A Web site is a set of linked documents with shared attributes, such as related topics, a similar design, or a shared purpose.
You can create individual documents with Dreamweaver. But most Web designers create coherent sites, not merely collections of assorted unrelated documents. Dreamweaver is a site creation and management tool as well as a document creation and editing tool.
Creating a site from a collection of disparate premade documents is much more difficult than creating new documents from a common site design. For best results, design and plan your site before you create any of the pages that will populate it.
Note: If you can't wait to start creating documents immediately, you can try out some of Dreamweaver's document-creation tools and make a sample document. (See Creating and editing HTML documents.) But don't start serious document development until you've set up a site.
The first step in creating a Web site is planning. See About site planning. The next step is to set up the basic structure of the site; see Creating a local site. If you already have a site on a Web server and you want to begin using Dreamweaver to edit that site, see Editing and updating an existing site.
Once you've created the local site, you can populate it with documents. Documents are the pages users see when they visit a Web site. Documents can contain text and images, as well as more sophisticated content such as sound, animation, and links to other documents. As you create and work with documents, Dreamweaver automatically generates the underlying HTML. Use the HTML Source inspector to examine or edit the HTML source code.
You can create documents in Dreamweaver starting from either blank HTML pages or templates. You can also open and modify HTML documents created in other applications. See Creating and editing HTML documents.
Use the Page Properties dialog box to set up a document and define basic page elements. The page title identifies the document to the user. Background images, background colors, and text and link colors customize the page and distinguish regular text from hypertext. See Setting document properties.
Add text to documents by typing in the Document window or by pasting text from other sources. Add images, horizontal rules, and other objects by using the Object palette or commands on the Insert menu. See Adding text and inserting objects.
As you add content, you can select and modify objects directly in the Document window. In some cases, you may need to select markers that represent page elements that are not visible in the Document window. See Selecting elements in the Document window.
To help you manage your site, Dreamweaver displays the files in the site as either a list of files or a site map. You can use the site map to quickly create and view prototypes of your Web sites. See Working with site files and Viewing the site structure.
When you have some documents in your site, you can create links to connect them to other documents within your site, to documents on remote sites, or to e-mail addresses or scripts. See Creating links.
Finally, set up a remote site corresponding to your local site, and upload the local files to the remote site to make your pages visible to visitors. See Setting up a remote site.