Benefits of Using Templates
Templates allow a Web designer to construct a site that can be flexible, easy to update, and provide consistency, and continuity between HTML pages. Templates can enhance productivity, allowing some members of the team to focus on the format of the pages, while other members of the team create new pages and revise the content without changing the formatted layout.
Designers can make changes to the overall design of the site quickly by revising the DWT (Dreamweaver template) files directly. The pages that are linked to the template files are automatically updated allowing for site-wide modifications in minutes.
Creating Templates Any HTML page may be saved as a template. Simply create a new page or open an existing one and make changes to the page properties, insert images, type text, generate layer and table layouts, and so forth. Once the design of your HTML page is complete, choose (File > Save as Template) to generate the DWT file. Dreamweaver creates a Templates folder for the template (DWT file) at the root level of the local site folder. |
Inserting an Editable or Repeating Region Editable template regions control which areas of a template-based page a user can edit. Before you insert an editable region, save the document you are working in as a template. You can place an editable region anywhere in your page. A repeating region is a section of a template that can be duplicated many times in a template-based page. Repeating regions enable you to control your page layout by repeating certain items, such as a catalog item and description layout, or a row for data such as a list of items. A repeating region is not necessarily an editable region. |
Applying a Template to an Existing Document
When you apply a template to a document which contains existing content, Dreamweaver attempts to match the existing content to a region in the template. If you are applying a revised version of one of your existing templates, the names are likely to match. If you apply a template to a document that hasn’t had a template applied to it, there are no editable regions to compare and a mismatch occurs. Dreamweaver tracks these mismatches so you can select which region or regions to move the current page’s content to, or you can delete the mismatched content. You can apply a template to an existing document using the Assets panel or from the Document window. You can undo a template application if necessary. |
Detaching Document From a Template
To make changes to the locked regions of a document based on a template, you must detach the document from the template. When the document is detached, the entire document becomes editable. You cannot convert a template file (.dwt) to a normal file by simply resaving the template file as an HTML (.html) file. Doing so does not delete the template code that appears throughout the document. If you want to convert a template file to a normal file, you can save the document as a normal HTML file, but must then manually delete all of the template code in Code view. |
