway

Greetings Hossein,

Creating your own search feature in Dreamweaver is very complex and generally not worth the effort because there are services that you can use instead.

Google offers a search feature you can add to your Web site. You can learn more about it at www.google.com/sitesearch/

I just added the features offered at www.wibiya.com because I like the fact that the service combines Google’s search engine with a few social media features all in one.

Hope that helps and I wish you all the best,
Janine

Still want more? Visit the Dreamweaver Help Center at www.DigitalFamily.com/dreamweaver to find Dreamweaver tips, tricks, and tutorials.

Hi Janine,

Thank you for the interesting book. I am busy learning how to design a business website and I would like to collect info on the people ordering on my website. How would I do so, bearing in mind that I am a beginner to websites and computers in general?

Many thanks,
Shamen

Hi Shamen,

Thank you for buying my book. Collecting information on customers is not an easy thing for beginners to do on their own. My best advice is that you consider using an established service that has worked things out for you.

Here are two options you might consider:

1.    Business Catalyst – Adobe acquired this company and integrated their services into Dreamweaver. Customer Relationship Management is one of their strengths, but you may find that this is a somewhat complex solution for a beginner, and they do charge a monthly fee.

2.    Yahoo Store – This is one of the most popular eCommerce solutions. You can set up your online store through their service and take advantage of their wide range of options, but you will have to pay a monthly fee for their service.

I hope that helps and I wish you all the best,
Janine

Still want more? Visit the Dreamweaver Help Center at www.DigitalFamily.com/dreamweaver to find Dreamweaver tips, tricks, and tutorials.

Hi, Janine,

I am a registered user of Total Training and have been emulating your tutorial on Dreamweaver CS4 through Lesson Two, Chapter Eight. I have created all of the files and links as they were done in the tutorial, except that Index.html appears at the bottom of the Local Files list instead of at the top as you recommend. Can you please tell me how I can move the Index.html page to its proper location in the list?

Hi James,

Thanks for watching my videos. Click on the words Local Files at the top of the list. This will change the order, which should move the index page up until it looks like it does in my videos.

I hope that helps and I wish you all the best with your web designs,
Janine

Still want more? Visit the Dreamweaver Help Center at www.DigitalFamily.com/dreamweaver to find Dreamweaver tips, tricks, and tutorials.

Hi, Janine,

I purchased Web Sites For Dummies today and was impressed with how easy it should be to create my personal portfolio for my schooling. However, I have not been able to download Dreamweaver CS4. It seems all of the sites want to download CS5, which I hear is still full of bugs. Can you provide a link that will allow me to download a free trial of Dreamweaver CS4?

Thanks,
Doug

Hi Doug,

Thanks for buying my book. Dreamweaver CS5 is the latest version of Dreamweaver, and now that it’s out, Adobe is no longer offering free trials of the CS4 version. It’s common practice to discontinue the previous version when a company launches a new one.

But don’t let that stop you. I’ve been using version CS5 for some time now. Although every version has a bug here and there, over all I find CS5 to be a great program with a few nice additions and no bugs that make it worse or less usable than version CS4.

The templates I created for my Web Sites Do It Yourself For Dummies book will work with version CS5 just as they do with version CS4, so you should be able to follow along with the lessons in that book with either version.

I hope that helps and I wish you all the best with your Web design,
Janine

Still want more? Visit the Dreamweaver Help Center at www.DigitalFamily.com/dreamweaver to find Dreamweaver tips, tricks, and tutorials.

Hi Janine,

I am reading your new book Dreamweaver For Dummies and saw in your book that you discuss WordPress and CS5. I purchased CS5 to work with WordPress and have yet to successfully get it working with my various WordPress installations. I am not a real developer and would prefer to not create a local test environment but to work with Dreamweaver directly with the installation I have on a hosting account with GoDaddy.

It is close to working, but I get an error message about the connection to the database. The FTP access works properly. I can sync the files. Does this have anything with logging into the SQL database? Can you point me to some troubleshooting tips for the initial connection to WordPress and Dreamweaver? Everything I find, read, or watch makes it look so simple and nonproblematic. . .

Thanks
Dave

Hi Dave,

Thanks for buying my book. Dreamweaver CS5 does provide much better support for WordPress than any previous versions, but you will have to set up a local testing environment if you want WordPress files to work on your local computer the way they work on your server at GoDaddy.

That’s because WordPress generates web pages dynamically by pulling content out of a database and displaying it in a template/theme as it opens the page in a Web browser. Thus, you have to set up a database and web server on your computer if you want those pages to display on your computer. That’s not as hard as it may seem at first, but it is more complicated than simply installing Dreamweaver.

