In Dreamweaver, you must create and define a site to contain the pages you create, be it one single page or a set of 100 pages. This local site on your hard drive will mirror the actual pages on the Web. The local site is where you do all of your developing, testing and editing.

All of your files for your site will be contained in one main folder, the root folder on your hard drive. You will create subfolders and the elements of your site from within Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver uses the local root folder to locate all links specified as site-root relative URL's. When you create your pages, the graphics and links are relative to that folder. When you are ready to publish your site, all you have to do is copy your root folder and all of its files to the remote server. The images and links should all work (assuming they work locally, on your computer). Rearranging and/or editing folders outside of Dreamweaver will result in broken links. As you work within Dreamweaver it automatically updates and changes the referencing pathways.

Do not create or save any elements within the Dreamweaver application folder. If you ever need to reinstall Dreamweaver, your work would be lost. Also strongly suggest that you back up the hard drive root folder with a disk copy at the end of a work session. Computers have been known to crash. You need that back up copy to regenerate your site if that sad, awful, frustrating thing happens. Floppies work for awhile, but sites get pretty big pretty fast. Zip disks (zip drives) and zip files (winzip) are options until your site is up an running on the server. Once it's on the server, you have a back up at least to the time of your last local changes.

You may have done some of the following steps, just follow the steps and start at the point you are now:

1. Create a new folder on your computer and give it the name of your site (can be first initial and last name: mrodney).
2. Choose Site from the tool bar and select New Site from the menu.
   
   
   
   
3. Refer to the diagram below: Type the name of your site in the Site Name
   text box. The name that you type in can be the same as the name of your
   root folder. Please continue to refer to the diagram below to complete steps 4 through 9.
   
   
   
   
4. Click the folder icon next to the Local Root Folder text box to locate the folder on your hard drive where the files for this site are stored.
5. Locate your Root Folder on your computer and click Select.
6. In the Site Definition box, select Refresh Local File List Automatically. This enables Dreamweaver to to update the site list whenever you add a new file to the folder.
7. You can enter the HSTA site next to the HTTP Address.
8. Select Enable Cache and click OK. You will usually want to select this option in that by creating a local cache, you improve the speed of linking and site-management tasks. In a very large site, however, recreating the cache can slow operations down.
9. Click OK in the "The initial site cache will be created." message box. This will bring up your Site.
   
   
   
   
10. You are now ready to set up the ftp and upload your files to the HSTA server - Click here for instructions.