Dreamweaver CS5: The Missing Manual

Building Pages Based on a Template

Building a template is only a prelude to the actual work of building your site. Once you finish your template, it’s time to produce pages.

To create a new document based on a template, choose File→New to open the New Document window (see Figure 20-14). Click the "Page from Template” button, and then, from the Site list, select the site you’re working on. All the templates for the selected site appear in the right-hand column. Select the template you wish to use, and then click Create.

Note

If you don’t want your new web page linked to a template (so that future changes to the template won’t affect the web page), turn off the "Update page when template changes” checkbox. The result is a new page that looks just like the template, but has no locked regions; you can edit the entire page. This is a useful technique to use when you want to create a new template starting with the general design and structure of an existing template. (Be aware that Dreamweaver remembers this choice the next time you create a new template-based page. In other words, future pages you create from a template will also be unlinked—unless you remember to turn the “Update page” box back on.)

A new web page document opens, based on the template, bearing a tab in the upper-right corner that identifies the underlying template name. Dreamweaver outlines any editable regions in blue; a small blue tab displays each region’s name (Figure 20-5).

Dreamweaver makes it obvious which areas of ...