Hi Janine,

I have been a graphics designer for the past 15 years or more (I quit counting), and I have never had the desire to do Web design or learn HTML until recently. The handwriting is on the wall and I want to put up my portfolio on the Web, etc. (for many reasons).

Getting to the point, I had talked with a friend who is very experienced in Web design and writing code. He knows what he is talking about and doesn’t make claims without explaining his reasoning. Recently, I contacted him to see if he would advise me about my site. I want to design my own site. My reason is, I don’t want a client of mine to ask me “who did your site” and my reply would be “he did” or “someone else.” I know NOTHING about HTML other than I get a knot in my stomach every time I think I need to learn it.

Here is the concern I have, and I’m not sure I believe him and this is why I am asking you. This person — I’ll call him an “HTML Purist” — said that Dreamweaver and all the Web site builder programs (he listed several but lumped them all into the same category) all BLOAT THE CODE. They work fine until something doesn’t work correctly, and then you are forced to re-do, or find the corrupted piece of code, fix it, etc. He said I was better off learning HTML because it would be easier compared to Dreamweaver. I don’t see it this way. If this were true, why would Dreamweaver be such great software to use? I don’t understand what he meant by saying “bloat the code.” He also said that these types of programs do not put in Meta tags and keywords in your pages as well as pure HTML code so the search engines have an easier time finding your site. He claims he has a way of building Web sites that search engines will find and list you on the first 10 finds most of the time. As I said before, I am a newbie about this and would love to hear some advice by an expert. I plan on wanting some Flash, cascading style sheets, possibly even some video, ALL that can be accomplished through DW.

I can learn software, and I suspect that clients will want me to build sites for them as well. I have turned down multiple requests over the years to my clients. I would like to be able to maintain any Web sites I build for my clients. My only concern is if something didn’t work correctly, I would be in an awkward position if I couldn’t provide the service of maintaining their sites.

I was going to post something like this on a forum, but I’m afraid all I would get in response is “what seems to be the problem.” I don’t know enough about it to even ask an intelligent question.

Please advise, and thanks for your honesty and time.

Ben

Hi Ben,

I understand your question well and have spoken with many graphics designers over the years who did not want to learn Web design, as well as to many ‘geeks’ who insisted that you have to learn HTML and be a purist to create a good Web site.

Here are a few thoughts to help you find the best path. First, I disagree with your friend about Dreamweaver. Because I am an instructor of the program, I’m sure you’re not surprised — but I’ll explain why.

Typing HTML is a tedious chore and one prone to typos and other errors that can ruin a good Web design. Dreamweaver is a carefully created program that is far better than most people at creating good code. And, on the rare occasion when I do need to fix something in the code, it is relatively easy to view the code in Dreamweaver (and even write code in Dreamweaver if you prefer to do it that way). Even then, you only have to learn a few things to create great pages in Dreamweaver, and as I explain in my videos, you can add Meta data and Alt text behind images and other things that are likely to help your search engine ranking. Dreamweaver is the best-selling program for Web design today for good reason. Your friend may prefer learning all those tedious tags and writing the code himself, but you are sure to be happier with Dreamweaver, which is not unlike InDesign in that it is a layout tool designed to help designers.

That said, there are many limitations in Web design that stem, not from the program you use, but from the fact that Web browsers do not always display Web pages the same way and there are many restrictions on how you can create a design that will look good on small and large monitors and all of the other variations on the Web. These things are likely to frustrate you, no matter how you create your pages, but rest assured, there are ways around some of the limitations and the power of the Web makes it all worthwhile.

You may be rolling your eyes at this point and still wishing you never had to learn HTML or anything like that, so here’s one last thing I will share with you. Although you can learn in my videos how to create a basic Web site, one that would surely serve you well for a portfolio of your work, to create sites for clients you’ll have to learn far more than HTML these days. The best Web sites today are created by a team of people, usually made up of a designer, an HTML/CSS coder, and then a hard core programmer who can write PHP or ASP.NET or some other advanced programming for database-driven dynamic sites.

