Contribute Article

Design and Deploy Websites with Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 and Contribute 3: Training from the Source

Note: The book excerpt linked to below is from Lesson Seven of Design and Deploy Websites with Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 and Contribute 3: Training from the Source by Joseph Lowery, published by Macromedia Press.

Macromedia Contribute and templates were made for each other—literally. A basic concept of Contribute—to allow nontechnical users to supply content to a page—works best when templates are used. With templates, content is added to specific areas; whereas other page elements, such as navigation and overall design, are protected from modification. Moreover, advanced template features such as optional regions come into their own only when applied in Contribute.

In this lesson, you will:

• Create a basic template for Contribute use
• Define editable regions for headings and body text
• Convert a legacy template to work better with Contribute
• Structure a nested template for multiple departments
• Make a new page from a template in Contribute
• Apply a Dreamweaver template to a Contribute page

Each lesson in this book builds upon the last. By Lesson Seven, readers have created both a local Dreamweaver site and a related Contribute site called Design_Deploy. To work through this book excerpt, first expand the compressed ZIP folder and copy the files to your system. Next, create a local Dreamweaver site and copy all the files from the Lesson07 folder into the local site root. Then create a site on a Web server (either a localhost development system or on a remote system) and make that your remote site in the Dreamweaver site definition dialog box. In Contribute, establish a connection to the remote site and make yourself the administrator. Once you've worked through the chapter, compare your completed Dreamweaver files to those in the FinalFilesLesson07 folder.

Requirements

To complete this tutorial you will need to install the following software and files:

Dreamweaver MX 2004

• Try
• Buy

Contribute 3

• Try
• Buy

Download the complete lesson:

Tutorials and sample files:

• contribute_template_samples.zip (ZIP, 37K)

Buy the book:

• Design and Deploy Websites with Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 and Contribute 3: Training from the Source

Pages 89–116 excerpted from Design and Deploy Web Sites with Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 and Contribute 3. Copyright © 2005. Used with the permission of Pearson Education, Inc. and Macromedia Press.

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