About site designs

A site design is a working prototype of a site or site subtree. It is made up of HTML pages, and you can add content and links to the pages as part of the design process. When you complete the design, you can move it to a live site as is.

You keep track of site designs in a separate Design tab of the primary site window, and you create the designs in a separate site design window. Until you make a design live--that is, submit it--the files for the design stay in a Design subfolder of the site data folder.

A site design looks something like the navigational hierarchy of a site when it has its pending links spotlighted.

You use the same techniques for adding pages and pending links that you use to build up the navigational hierarchy of a site. The difference is that in a site design view you also treat the pages and link lines as strictly visual elements, repositioning the pages, bending and unbending the lines, and so on. In fact, you develop the design by drawing it in storyboard fashion as much as by specifying it logically.

You can submit a design after you have worked out its basic structure, using site windows to manage further site development. Alternatively, you can develop the individual pages of the design in the design view, making the submission only when the site is ready to publish. Site designs can be used for presentation purposes as well as submission, with the design view's drawing features used to make the presentation effective. Since a single site can have multiple designs, presentation designs are particularly useful when there are several possibilities for the structure of a site and one has to be chosen.

Designing Web Sites > About site designs