If you’re a good designer, learning all that will not only be frustrating, it’s probably not worth your time, because again, the best sites are built by a team of people. Often the designer creates the look and feel of a site in Photoshop and then passes those designs on to the HTML person and/or programmer to develop the site. As a result, many graphics designers are now creating great Web page designs without having to learn all of the technical stuff.

So, my best advice today is that you learn the basics, including how to create at least a simple site in Dreamweaver so that you understand what is possible on the Web and where the limitations are. Then partner with an experienced Web programmer and work as a team — you create the design, they create the Web site from that design. It’s a common model and increasingly important because few people have the aptitude, or interest, in becoming both a great graphics designer and a programmer.

I hope that helps you find the best solution for your own site and for your clients.

All my best,
Janine

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

Hi Janine:

First of all I would like to say that your books Dreamweaver CS3 For Dummies and Web Sites For Dummies are excellent and have provided me with very useful information.

I am new at using Dreamweaver CS3 and on my first time creating a Web site. I’m attempting to build a Web site for my church and have some initial design questions. I’m using the fixed two-column/header/footer predesigned sample in DW and my question is how do you adjust the height of the banner area? I’m finding that the space is too small and most Web sites seem to have a larger space.

What height do you recommend and how do I adjust the predesigned sample to accomplish this?

I’m doing this task on a volunteer basis and would like to get the Web site up and running soon. I’ve followed your planning instructions and I’m ready to go.

Thank you so much,
Margie

Hi Margie,

Thanks for the note. This tutorial on my site should walk you through the process of customizing many aspects of a CSS layout: http://digitalfamily.com/dreamweaver/css-tutorials/editing-CSS-layouts.html

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

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

Hello,

I purchased DW CS4 For Dummies and don’t see that on your Web site for getting a password. Is it available?

Best regards,
Michael

Hi Michael,

Some of my videos and books, such as Web Sites DIY For Dummies, come with templates and other files for use with the lessons in the book and require passwords to get to special related content.

Dreamweaver For Dummies is more of a reference guide and doesn’t require the kind of supportive material I keep in the Reader’s Corner, but you will find many more tutorials and other resources available for free on my site at www.Digitalfamily.com/dreamweaver and in my Dreamweaver FAQ.

Thanks,
Janine

Hi Janine,

I have another question for you.

In the process of creating our Web site, I created a number of layout designs as I created my own templates. As a result, I went through many iterations of pages, those that ‘worked’ for me, and ‘others,’ which did not. As time went by I placed these roughs in folders labeled ‘iterations,’ occasionally using them for reference purposes. My question for you is this: Can I now remove or delete these folders, which include active links, without either damaging or causing a load more work to correct? Yikes! What have I done, shot myself in the foot or what?

Thank you so much for your precious time, I hope to hear from you soon.

Jamie

Hi, Jamie,

You just need to make sure that none of the pages in the site that you want to publish link to pages in the iterations folder. If there are links from the iterations pages back, that’s no problem.

Here’s a quick way to test. Open the folder on your hard drive (not in Dreamweaver) and move that iterations folder onto your desktop or something. Then go test your site. If all the links work, you’re fine, if you find broken links, you know you need to fix them before you publish the site. Ultimately, you don’t want any of those iterations pages on your site at all, so you’re best removing them anyway.

You can do a quick test of all your links by choosing Site >> Check Links Sitewide. If you find several pages link to the same page that has been changed, you can fix them all at once this way.

Hope that helps,
Janine

Janine, you are so fine! Thank you so much, and then some!  Jamie

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

Dear Janine

We have successfully completed your online training with Total Training for web design using Dreamweaver which was GREAT! and we are now utilizing the training effectively in designing sites for our clients.

My colleague e-mailed you about a year ago regarding ecommerce and you recommended Zen Cart as a graphic designer’s choice for taking a base template that would be of sufficient adaptability to satisfy a designer’s need to have total design freedom but with all the background functionality in place. This has been a fantastic recommendation and we have been using it very successfully. THANK YOU!