The good news for you is that you’re not alone in facing this challenge, so a couple of great services bundle all of the software you need (the Apache web server, MySQL database, PHP, etc.) into one nice package that you can download and install relatively easily on any desktop computer powerful enough to run Dreamweaver. My favorite for Windows is XAMPP www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html. If you use a Mac, a popular option is MAMP www.mamp.info/en/index.html.

Once you install this software and install WordPress (which you can download for free from WordPress.org), you’ll need to start the server and set up a database. You’ll find instructions for how to do this at http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress.

If all goes well, this entire process should take less than an hour, but it’s one of those things that can be a bit tricky to get right the first time. Fortunately, you only have to do it once and from then on, you’ll be all set up to work on your blog on your computer.

An alternative is to work on elements of your blog in Dreamweaver without setting up a local server. For example, you can edit just the CSS files on your local computer by copying them to your hard drive, editing them in Dreamweaver, and then uploading them to the server again. Similarly, you can compose posts in Dreamweaver and then copy and paste them into the editor online. But to get the full functionality of WordPress on your local computer, I’m afraid you’ll have to set up a local testing server.

I hope that helps and I wish you all the best with your WordPress blogs,
Janine

Still want more? Visit the Dreamweaver Help Center at www.DigitalFamily.com/dreamweaver to find Dreamweaver tips, tricks, and tutorials.

Hi Janine,

Hope you can answer this question. I am using Dreamweaver MX2004 and want to include an image as a background in page properties. I don’t want the image tiled and I think there is a way to do that by using CSS, but I sure can’t find it in the Help section.

Can you point me in the right direction? By the way, I think CS4 and CS5 are far more difficult to use for those of us who only occasionally build a web page.

Thanks in advance,
Pete

Hi Pete,

I understand your reluctance to upgrade to a more complex version of Dreamweaver, but you won’t find the options you’re looking for in MX2004. To add a background image that does not tile, you’ll need to use Cascading Style Sheets, and those features were not included in the Page Properties in MX2004.

You can create your own style sheets in that version if you learn CSS and can write the code yourself, but believe me, that’s a lot more complicated. If you upgrade, you’ll find that the Page Properties features in later versions of Dreamweaver make it easy to control how a background tiles and the program generates the necessary CSS code for you.

You’ll find many free tutorials on the CSS features in later versions of Dreamweaver on my site at www.DigitalFamily.com.

Hope that helps,
Janine

Hello Janine,

I have a couple of questions regarding instructions you gave on your recent training video thru Kelby Training.

First, I am on a Mac and would like to know what to name my web URL in the server setup. You indicate Localhost for Windows. Is it the same for Mac?

Second, is the setup the same for setting up a local server (Apache) to test and customize WordPress if WordPress is my blog link on my index page?

Thanks for any clarification you can give.

Kathleen

Hi Kathleen,

Thanks for watching my video. I went over that installation process rather quickly in that CS5 preview video. I plan to do a more comprehensive video on editing WordPress with Dreamweaver later this summer, but here are some answers to help you in the meantime.

1. On a Mac, I recommend you get the MAMP set of programs at http://www.mamp.info. And of course, that you also download and install WordPress.

2. As for the settings and address of your local testing server, follow the instructions from the MAMP site and you should find all you need about how to set up a Mac. Much of it does depend on what software you use and how you set it up on your computer.

3. If you have a site that is built in Dreamweaver and just links to a blog in WordPress from the front page, you can edit the blog just as you would if all you had was a blog, like I showed in that video. To make it all work well together, consider moving all of your Dreamweaver files into the root folder for your local testing server along with the WordPress files. That way you have it all in one place on your hard drive, running on your local server, in the same relative location that it all resides in on the server where you host your site and blog. (If you host your site and blog on different servers, it doesn’t matter if your WordPress files and your main site files are in the same folder on your computer because you’ll need the full URL to link from one to the other anyway).

I hope that helps and I wish you all the best with your site and your blog,
Janine

Still want more? Visit the Dreamweaver Help Center at www.DigitalFamily.com/dreamweaver to find Dreamweaver tips, tricks, and tutorials.

Hi Janine,

I have been reading one of your web design books and am interested in learning Dreamweaver but live in Cairns, Australia, where there is no training center available. First, is it possible to learn Dreamweaver (with no past training in web design) by using your videos? Second, if it IS possible, can it be delivered to Australia?

Thank you very much.

Alice

Hi Alice,

I’ve known many people who learned web design over the years. It’s a new and growing profession, so lots of people are starting in now. I’ve been doing this for 15 years (which makes me the age of a grandparent in Internet time) and I’ve learned that some of the important things to consider when you start to learn web design are (1) what kind of site do you want to create? and (2) what is your background (what programs do you already know)?

If you give me a few more details about what you want to do, I can help you assess the best approach and which of my books or videos (as well as other resources) might help you achieve your goals.

In the meantime, you can find many free tutorials and other resources at www.DigitalFamily.com.

Thanks,
Janine