How to Unlock a Template in Dreamweaver 8

Include menus and sidebars in your site's template.

The Dreamweaver 8 Web development software uses templates to streamline and speed up the process of creating a website. A Dreamweaver template contains any Web page elements that you want to use on every page of the site; this commonly includes a header, background image and any sidebars or columns. Once you've created a template for your website, you only need to add the page-specific content when you create a new page, rather than creating the entire page from scratch. Before you can add new content to a template, however, you must unlock the regions that you want to alter.

Instructions

1. Launch Dreamweaver 8. Click "File," then "Open." Double-click the template file that you want to unlock.

2. Click inside the first template region that you want to unlock. If the template region contains text, click and drag it to select it.

3. Right-click the selected region. Hover the mouse cursor over "Templates" in the menu that pops up.

4. Click "New Editable Region." Type a name for the region -- "Content," for example -- into the "Name" field in the window that pops up.

5. Click "OK." Repeat the process for any other regions in the template that you want to unlock.

References

• Lehigh University: Creating Templates
• Adobe: Dreamweaver 8 Documentation (ZIP)
• Lynda Design: Editable and Locked Regions