We now have clients requesting Web sites that are mainly informational that, after handover, they would like to manage with a CMS. Do you have a similar recommendation like Zen Cart that we could utilize using Dreamweaver?

With kind regards
John

Hi John,

Delighted to know my training and recommendations have been so helpful. I’ve been pleased with the CMS features in WordPress (yes, it’s far more than just a blog program). For a more sophisticated CMS, consider Joomla, which I believe is already integrated with Zen Cart.

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

My links now seem to have a broken-lined rectangular box around them when you select a link. The line is the same colour as the link itself, but this was not there yesterday. Do you think I have a fault with the Dreamweaver application or is there another explanation?

Regards
John

PS It takes a bit of time to get your head around Dreamweaver CS3 Advanced but Janine is getting me there!!!

Hi John,

If the links are actually broken, you need to reset them in Dreamweaver to fix them and should check to make sure you’ve completed the Site Set Up process first.

If it’s just that they look different, you probably have a style for the ‘visited link’ that is different from the main link style. In HTML you can have up to four different styles for the four different states of links. The visited link style appears after you’ve clicked on a link, so your links will look one way the first time you view a page in a web browser, and then they will change to the visited-link style after you’ve clicked on them. That would explain why they look different today than yesterday.

To fix this, look for a style in the CSS Styles panel with the name a:visited. You can also choose Modify Page Properties and then click on the Links category to change the style. You can use the same color for all four settings or a different color for each, depending on whether or not you want your links to look different once a visitor has clicked on them.

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’m a Chinese teacher in France. Actually, I’m doing a project on how to make Chinese Learning easier, a quick method that I created to help foreigners learn to speak real mandarin.

Thanks to your Total Training DW course, I could start building my Web site step by step. I’m not flattering, but I must say you’re a very good teacher, with much patience that could be heard in your voice. Your language speed is quite suitable for us non-English speaking students.

As you said in DW CS4 Essential Training: “You don’t have to do backbends to set links.” So today, I’m trying to link with my teacher to get some help with the questions that I’ve googled for a long time without any ideal result.

My first question is how to make my Web site both in French and English?

The second one is how to make a Virtual Scene, like an office environment that appears in your Total Training DW CS3? Because I’m going to prepare an online course and I want to make it a bit stylish. But I just don’t know where to start and what software I should use.

If it won’t take too much of your time, could you please just let me know the working process and the software involved for getting it done?

I would be most grateful if you could send me your advice. I’ll be very happy to make your acquaintance.

Kind regards,
Mengnan

Hi Mengnan,

Thank you for your kind words about my videos. To create a site in more than one language, you essentially need to create a second version of the site and translate the text. Just treat the second version as a section of the first version and set the links to the pages in the second language as you would link to anything else. If you visit my www.jcwarner.com or www.artesianmedia.com sites, you’ll see that I’ve done this with my sites in English and Spanish.

As for creating the ‘virtual office’ scene, the professional video editors at Total Training did it in a program called After Effects, which is used for video editing. I create all of the Web sites and training in my videos, but they do the video editing, so I can’t help you with that part.

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.

Dear Janine,

I cannot tell you how much I appreciate your personal reply to my e-mail. All of the “manage site” issues have been resolved, but no matter what I do, I cannot see my Web site on Internet Explorer. I can’t imagine what hasn’t been resolved, because there seems to be nothing else to do.

I don’t know if it is a Dreamweaver issue or a host server issue.

A month (or so) ago I used a trial version of Expression and was able to upload my site with no difficulty. However, I spent a considerable amount of time taking a class in Dreamweaver and feel comfortable with the creation end of Web site design. Unfortunately, the class did not include any information on how to publish the Web site.

This has been a real learning experience for me. I am adept at using Publisher — and have created some pretty nice things for print (including that cookbook — I think I owe you one). However, it appears to be less burdensome to publish through a printer than the Internet.

