Dreamweaver CS6: The Missing Manual

Exporting a Template-Based Site

The good news about Dreamweaver’s sophisticated templating features is that it lets you build complex web pages that are easy to create and update. The not-so-good news is that you need some behind-the-scenes code to achieve this ease of use. Dreamweaver’s template features rely on HTML comment tags to identify editable, optional, and repeating page regions, as well as nested templates and editable tag attributes (see the box titled Under the Hood of Templates).

Although this code is only for Dreamweaver’s use and has no effect on how a web browser displays the page, it does increase, by a small amount, the size of your pages. That’s probably why Dreamweaver includes a feature that lets you export an entire site into a new folder on your computer without any template markup code—to give you the leanest HTML possible. The following steps show you how to do that.

Note

While it’s certainly possible to perform this file-slimming procedure, truth be told, it’s not really necessary—the code Dreamweaver adds is minimal, so it won’t have much effect on the download speed of your site.

1. Choose Modify→Templates→Export Without Markup.

   Dreamweaver uses the currently active site, so make sure you select the site you want to export in the Files panel. The Export Site Without Template Markup window appears, which offers just three options.

2. Click the Browse button, and then select a destination folder for the exported site.

   Select a folder other than the current local site ...