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.

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

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

I’m trying to add a Flash file to a template page, but I keep getting the error message “Making this change would alter a region that is locked by a template or translator. The change will be discarded.”

Do you know what I’m doing wrong?

Thanks,

Kate,

You’re not doing anything wrong. This is a common error in templates, and there is a fix that will take care of your problem.

Here’s a somewhat technical explanation of the problem with your template pages, followed by detailed instructions for correcting it. In addition to making it possible to add Flash files to pages created with templates, this fix will enable you to edit the title of your pages and to add AJAX, CSS, and Behaviors to pages created from templates.

The errors for all of these problems are caused because of a missing editable region in the header tag area at the top of the page (more on what that means below).

There are two ways to create templates in Dreamweaver. You can create a new template (.dwt file) directly, or you can create an HTML page and then later save the page as a template. When you create a new .dwt file from scratch in Dreamweaver, the head area of the template is automatically set up as an editable region.

Here’s what caused your problem and why it doesn’t always happen in Dreamweaver. When you turn an existing HTML page into a template (using Save As to change the file to the .dwt format instead of .html), Dreamweaver should make the head area editable — it does that when you create a new template, but not when you save an existing page as a template. This problem can be hard to find because the head region of a page is not visible in the design area, but it’s very important.

If you’re using Dreamweaver CS3, 8, or a previous version, you’ll need to make the head area of the template an editable region manually, and you’ll have to do a little code work to fix it. (Don’t worry, I’ve included the code below so you can just copy and paste it.)

Note: If you are using Dreamweaver CS4 (the newest version), this problem was fixed in most versions. That said, if you’re having this problem and you’re using CS4, the following solution will work for you, too.

To manually add an editable region to the head section of a template so you can insert Flash and other files into your pages, follow these steps:

1. Open the .dwt file and choose Split or Code View so you can see the code behind the page.

2. Find the Head section of the page — it should be toward the top of the page in the HTML code and should look something like this:

<head>
<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=utf-8″ />
<title>Untitled Document</title>
</head>

Note: Your code may be longer and include other details, such as a real document title instead of Untitled Document, but you want to identify everything between the <head> and </head> tags before you fix it.

3. Dreamweaver creates editable regions in pages by adding a little code that looks like this: <!– TemplateBeginEditable name=”head” –> around whatever area you want to be able to edit. That code is not inserted when you create a template from an existing page, but you can copy and paste the following code into the top of your page to fix it.

4. The easiest thing to do is to replace the entire head area in the HTML code of the original .dwt template file. (Note: You can’t do this in an HTML page created from the template; you need to do it in the original .dwt file. The bonus is that if you’ve already created multiple pages from the template, this should fix all of the pages you created from the template at once.)

Here’s what you need to do:

First, select all the code at the top of your template contained between the <head> tag and the close </head> tag and Delete it.

Then copy the following code and paste it into your .dwt file in place of what you deleted (be very careful to paste this in exactly the same place where you cut the old <head> content. Note that you may want to preserve your title tag or other custom code by saving it and pasting it back into place very carefully. HTML is for the detail-oriented; one missing quote mark and it won’t work. . .

<head>
<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=utf-8″ />
<!– TemplateBeginEditable name=”doctitle” –>
<title>Untitled Document</title>
<!– TemplateEndEditable –>
<!– TemplateBeginEditable name=”head” –>
<!– TemplateEndEditable –>
</head>

5. Save the page to complete the changes. If you are prompted to apply those changes to pages created from the template, make sure to approve the changes.

6. Although you shouldn’t see any change in the main design area of the page (unless you made a mistake such as deleting the <body> tag), you should now be able to add Flash files and other elements to any page you’ve created from your template, because Dreamweaver will not have an editable region at the top of the code where it needs to save the scripts that make your Flash files, behaviors, and other interactive features work.

7. Once you’ve changed the head code area in the template, you should be able to open any of the pages created from the template and edit the title, insert Flash files, and anything else just as you would any other page . This will also make it possible to add Behaviors that use Javascript, Spry features, such as drop-down menus, and other elements that require adding code to the head region.

Hope that solves your problem, and I wish you all the best with your Web site!

– Janine

I wonder if you could help me with the following: I’m new to building Web sites (I started 3 days ago!) and the problem I have is small but annoying. When defining rules for links, I am able to change the “hover” color but not the link color. When previewed in IExplorer, the link color insists on being purple when I’ve defined it as blue. Can you tell me what I’m doing wrong?

Hope to hear from you.
Regards,
Justin

Hi, Justin,

I’m guessing you’re seeing the visited link color in IE because you’ve already “visited” those links.

There are four color settings for links and you need to change all four. And keep in mind that you can use the same color for both active and visited links if you don’t want the color to appear to change after someone has visited the page.

On my website, you’ll find a tutorial on how to use CSS to create styles for links formatted in an Unordered List, which is a popular way to create navigation bars. Follow this link to the tutorial, where you’ll find more details about how to define styles for each of the four link states.

Best regards,
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.

Thanks for all your great work teaching Dreamweaver! I’m looking for the simplest way to develop a sitewide search engine in which the user types into a blank field and sitewide search results appear. Can this be done through any Spry widgets inside Dreamweaver?

Thanks,

Kendra

Hi Kendra,

One of the easiest ways to add a search feature to a web site is to use Google’s search tools. You can learn about their service at this URL: http://www.google.com/sitesearch/

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.

I’m writing in part to tell you how much I’m enjoying your book, although I’m still very new to the concepts, the Dreamweaver program, and web-design in general.

I’m also asking if you might have any recommendations on sources for Dreamweaver templates. I’ve downloaded a some from various Web sites, and I’ve found that they are often not developed with the neophyte user in mind. Trying to modify them involves a fair amount of trying to figure out what the original designer/developer was doing.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Brian

Hi Brian,

One of the most confusing things about templates is that there are so many different kinds. For example, if you download a template designed for Flash, it won’t work in Dreamweaver. Similarly, many templates that are designed for blogs use PHP and require advanced programming knowledge and a web server.

Even if you do get a template designed using Dreamweaver’s template features, it can be difficult to know what and how to change things such as colors and fonts if you want to alter the template design.

Most good pages are designed with CSS these days, and if you learn CSS, you can probably edit most of the well-designed templates you can find on the web.

If you’re still new to design, you may appreciate a book I wrote called Web Sites  For Dummies — it’s part of the new Do It Yourself series it combines templates I created in Dreamweaver complete with instructions for how you can edit them in Dreamweaver.

When you buy the book, you get access to a special part of my Web site where you can download the templates.

You can find the book in the The Digital Family Bookstore.

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

I’ve watched your video (Total Training Dreamweaver CS3) and I’ve designed a new intranet site. This is my first time and I don’t know how to upload onto the server via local/network connection.

Please advise how I can go about.

Regards,
Freeman in
Papua New Guinea

Hi, Freeman,

You will need to ask your network administrator for this information as it depends on how your intranet system is set up. You will use the same site-management features but will select local/network connection and then enter your server information in the dialog.

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.

I’m going through your Dreamweaver CS4 session on Total Training and was looking for the spam-blocker app you mentioned in the chapter “Creating a New Website, Creating Links.” I think I’m blind – I can’t seem to find it. Could you please direct me to the software you were referring to? Thank you so much for your time!

Sincerely,
Andrew in Texas

Hi, Andrew,

Happy to help. The online tool is called Address Munger. You’ll find it and a few other useful online resources on my site at www.digitalfamily.com/dreamweaver/web-design-resources.html

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.

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