While what I have created so far is fairly simple (plan to do much more later), it at least has up-to-date info on our Christmas programs. However, I haven’t made much progress — yet. It is now two weeks before Christmas Eve, and I have wasted — so far — three days this week with nothing to show for it. I promised that I would get all of this posted on the web this week but can’t figure out what else to do. I honestly appreciate your calm letter and your helpful technical support.

Thanks,
Jean

Hi Jean,

So sorry you’re having such a tough time trying to upload your site. Here are a few suggestions that may help you:

1. First let me reassure you a little: Getting the FTP settings right in Dreamweaver can be challenging, but you only have to do it once. After you get it set up, Dreamweaver should remember and you won’t have to go through this again (at least not until you change computers or servers).

2. The server settings are specific to your hosting company, so if you use 1and1, you will have to get their FTP information and that’s why the instructions in my book and on the Adobe site may be different.

3. FTP information for servers must be entered exactly the way your server is set up. That means you need to make sure you use the right case in all names, passwords, etc.

I looked over the instructions on the 1and1 site and they are for very old versions of Dreamweaver, so that may be part of why they are not working for you. I’ve attached a screenshot from Dreamweaver CS4 for your reference (if you are using a different version, things may look slightly different, but should work the same).

1. First, choose Site > Manage Sites in Dreamweaver to open the dialog.

2. Make sure you choose the Remote category on the left. There are really only a few pieces of data that matter in the remote settings, but they must be entered exactly.

3. From the Access drop-down list, choose FTP.

4. In the FTP host field, enter yourdomainname.com — nothing else, no spaces. Some web servers ask you to enter ftp.domainname.com, others just domain.com, still others use something else. This depends on your server, but from what I found at 1and1, you should enter just the domain.com, meaning you enter your domain name (no www’s or anything else like that).

5. The Host directory field is optional, but if you don’t enter a directory, you may need to open a folder after you log in to upload your files to the correct location. (See my notes on this below for more details once you get logged in.)

6. You must enter your login and password exactly; these are case-sensitive and any extra characters or typos will cause this not to work. Again, this is information specific to your account on your web server.

7. Important: On the 1and1 server, they specify that you need to check the box next to Use Passive FTP (this is just below your password field).

8. When you have finished all that, click on the Test button. If you’ve entered everything correctly, you’ll get a message that you connected. If not, keep playing with these settings until you can connect.

9. Here’s the link to the instructions I found on 1and1. Again, if you use a different version of Dreamweaver, things may look slightly different, but this is what they say should work.

http://faq.1and1.com/web_space__access/ftp_account/dreamweaver_guide/3.html

10. Keep testing until you get a connection. Once you do get it right, click OK to save your settings and then use the little connection button (it looks like a small blue electrical plug) at the top of the Files panel to connect to your server.

When you’re connected, here are a few tips about getting your files in the right place.

Note: To better see the folders on the server, click on the tiny icon at the far right top of the Files panel; it kind of looks like a box inside a box and when you roll your cursor over it, it says “Expand and show local and remote sites.”

When you click on this tiny icon, the program changes and you’ll see the Files panel split in two. The left side is what’s on your server; the right side is your local computer (unless you change this in preferences). If the left is blank, click on the Connect button (the one that looks like a plug) again to connect to the server. Note: To close the dual view and go back to the regular Dreamweaver workspace, click on the small box within a box icon again.

Keep in mind that FTP is just a matter of copying files from your computer to the server. That part is easy, but you need to make sure you copy them to the right place. When you open the Files panel, the left side shows the files and folders that are on the server and you can click on them to open folders there to see what’s inside. You need to copy your Web site into the right folder. Usually, that folder is called something like httpdocs, or web, or public, or something like that. Even if you get the FTP to work and you can log in, if you don’t copy your files into the right folder, you’ll never see them when you visit the site in a browser.

To copy your files to a specific folder on the server, click and drag each file from the right side (your local computer) to the left side and make sure you drag the file onto the folder you want to copy it into. (The folder will change color when you drag the file onto it, and after copying, you’ll see the file in the folder.)

