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University of Connecticut WebTools

Uploading Files

The most common approach for building websites is to create and edit pages on your local computer drive and then upload them to a web server. The University of Connecticut's Central Web Server provides hosting for University websites that belong to Schools, Colleges, and Divisions. Student organizations, faculty, staff, and graduate students may use the Homepages Web Server to host their individual pages. The UConn Health Center has a separate server to host websites for its doctors, researchers, and clinical services.

There are two common methods for uploading files. In this tutorial, you will learn how to set up a site in Adobe Dreamweaver so that you can build your site and upload it to the Central Web Server. You may also choose to connect to the server directly from your computer. Instructions for this method are located on an instructional page maintained by the Web Development Lab.

Note: UITS supports Adobe/Macromedia Dreamweaver. While there are many development tools available, we recommend Dreamweaver because it is widely used throughout the University and support is available if needed.

If you need to purchase Dreamweaver, please contact the Software Licensing Group (SLG) for information on University licenses and pricing.

Note: UConn Health Center faculty and staff currently use Sharepoint Designer as their development tool. For website and development support, please contact Sheryl Rosen at (860) 679-1769.

The following instructions are written for Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 and may differ based on the version of Dreamweaver you are using.

For instructions on uploading files using other versions of Dreamweaver or connecting to the server from your computer, visit UITS' WebDAV page.

Step-by-Step Instructions

To begin, create a folder on the local drive of your computer. This is known as your root folder or local site. Moving forward, you will edit your web files from this folder, then upload them to the web server where they will power your website.

Note: If you utilized the UConn template builder, the unzipped folder that you downloaded should serve as your root folder.

The identical folder that is stored on the web server is known as your remote folder. Many web developers maintain more than one copy of their remote folder on different servers. For example, you might keep a copy of the folder on a test server and another copy on the web server that hosts your live website.

For instructions on uploading content to your website, please visit UITS' page about connecting to the server.

You are now ready to setup your site in Dreamweaver:

  1. In Dreamweaver, select New Site from the Site menu.
  2. At the top of the window, select the Advanced tab.
    3. Dreamweaver Local Site Setup
  3. On the left side of the window, the Category should be set to Local Info.
  4. Insert a site name. For example, this website is WebTools in Dreamweaver.
  5. Click on the folder icon next to the Local Root Folder field. Navigate to the root folder on your computer and select the folder by clicking Choose.
    6. Local Root Folder
  6. Now change the Category on the left side of the window to Remote Info.
    7. Remote Info for WebDAV
  7. In the Access dropdown menu, select WebDAV.
  8. In most current versions of Dreamweaver, three fields will appear: URL, Login, and Password. In some older versions of Dreamweaver, these fields will appear in a secondary window after you click Settings.
  9. The URL is: https://web2.uconn.edu/mysite_source where mysite = your account name.
  10. The Login and Password are your NetID and password.
  11. Do not check Enable file check in and check out.
  12. Click OK. Your site is now setup. Changes can be made by accessing the Site menu and selecting Manage Sites.
  13. To view your local and remote files, select the Files window from the Window menu. From this window, you can select your site and its local view. You can open files from the root folder to edit.
  14. Individual files or entire folders can be placed in your remote folder on the web server by selecting the file(s) and clicking the upwards-facing arrow Put or Up Arrow which is labelled Put.
  15. You may also download files off of the server by using the Get function which is marked by the down arrow Get or Down Arrow. This method can be used to create a set of backup files for your website or grab copies of specific files. When pulling files off of the server, be careful not to mistakenly copy over existing files in your root folder.