When you create a document in a word processor, you can embed media such as images or movies directly into it. No matter how much you embed, you still end up with a single document. But that's not now HTML works. An HTML document is plain text, and that's it. If you want images or other media to show up on your site, you'll need to put them on the same server (or in the same folder, for our purposes) and reference the external media from the HTML.

Therefore, it's important to make sure all your HTML documents and media files live together under a single folder (or in sub-folders of a parent "site" folder). It's also a good idea to create a parallel "source" folder for files and documents you use to create your site, but that aren't actually part of the site (for example, uncompressed images and video, Word documents, etc.) Before you begin, please take time to create a "site" folder on your desktop, into which you'll place all of the files that make up your page or site.

For more on this topic, please have a quick look at the first section of our Dreamweaver tutorial, titled "Getting Ready" then return here.

Before getting to work, set up a logical structure for your site, as well as a place to keep original source materials related to the site. Don't put non-web-ready media (such as uncompressed video, Word docs, etc.) into your site folder!