Site Management in GoLive
Back to Basics: Create, Manage, and Carry Your Site with You
The true power in maintaining a website lies within your program’s site management capabilities. GoLive has some unique features based around site management, most notably the ability to fix and update links inside of media files such as SWF (Flash), QuickTime, and PDF—without even opening (or even owning) Acrobat or Flash.
The second feature is that a GoLive site is portable! When you set up your website project, you can copy it to a hard drive, convert it to a Version Cue project, or even put it on your iPod, and all of the Web settings travel with it. This means you can work on your site from any device on any computer running Adobe GoLive.
To get started, you’ll need to set up a site. We’ll show you two ways to do this: one by creating a new site from scratch and another by converting an existing site into a GoLive site.
Creating a New Site
STEP 1 Create New Site
To make a new site in GoLive CS2, choose File>New (in GoLive CS, choose File>New Site). You’ll see a brand-new New dialog in CS2. Choose Site in the left column, Create Site in the middle column, and then Blank Site under the Site Creation Wizard section. Click the Next button.
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STEP 2 Name Your Site
In the Specifying a Site Name and Location section of the New dialog, give your site a name. This will be the portable folder GoLive creates that will hold all of your website files. Then, choose a destination for this folder (I chose my desktop). Click the Next button again.
STEP 3 Version Control and Publish Server
GoLive supports a number of version control systems, so if you’re running a system such as Version Cue, CVS, or other, choose Use Version Control. For this tutorial, choose Don’t Use Version Control, and click the Next button. The Publish Server Options is where you can enter your Web hosting information. Most times you’ll connect through FTP, but ask your server administrator if you’re not sure. For now, choose Specify Server Later, and then click the Finish button.
STEP 4 Site Window
Now GoLive will create the necessary site files for you and open your site window. This site window gives you access to all aspects of your site, and it allows GoLive to manage your assets, check your links, and a host of other things. You’ll also notice a new folder on your desktop called “My New Website” (or whatever you named your site). This folder contains all of the items created by GoLive.
STEP 5 Your Website Folder
This folder contains everything you need to maintain your website. Copy this to a portable drive and take it wherever you want. First, let’s take a look at the contents of this new folder. You’ll see three files starting with your site name and ending respectively in “Backup.site,” “.site,” and “.site.cache,” and three folders. To open your GoLive site window, you only need to open the file ending in “.site” (in this case, My New Website.site). The folder “web-content” contains only those files that will be uploaded to your Web server. The folder “web-settings” contains all of the settings for you site (making it portable).
STEP 6 The Site Window
The site window is a representation of the files in the My New Website folder. The web-content folder is represented in the left column of the site window. These files are the only files that will be uploaded to your Web server. The web-data folder contains a series of folders to help you organize your source assets. You’ll see folders for Templates, SmartObjects, Components, InDesignPackages, etc. These are represented in the right column under the Extras tab in the site window. You can create additional folders in here as well, maybe for Word documents or EPS files.
STEP 7 Accessing Site Settings
The web-settings folder contains a series of XML documents that tell GoLive about specific ways you would like to work with this particular site. To access the site settings, simply Control-click (PC: Right-click) in the site window and choose Settings in the contextual menu. Another aspect of GoLive that sets it apart from other Web-authoring tools is its ability to have separate settings for each site—even if you have them open at the same time!
STEP 8 Site Specific Settings
There are a host of settings available for your site, including whether GoLive writes JavaScripts into each page or uses a common external file, how it handles URL encoding, restrictions on how files are named, and connection information about your hosting company to name a few. When you see a Site Specific Settings option at the top of a category, this means GoLive will adhere to these settings only when working on this particular site. Each site can have its own settings.
STEP 9 Web Content
The web-content folder has two files: index.html (your homepage) and a CSS folder with a basic.css (cascading style sheet) file. This will get you started with a homepage and a linked external style sheet. One of the powers of site management is if you change a filename in GoLive’s site window, GoLive will update all necessary files so you won’t have broken links, etc. Rename the style sheet from “basic.css” to “stylesheet.css” by selecting the file and clicking on the name. Once you hit Enter, GoLive will bring up a dialog showing all files in your site that need to be updated.
Converting an Existing Website
STEP 1 Locate Your Web Files
Because HTML files are just ASCII (text-only) files, you can edit the files individually with any Web editor, including GoLive (there’s really no such thing as a FrontPage, GoLive, or Dreamweaver HTML file). If you’d like the benefits of GoLive’s site management capabilities, you can create a new site from existing website files. Locate the folder that contains your Web files. The existing website in this example has a few HTML files, a PDF, a SWF, a CSS, and a JavaScript file.
STEP 2 Create a New Site
Start by choosing File>New in GoLive CS 2 (in GoLive CS, choose File>New Site). When the New dialog appears, select Site from the left column, Create Site from the middle column, and lastly, select Site from Existing Content in the Site Creation Wizard section. Click the Next button.
STEP 3 Where is Your Existing Site?
There are three options for creating a site from existing website files. If you have access to a Web server that hosts a site, you can download it directly from that server via FTP. You can also create a site from an existing Version Cue project. In this case, we’re going to choose the first option, which creates a site From a Local Folder of Existing Files. Click the Next button again.
STEP 4 Select Your Site Files
Click the Browse button and locate the folder that contains your website. If your homepage is named “index” or “default” or “home,” GoLive will assign that page as the homepage. If you’d like to specify another file, click the Browse button under the Home Page of New Site area in the New dialog. Click Next. Now choose a place on your hard drive for GoLive to create your site. This will contain the six items listed in Step 5 of the first tutorial.
STEP 5 Site Management Engaged!
GoLive will create a site window for you representing all of your site assets. GoLive can now begin its site management. In the site I’ve chosen, GoLive is warning me of some broken links. Two of the three broken links aren’t in HTML files: one is in a SWF (Flash) movie file and one in a PDF file. Open the In & Out Links palette, select the PDF file, and point-and-shoot the broken link to the correct file, and viola! fixed—without even opening Acrobat! You can fix links inside of SWF, QuickTime, and SMIL documents without ever leaving GoLive.
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