WebSphere Application Server - IBM Redbooks

Important: Using Web Site Designer is not required for developing
applications in Studio Site Developer. The HTML/XHMTL wizard can also be
used to create Web pages (see 5.1.4, “HTML/XHTML wizard” on page 108).
The advantage of using Web Site Designer is in the layout of your application.
It may become difficult to remember every page and every link in your
application using traditional methods. Web Site Designer, on the other hand,
provides you with a high-level picture of your application.
A typical application development scenario using the Web Site Designer might go
through the following steps:
1. Create a Web project. Select a default page template to use for the Web
pages. For information about page templates, see 5.1.5, “Using Page
templates” on page 109. As you create Web pages, the default template will
be used.
2. Open the Web Site Configuration file. You will find this in the root directory of
the project. It is automatically created when you create the Web project. This
file is actually an XML file called .website-config that will contain Web site
design information as you build your Web site using the designer.
3. Begin designing your application by adding pages to the configuration. At this
stage, you are simply adding elements to the design that represent JSP and
HTML pages, and defining their relation to each other. For example, you could
start by creating a top page called index.html.
4. Add additional pages and place them in the design so that the application flow
is illustrated. For example, if index.html will have four menu options, you
should select the index.html box and add four new child pages (one per
option) to the flow.
5. Continue to visually lay out the application flow by creating design elements
that represent each HTML and JSP page in the application. You can move
elements around the diagram as you go to change the application flow.
6. When you are done, create a real page for each design element (you could
also create the Web pages as you go along).
As you build your Web site design, the information is stored in the .website-config
file so that navigation links and site maps can be generated automatically. This
means that when the structure of a site changes, for example, when a new page
is added, the navigation links are automatically regenerated to reflect the new
Web site structure.
94 IBM WebSphere Application Server - Express V5.0.2 Developer Handbook