Creating a site with the Site Wizard
Use Namo WebEditor’s Site Wizard to create a ready-to-customize Web site in just seconds, using your choice of structural template and visual theme. The wizard generates a complete local siteA managed collection of documents, folders, and resource files on the local file system that you intend to publish as a Web site., including HTML documents, predesigned graphics, navigation bars, and a complete site tree. Once you finish the wizard, all you need to do is fill in the content placeholders on each page with your own text, replace the placeholder images with your own images, and then publish your site to the Web.
When (and when not) to use the Site Wizard
You should consider using the Site Wizard any time you need to get a basic site up and running on the Web with the minimum investment of time and effort. You might be a novice Web author who wants to quickly create a place to share information and images with family and friends, or a small business owner with no Web authoring experience who needs to “hang a shingle” in cyberspace as soon as possible. Since the wizard takes care of design, layout, and site structure for you, you can focus on content and get the job done faster.
While the Site Wizard is a great tool for building a Web site quickly and easily, it has various limitations that you should consider before deciding to use it. If any of the following conditions applies, you’ll probably be better off building a site from scratch:
- You need to build a large and/or complex site. The site templates used by the wizard contain from 7 to 16 pages. Although you can add as many pages as you want later, the simple structure of the wizard’s templates may not easily support large numbers of pages. Rather than radically modifying the structure of a wizard-generated site, it probably makes more sense to build your own site structure from the ground up.
- You need precise control over page layout. Pages created by the Site Wizard use table-based layouts that cannot be modified within the wizard and may be difficult to modify afterwards.
- Your site needs to have a unique graphic design. Although the Site Wizard lets you choose from 200 visual themes suitable for a variety of purposes, no predesigned theme can substitute for a truly unique visual design. If you already have, or plan to create, your own graphic design elements to use on your site, it can be easier to start the site from scratch rather than replacing a theme’s built-in graphics.
Using the Site Wizard
To launch the Site Wizard: on the Shortcut Bar, click Site Wizard.
Step 1: Template
Choose a site template from the list on the left. The site template determines the mix of pages that will initially make up the site, as well as the relationships among them. The template’s site treeThe explicitly defined logical structure (hierarchy) of a site, on which dynamic navigation bars are based. is shown in the preview area. You can edit the structure of the new site by moving nodes in the site tree and using the buttons below it.
Click Next to proceed to the next step.
Step 2: Theme
Choose a visual theme from the list on the left. Your choice of theme will determine the visual style of your site. Themes include both text styles and graphical elements, such as buttons, banners, and backgrounds. To preview the site with the selected theme applied, click Site Preview. Click OK to return to the Site Wizard.
Click Next to proceed to the next step.
Step 3: Information
Fill in the boxes with the requested information: a title for your new site, your name, your e-mail address, and your copyright notice. The site title and author name will not appear anywhere except in the Site Manager, but the e-mail address and copyright notice will appear on every page.
In the Save site in box, enter the path of the folder in which you want to store the new local site. (Click Browse to browse for a folder or to create a new one.)
Click Next to proceed to the next step.
Step 4: Publishing
If you have already defined the remote site to which you intend to publish the new local site, select it in the box on the left. Otherwise, you can click New to define a remote site now, or just ignore this step and define a remote site later.
Click Finish to exit the Site Wizard.
The wizard will take a moment to generate the new local site, and then the site will be opened in the Site Manager.
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Creating a local site with the Site Wizard