Here’s a tip: Copy just your index.html file (that’s what you should name the first page of your site) to the folder you think is the right one. Then look with a web browser to see if it’s there. Once you get one file in the right place, copy the rest and you should be all set.

I truly hope this helps you get your site online and I wish you all the best with your web site.
Janine

Good afternoon Janine,

I am a new web designer and am practicing doing some web sites and trying to find a job in this new career. I live in Ontario, Canada and I am designing a photography site for my niece in High River, AB.

My question is: How can I show her some of the designs I create, say the homepage or how the navigation works?

She wanted the navigation as text, not buttons, which I finally figured out, using some CSS code from the Internet.

At the moment I do not have my own site, and I am looking into creating a portfolio, once I figure out how.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Steve

Hi, Steve,

When I want to show a client how a site looks as I’m building it, I usually set up it in a temporary address at one of my domains. For example, I have a site at DigitalFamily.com. If I had a client who sold cars, I might set up a test site at DigitalFamily.com/cars so my client could go to that address to see how the site looks while I’m working on it.

Once I’m finished with the site, I would move it to their domain name and whatever server they prefer.

Hope that helps,
Janine

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

Dear Janine,

Thank you for making the DVD Dreamweaver CS3 (Total Training) lessons on creating Web sites. I have found your instruction method to be clear and easy to understand. I have found one or two places where your lessons might have included more clarifying information but did not, yet know this could also have been just an example of my missing something. The point is, I have very much enjoyed working with you via DVD, and now want to FTP the 60-plus page site.

Some time ago I subscribed to WebAssist so as to gain access to their many extensions. I have not downloaded anything as of yet so that if I suddenly experience some kind of difficulty, I will not have to isolate the one from the other to further isolate/identify its cause. So far, all well and good. Are you still with me?

A couple of weeks ago, WebAssist made available an extension upgrade called Surveyor 1.0.5; perhaps you are familiar with it. I decided to give it a try, using a copy of my Web site, in case problems should arise. Unthinkingly, for a moment forgetting everything you had taught me, I simply dragged the entire site to my other dedicated partitioned 1-terabyte HD, on which I intended to test Surveyor. Perhaps you know where I am going with this?

Suddenly I have files searching for their images or graphics. And when I actually can view an image on, say, Firefox and then attempt to test the links, nothing works as before, even though they worked perfectly prior to my dragging the entire site’s Root Folder to another partition. When trying to view via browser, I sometimes have an image, sometimes not. The more I read the more fearful I become that I may further damage the site; so I ask you, what can I do to remedy my major fopah? Is there anything I can do, or have I completely screwed everything up? Can you please help me?

Thank you, Janine.
Jamie

Hi Jamie,

From what you’ve written, it appears that you’ve moved your main root folder for your site and Dreamweaver is having trouble keeping track of your links and image references.

You have a couple of options. You can move the folder back to exactly where it was before, without changing an folder names, and Dreamweaver should find it again.

If you want to leave it where it is, or don’t want to move it back exactly, you can use Dreamweaver Site Management features to reset the root folder (just follow the basic site setup features I cover at the beginning of almost every one of my video lessons).

Once Dreamweaver knows where the root folder is again, you should be back on track, and if any images or links were broken in the meantime, they should be pretty easy to fix (consider using Dreamweaver’s Link Checking options to make sure).

You may also benefit from understanding that you can have more than one copy of the same web site on your hard drive; you just have to treat them as different sites in Dreamweaver. That means you’ll need to keep each copy in its own folder and then go through the site setup process using Dreamweaver’s Site Management dialog for each site separately. You can name them something like site1 and site2 so you can keep track.

A good practice is making a backup copy for testing new features, especially features as complex as the ones you can get from Web Assist.

Sorry I don’t have much experience with Web Assist, but I hope this helps you with your Dreamweaver challenges.

I wish you all the best with your Web site,
Janine

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