Introduction to Sites
- Creating a New Site
- Importing a Site
- Site Templates
- The Site Window
- Troubleshooting
- Going Live
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
In this chapter
Creating a New Site
The best way to create your new Site is to use the Site Wizard. Unless you've disabled it with the Don't Show Again check box, GoLive presents you with the option to start a new Site when you launch the program.
If that option box doesn't appear, or if you want to manually launch the Site Wizard at any other time, simply go to the File menu and select New Site. Right away, you're into the Site Wizard, and are about to dip your first toe into the pool of GoLive site development.
The Site Wizard
The Site Wizard, shown in Figure 3.1, offers a variety of options to accommodate Workgroups and more advanced users as well, making it a useful tool for any level of expertise. Let's walk through the process step by step so that you can see for yourself how easily it sets up any site. We'll opt to take the Single User route since Workgroups will be covered in greater detail later in the book.
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Figure 3.1 The Site Wizard first presents you with the option to create a Single User or Workgroup site.
→ For more on Workgroups, see Chapter 26, "The Workgroup Server."
As the Site Wizard opens, select Single User and click Next. Your options when creating a New Site, shown in Figure 3.2, include beginning completely from scratch with a new Blank Site, Importing a Site either locally from your hard drive or remotely from a server, or choosing a Site Template from the Templates Folder with GoLive. We'll explore each of these options separately.
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Creating a Blank Site
Creating a blank site means that you're creating a brand new root directory for your site. Whenever you create a site, GoLive assembles a complete package with all the things you'll need for that site. The site folder automatically contains a generic home page called Index.html. The data folder contains empty subfolders for future elements of your site. The settings folder will hold specifications for your site. And the site document itself—identified by the site extension—opens to reveal the hierarchy of your site within a Site Window.
Figure 3.2 This next screen of the Site Wizard lets you choose the origin of your site's material: whether it's a new original site, or is being imported from an existing source.
→ For more detailed information about the Site Window, see "The Site Window" in Chapter 3, "Introduction to Sites."
To create a new blank Site, complete the following steps:
Choose Blank Site from within the Site Wizard.
To access the Site Wizard, select File, New Site from the menu, or press (Opt-Cmd-N) [Alt+Ctrl+N] on your keyboard. Establish yourself as either a Single or Workgroup User and choose Blank Site. Click Next or simply hit Enter/Return on your keyboard to proceed to the next step.
Name your Site. Type your site name into the space provided.
For our example, we'll be creating a Site for Rooftop Records, a fictional record shop; therefore our site will be called Rooftop, as in Figure 3.3. (For more information on file naming conventions and restrictions, see "File Naming," later in this chapter. )
Optionally, you may choose to create a single project folder here that contains all your site-related files, and will be named accordingly. For instance, if you name the site Mysite, the umbrella folder will be called Mysite Folder. Check the Create Project Folder box on this screen if you'd like to take advantage of this option.
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Figure 3.3 On this screen, you can give your new Site whatever name you choose. This name will not appear in the finished Web site; it's only a reference for how your GoLive files are named.
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Choose a location to store your site. Click Browse, navigate within your system until you reach the appropriate folder, and select it, as shown in Figure 3.4.
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Click Finish. As you can see in Figure 3.5, your new site opens automatically in a Site Window.
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Figure 3.4 Use this screen to tell GoLive where to put your files. If you're testing the Site from a local server, it's best to store the files inside the server folder so you can test them directly.
Figure 3.5 The finished Site Window shows all the components and folders that GoLive has created for your site.