RUNNING AWAY: Terms Worth Knowing
Throughout the tutorial on these pages (and, indeed, throughout Dreamweaver), you’ll come across some frequently heard terms at lunch breaks. from web designers:
Root folder. The first rule of thumb for managing a website is that each part of the site you are working on (web page documents (HTML), images, sound files, etc.) should be in a single master folder on your hard drive. This is the root folder of your website, and since it’s on your computer, it’s called the local root folder, even though Dreamweaver calls it the local site folder. The root folder (also known as the site) is the main, external, and main folder. Think of it as the edge of the known universe for that site; nothing exists outside the root. Of course, to help organize your site’s files, you can include any number of subfolders within that parent folder.
When you’re done creating a site on your computer, you’ll move the files to your local root folder. on a web server for the world to see. You call the folder where you put your site files on the server the remote root folder.
Local Site. The usual routine for creating web pages is as follows: you create the page on your own computer, using a program like Dreamweaver, and then upload it to a computer on the Internet called a web server, where your work is available to the masses. . Therefore, it is very common for a website to exist in two places at the same time, one copy on your computer and the other on the server.
The copy on your computer is called a local site or a web site. development. . Think of the local site as a kind of arena, where you build your site, test it, and modify it. Because the local site isn’t on a web server, the public can’t see it, and you can freely edit and add to it without affecting the pages your visitors see (they’re on the remote site, after all).
Remote site. When you add or update a file, you move it from your local site to the remote site. The remote, or live, site is a mirror image of your local site. Because you create the remote site by uploading your local site, the folder on your web server has the same structure as the folder on your local site and contains the same files. Only fully functional, polished pages go online to the remote site; save half-finished, typo-filled drafts for your local site. Chapter 17 explains how to use Dreamweaver’s FTP features to define and work with a remote site.
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