Migrating your FrontPage website

Prepare for your migration to Dreamweaver by making an archive copy of your FrontPage website. Then create a Dreamweaver site that uses a copy of your FrontPage-created website for its local web store.

When you first open a website created with FrontPages you may notice folders beginning with "_vti_" that you did not see in FrontPage. These folders are used to hold information used by FrontPage to manage your website. If you are working on a copy and do not plan on using FrontPage to edit the pages in that copy, it is safe to delete those folders (see Figure 36).

Figure 36. Deleting the _vti_* folders only if you do not plan to open the website in FrontPage again

Dreamweaver has _notes folders that you will be able to see if you look at your local store through Windows Explorer. Dreamweaver allows you to store design notes in these folders by right-clicking on any file and selecting "Design Notes" to view the notes for that file.

Using DWTs

When Dynamic Web Templates were introduced in FrontPage 2003, Microsoft used template syntax compatible with earlier versions of Dreamweaver Web Templates (Dreamweaver 4 template syntax). Since Dreamweaver 8's more advanced template engine is backward-compatible, you can open and edit the DWTs you created in FrontPage in Dreamweaver 8 (see Figure 37) and still have the attached pages update.

Figure 37. FrontPage Dynamic Web Template opened in Dreamweaver 8 and accepted as a Dreamweaver Web Template

You may need to make minor changes in your web structure for your FrontPage DWTs to update properly in Dreamweaver. In FrontPage, your Dynamic Web Templates can be located anywhere within your website. Dreamweaver requires that all templates be in a folder named Templates or templates. If your DWT is not located in a folder named templates, right-click in the Files panel and create a new folder with that name (see Figure 38). Then drag your DWT to it. Dreamweaver will update all the references to the template, and future changes you make in Dreamweaver will update properly. That is all you need to do to make your FrontPage DWTs work in Dreamweaver 8.

Figure 38. DWTs required to be in a folder named "templates" or "Templates"

You can create or edit templates in Dreamweaver in three ways:

• Insert > Template Objects
• Modify > Templates
• Right-click menu in Design View.

Dreamweaver Web Templates are more feature-rich than the first-generation Dynamic Web Templates in FrontPage. You can nest templates, which eliminates the need for separate menu includes; you can also have optional and repeating editable regions for specific areas of your site that will still inherit changes made to a single parent template. Please see the Help file index topic "Templates" for more information on how to use Dreamweaver Web Templates.

Publishing your site

When you set up your site definition, you entered the FTP destination, user ID, and password. As a result, you do not need to enter them again when you publish. To publish individual files, you can use the up arrow in the Site Management section of the Files panel. To publish your entire site or to see both your remote and local site at the same time, use the expanded FTP workspace, which is launched using the icon on the far right (see Figure 39).

Figure 39. Launching the full FTP workspace using the window icon

To connect to your remote website, use the connect icon (see Figure 40)

Figure 40. Connecting before you can synchronize or publish files

Once you are connected, you can drag and drop between your local and remote site, use the up or down arrow, or click the synchronize button to publish (see Figure 41).

Figure 41. Dreamweaver's simple-to-use FTP client

While there are differences between the programs, your FrontPage knowledge and skills will help you make the transition to Dreamweaver.

The next section lists shortcuts to some of the ways that Dreamweaver and FrontPage allow you to perform certain common functions, such as write HTML, style pages, add links and images, and manage your site.

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