Advanced settings

The folder in which you want to store images for your site. Enter the path to the folder, or click the folder icon to browse to the folder. Dreamweaver uses the path to the folder when you add images to documents.

Specifies the kind of links Dreamweaver creates when you create links to other assets or pages in your site. Dreamweaver can create two kinds of links: document-relative and site root-relative. For more information on the differences between the two, see Absolute, document-relative, and site root-relative paths.

By default, Dreamweaver creates document-relative links. If you change the default setting and select the Site Root option, make sure the correct Web URL for the site is entered in the Web URL text box (see below). Changing this setting does not convert the path of existing links; the setting will only apply to new links you create visually with Dreamweaver.

The URL of your website. Dreamweaver uses the Web URL to create site root-relative links, and to verify links when you use the link checker.

Site root-relative links are useful if you are uncertain about the final location in the directory structure of the page you’re working on, or if you think you might later relocate or reorganize files that contain links. Site root-relative links are links whose paths to other site assets are relative to the site root, not the document, so if you move the document at some point, the path to the assets remains correct.

For example, let’s say that you’ve specified http://www.mysite.com/mycoolsite (the remote server’s site root directory) as the Web URL, and that you also have an images folder in the mycoolsite directory on the remote server (http://www.mysite.com/mycoolsite/images). Let’s also say that your index.html file is in the mycoolsite directory.

When you create a site root-relative link from the index.html file to an image in the images directory, the link looks as follows:

<img src="/mycoolsite/images/image1.jpg" />

This is different from a document-relative link, which would simply be:

<img src="images/image1.jpg" />

The appendage of /mycoolsite/ to the image source links the image relative to the site root, not the document. Assuming the image stays in the image directory, the file path to the image (/mycoolsite/images/image1.jpg), will always be correct, even if you move the index.html file to another directory.

For more information, see Absolute, document-relative, and site root-relative paths.

With regard to link verification, the Web URL is necessary for determining whether a link is internal or external to the site. For example, if your web URL is http://www.mysite.com/mycoolsite, and the link checker finds a link with a URL of http://www.yoursite.com on your page, the checker determines that the latter link is an external link and reports it as such. Similarly, the link checker uses the Web URL to determine if links are internal to the site, and then checks to see if those internal links are broken.

Checks that the case of the links matches the case of the filenames when Dreamweaver checks links. This option is useful on UNIX systems where filenames are case-sensitive.

Indicates whether to create a local cache to improve the speed of link and site management tasks. If you do not select this option, Dreamweaver asks you if you want to create a cache again before it creates the site. It is a good idea to select this option because the Assets panel (in the Files panel group) only works if a cache is created.