pre-built website businesses how to get into dreamweaver?

[itags_org]

Hello,

I just purchased a monthly  membership to a website that is selling "scripts". Pre-built website businesses  that I am able to download and edit as i like. I also recently dowloaded  dreamweaver and look forward to learning how to use it. I'm a novice with html,  web design, etc and know dreamweaver is pretty "intense". I tried to get these  files "php" and "css" into dreamweaver and I'm having difficulty. Is there some  easy way this is done that I'm not able to find in my books and online material?  thanks!

[pziecina]

Hi

Unfortunately without knowing what the 'pre-built' sites contain it will be difficult to say if they can be used 'as is' in dreamweaver.

Many of these pre-built sites contain templates and include files, and depending upon the type of template used, you may require a plug-in to use them in dreamweaver, the good new is that most of the common template systems such as 'smarty', do have dreamweaver extensions available.

The first thing to do is set up a testing server with a server side scripting language as required by the pre-built site. If it is a php/MySQL site then see this article for setting up a testing server -  http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/setting_up_php.html, if it is asp then try this one -  http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/setting_up_asp.html, should it be some other then please let me know.

Once you have your testing server of choice set-up, copy the files to a folder in the testing servers htdocs or www.root folder and define your site in the dreamweaver site definitions, to do this see -  http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/articles/first_dynamic_site_pt1.html, this article is for php but the steps required are the same.

Should your site use templates such a smarty, then a search of the web for smarty (replace this with your template name), dreamweaver extension, should find the dreamweaver extension you require, failing this try searching the dreamweaver extensions site at -  http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/exchange/index.cfm?event=productHome&exc=3&loc=en_us. There are also many tutorials and how-too's on the dreamweaver developers center pages at -  http://www.adobe.com/devnet/dreamweaver/?view=home, to help you get started with dreamweaver.

PZ