Settings for Defining a MyWeb Site in Dreamweaver CS4

Before you begin your Dreamweaver setup, you must first create an empty folder on your computer to hold all the elements of your website. On all the computers I use, I have created an empty folder on my local hard drive called "sottoMyWeb." Create this folder as the first step of setting up any site. Within this folder, it is a good idea to create another folder called Images, where you will store all your pictures and graphics. As your site grows, you will find that good organization is very important and all of your pages and associated images need to be together for things to work right.

Once your site folder and Images subfolder are created, start up the Dreamweaver application. To set up a new site in Dreamweaver, select the New Site option from the Site menu:

When you define your site, you will have to enter specific information for local storage and for the destination for uploading your local pages. In the case of the local computer, you will use a local folder that you created.

When I defined the local information, I browsed to my "sottoMyWeb" folder by clicking on the folder icon to the right of the box in order to fill in the "Local Root Folder" information. Here's the example from my laptop:

When you click on the Remote Info category (second on the list), you will need to provide much more information:

1. Set the Access setting to FTP.
   
2. For FTP Host enter: sftp.iowa.uiowa.edu
   
3. For Host Directory enter "myweb" followed by a forward slash followed by your HawkID: myweb/HawkID (e.g., myweb/sotto).
   
4. For Login, type the word IOWA followed by a back slash followed by your HawkID. In my case the Login box has iowa\sotto
   
5. In the Password box, type your HawkID password. If you are working on your own private/personal computer, check the Save box, so you don't have to type in your password ever time you upload a file.
   
6. Check Use Secure FTP (SFTP) and check Maintain synchronization information. Here is how mine looks:

Check the OK button to exit the Site Definition dialog.

The first thing you should do is create a main webpage saved as "index.htm" or "index.html". This is the name that a browser will automatically identify as the default main page for a site.