Adding New Pages to Your Site with Dreamweaver

If your site is using Dreamweaver templates, adding a new page is easy. If you're not sure if your site is using templates, read Is My Site Using Templates?

If you'd like your site updated to use Dreamweaver templates, e-mail web@wcas.northwestern.edu or visit the Contact Us page.

• Before You Begin
• Create a New Page (from a template)
• Fill in Page Information
  • About Document Titles
• Save!
  • Tips for File Names
• Link to Your New Page
  • Linking From the Content Region of an Existing Page
  • Adding the Link to Your Navigation Bar
• Upload Your Page
• Additional Help

Before You Begin

• You should be familiar with using Dreamweaver
• If your site isn't defined, read Define Your Site
• Make sure your site is set to local view

Create a New Page (from a template)

1. Under the File menu, choose New...
2. Make sure the Templates tab is selected
3. If you're managing multiple sites, make sure your site is selected
4. Select the section you want to create a new page in
5. Make sure Update page when template changes is checked
6. Click Create

Creating a new page from template

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Fill in Page Information

Sections outlined in blue are editable regions. Sections outside the blue are uneditable and are controlled by the template the page was based on.

1. Enter the page title in the Title region of the page (#1 pictured below)
2. Enter a shorter version of the title in the Breadcrumb region. In this example, if the title is "Does Russell's Set Contain Itself?" an abbreviated version might be "Russell's Paradox"
• The breadcrumb is displayed on the page and indicates where the user is in the site. This example is under the Math Department home page, in the about section
  
3. Enter a document title in the Title box (top of window). The document title should be in "reverse breadcrumb" form, with the page title first and the location of the page following it (see About Document Titles below)

Entering information in editable regions (steps 1-3)

About Document Titles

The document title (step 3 above) appears in several places:

• Top of the browser window
• Search results (Northwestern's search and external engines such as Google)
• Bookmarks/favorites menu

Good document titles:

• Start with the page title so users recognize the page in search results and bookmarks
• Include department information so users know which department a page belongs to (e.g., every site has a "Staff List")
• End with "WCAS, Northwestern University" so users on Google or other external search engines know the content is affiliated with WCAS and Northwestern

The above example's document title is "Russell's Paradox, About Us, Math Department, WCAS, Northwestern University"

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Save!

Before doing anything else, save your work (under the File menu, choose Save). Once you've saved, fill in the content area, save again and close your work, then link to your new page.

Tips for File Names

• Imagine reading the URL on the phone
• Avoid spaces and capital letters
• The shortest URL isn't always best
  • northwestern.edu/ofcs isn't as clear as northwestern.edu/offices
• Don't use numbers to replace words ("2" for "to" or "4" for "for")
• Avoid non-alphanumeric characters except period (.) and dash (-)
  • The underscore character (_) is easily confused with a space when text is underlined

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Link to Your New Page

Linking From the Content Region of an Existing Page

If multiple people or computers are used to maintain this site, you should download the page before you open it (highlight it and click Get/). See Downloading Files to Make Changes for more information.

1. Open the existing page that should link to the new page
2. Add new text, if necessary
3. Highlight the text that will link
4. In the properties window, click the folder icon next to the link field (pictured below)
• The properties window is usually at the top or bottom of your screen
• If you do not see the properties window, under the Window menu, choose Properties
5. Find and highlight your new page. Click Choose
6. Save and upload your changes (below)

Adding a link in the properties window (step 4)

Adding the Link to Your Navigation Bar

If multiple people or computers are used to maintain this site, you should download (Get/):

• Templates folder
• Library folder
• Folder of the section you added the link to

See Downloading Files for more information.

Navigation section

Opening the Navigation

1. In the Templates folder, open the template your new page is based on
2. The navigation section should be yellow (pictured right). This indicates it is a library item. Click on the navigation section to highlight it
   • If your navigation is not yellow, you're not using library items. Skip to Editing the Navigation (below)
3. In the properties window, click Open. This will open the library item that controls the navigation for this section

Opening a library item

Navigation library item

Editing the Navigation

1. The navigation links in your open library item will look different than in the template because they are outside the context of the surrounding styles (pictured right, compare to above)
2. Add a new line with the text for your link
3. Highlight the new text
4. In the properties window, click the folder icon next to the link field (pictured below)
   • The properties window is usually at the top or bottom of your screen
   • If you do not see the properties window, under the Window menu, choose Properties
5. Find and highlight your new page. Click Choose
6. Save your changes. Dreamweaver will ask if it should "Update library items in these files?" Click Update
7. Dreamweaver will update all the pages in that section to include the link in the navigation
8. Save and upload your page (below)

If you are using multiple templates to control that section, you will have to repeat this process for every template you want to add the link to

Adding a link in the properties window (step 4)

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Upload Your Page

1. Highlight the page you want to upload
2. Click the blue up arrow (Put/)
3. If Dreamweaver asks if you would like to "Put dependent files:"
   • If your new page contains images or other assets, answer Yes
   • Otherwise, if your new page only contains text/links, answer No

You will also need to upload pages linking to your new page:

• If you linked to your new page from the content region of an existing page, upload that page
• If you added a link to your new page in the navigation bar upload:
  • Templates folder
  • Library folder
  • Folder of the section you added the link to

Once your files are uploaded, visit the pages in your web browser to review the changes. You may need to hit refresh or reload on your browser.

See Uploading Files for more information

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Additional Help

For additional assistance, e-mail web@wcas.northwestern.edu or visit the Contact Us page.