Member Avatar for ryderdm

Hi Everyone ...

I am a complete newbie when it come to dreamweaver, site design etc. I contracted a designer to create a template for a site I wanted to revamp. I have Dreamweaver 3 and what from I can tell he has created this template using CSS which I know 0 about.

What I'd like to know is what upgrade do I need to get so that I can learn and work within the CSS - my lastest template was one that I purchased in Dreamweaver but it used dwf so all I had to worry about was working within the center of the template and creating my content everything else copied over and I worked it well. Now, I have links that I need to link but they refer to a # etc and I have no clue how to work this.

If anyone could shed some light and tell me what I would need to do to upgrade and which one I should upgrade to that would be great! I currently have Dreamweaver 3 - I know, I know back in the stoneage I suppose but it worked for me and I didnt see a reason to change, now with advancements I guess I have to.

Thank you!

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by danielle_w

Dani AI

Generated

Quick, practical path forward for the template problem described by . is right that newer tools make edits easier, and is correct that many templates expose an editable content area. Below are safe, concrete steps to edit links and small style changes without needing a major software purchase—plus a few troubleshooting notes so a single edit does not break the whole site.

  1. Locate the CSS and template files. Open the page in a text view and look for the stylesheet link in the <head> (something like <link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css">). Edit that CSS file to change presentation; leave the template file alone unless you want the change site-wide.
  2. Fix placeholder links. href="#" is a common placeholder. Replace it with either a real page URL or a fragment id. Example replacements:
<a href="about.html">About</a>
<a href="#contact">Contact</a>
...
<div id="contact">Contact info here</div>

If the anchor is meant to trigger JavaScript, check whether an event handler is attached; removing href="#" without adding a proper handler can break navigation.

  1. Use your browser DevTools to experiment first. Right-click an element, Inspect, and change CSS rules live to see the effect. Once satisfied, copy the tested rule into the actual CSS file. A minimal override example:
/* add to the end of styles.css */
nav a { color: #0055aa; text-decoration: none; }
  1. Backup and test. Make a copy of the original template and CSS. If the navigation is part of the template (not the editable content region), edit the template file and then refresh all pages that depend on it. If unsure which file controls the nav, search the project for the nav markup or the CSS classes you see in DevTools.

Further reading: MDN’s short guides are concise and accurate for learning selectors, anchors, and DevTools: CSS first steps, HTML anchor element, and Browser developer tools.

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Member Avatar for binoj_daniel

The latest version if always better to be with the technology, Dreamweaver CS3 is the one you should go for. Focus on creating XHTML compatible templates and thats the standard now.

Member Avatar for danielle_w

Hi there,

Editing pages that use a DWT or CSS is very simliar if you dont want to change too much of the overall template. There should still be "Content Area" that you can edit, and a quick lesson in CSS (http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_intro.asp) will help you keep everything looking uniform. Key is just to keep everything simple, and make sure that when they give you the CSS and template is nice and clean to avoid formatting problems in the future

Hope this helps
Danielle

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