One site I developed over the course of 14 years had 6 active templates. The site badly needed a new design and new code, but how could I update the templates and 300 pages of static web content without spending weeks of labor?
The answer came through experimentation with a two-step process in Dreamweaver.
But what do you do when the template itself was developed with outdated code and the site needs a complete design overhaul?
The first step in replacing an existing template is to make a copy of the outdated template and give it a new name. After you have created a new page design for the site’s new layout, save the new page as a template in Dreamweaver (choose, which will also exist on your new template by default.
You do not have to worry about those two, but you need to pay attention to the user created editable regions.
The chart below gives a graphic explanation of the difference between document-relative and site root-relative.
In the example below, the page has a graphic named inserted into it using alternate path choices.
This path sends the browser to look in the correct location for the file which will provide the page properties, layout, and graphics—all the content that exists only in the file.
This is why changes outside the editable regions of a page must be made directly to the file.
In the early days of web page development, using tables for page layout was standard operating procedure. Reliable, hierarchical navigation menu systems did not exist, so it was easier for a developer to create multiple templates for various sections of a website with tables for links.
For example, one template might cover category pages, while another would cover catalog pages.
It is very important to keep the file in the Templates folder where Dreamweaver creates it.
To avoid confusion, it is good practice NOT to save other elements of your site (image source files or HTML documents) inside the Templates folder. When a file is applied to an existing page or created new from a template, the following code is inserted in the source: To view the HTML source code that Dreamweaver generates, choose Window HTML.
Dreamweaver automatically generates a site root-relative path to the templates in the Templates folder, because it knows exactly where the template will be located, no matter what other file folders exist in the site structure.