What is a Dynamic Web Template?

So many acronyms… no wonder people think that “DWT” refers to Dreamweaver Template. Sure, DWT’s can be used in Dreamweaver. But they aren’t solely associated with this software application. Dynamic Web Templates (or DWT’s) can be used in other popular web editing tools such as, Adobe Dreamweaver, Microsoft Expression Web and even Microsoft FrontPage 2003.

The Purpose of Using DWT’s

There are a few reasons or benefits to using a DWT product. Let’s understand what a DWT in order to see how it might benefit the webmaster.

Base Foundation: DWT’s are created using an HTML web page — one which has already been created to contains all the necessary html code, cascading style sheet (css), design elements, and content areas for text, images, multimedia files, etc.

Creating the DWT: We use the HTML file as the base foundation and save it with the file extension “dwt”. For instance, if we have a home page layout called index.html, we might save it as “home.dwt”. Editing our new DWT file begins by isolating all the areas where the webmaster contribute their content  (i.e. text, images, etc.). We mark these areas using a special code which identifies them as “editable regions”. These regions are essentially placeholders which will appear as marked sections when the webmaster works in teh file. In fact, they will be the only areas accessible as the code and design elements become inaccessible after this step is applied.

Working with Dynamic Web Templates: where dynamic templates exist, the webmaster can create an html page and then apply a DWT and literally begin to “fill in the blanks”. The webmaster will not be distracted by code or any design elements as these are physically locked from their access.

A template may contain more than one DWT master file. For instance, some templates offer a variety of layouts and each layout would require a separate DWT master file. When the webmaster creates a new html page, they would simply decide which DWT to apply. They could even change their mind and apply a different template later. This is the real benefit to DWT’s is the scalability they provide. One more note – experienced webmasters may opt to access/edit the master DWT file(s).

In the case of Expression Web and FrontPage templates, master DWT files will likely also use Include Pages to minimize the need to edit repeating elements. Similarly, Dreamweaver templates will use Libraries in conjunction with their DWT templates. The use of DWT’s means that global site changes are much easier to execute and therefore, these templates are the most scalable option to consider when building in  these traditional web editing tools.