Editable Regions in Templates

A big benefit of working with templates is that you can specify editable and noneditable (locked) regions in your documents. In this way, you can create a template where your navigation menu, page signatures, and other standing items can be locked and are therefore noneditable.

When you create a new template, all areas of your document remain locked by default. Therefore, when you create a new template, the first thing you want to do after saving the template is to identify those areas or regions on your page that will be editable. To unlock a region in your template (make it editable), select/highlight the area you want to unlock and click the Editable Region icon on the templates toolbar.

In addition to marking a new editable region, you must also give the editable region a name. Dreamweaver will prompt you for this name after you click the Editable Region icon. When you are finished defining and naming your editable regions, simply save the template file and you are ready to being creating new files based on your template.

When you are working with a new document based on a template, the editable regions are outlined in blue and the name of the editable region is identified on a blue-highlighted tab in the upper left corner of the editable region. Any content provider with access to your site can create a new document from your template but will only be able to make editing changes within the editable regions. Attempts to click or drag your mouse across locked regions will be ignored by Dreamweaver.

Additionally, if you toggle into HTML code view while working with a templated file, you will notice you HTML code in the locked regions of your page is highlighted in yellow. These areas remain locked and inaccessible, even in code view.