Filed under: Macworld, Software
Using iWeb to post to servers other than .Mac
I spent
some time grilling some Apple employees about using iWeb with non-.Mac
servers and I have some good news. It is possible. It isn't pretty, but it is possible.iWeb allows you to save your files to a local folder, or directly to .Mac. It has no built in FTP capabilities so it can't connect to a FTP server an upload files to your webserver, but you can upload the files that it saves on your computer yourself. Folder actions and some Applescript magic can do wonders, but I think Apple should have baked FTP support in the product.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
tdungan said 6:47PM on 1-10-2006
The way I understand it though (based on the QT video on Apple's site), certain features may only be available through .Mac. Like the new Tiger-inspired slideshow. I obviously can't confirm this, but it sounds understandable.
I guess this will aggravate those windows converts out there using Frontpage and the like. I understand Apple's reasoning behind the tie-in, but it doesn't help things. Maybe they should offer a free new user account for the first year.
I wonder if they've improved Pages html export feature or enabled a workflow to port layouts to iWeb.... that would be nice.
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Patrick said 6:54PM on 1-10-2006
iWeb looks promising. If third-party blogging integration is what you're looking for, checkout performancing's firefox plugin that allows you to blog directly from your browser.
(i do not work for performancing)
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Clay Hummer said 7:04PM on 1-10-2006
I'm just wondering why I need a G4/G5/Intel processor to use iLife. I have been using iLife '05 since its release (sans iDVD), and it seems to work fine on my (apparently antiquated) iBook G3. I'd really like to ramp up my use of my .Mac account, but don't want to spend another $1,000 to do that.
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Brady J. Frey said 7:28PM on 1-10-2006
Interesting, it looks cool -- but if that thing spits out trash code like frontpage or aperture for that matter, I'm going to be an unhappy camper. Or maybe not, it'll give me more business.
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Matt Hoult said 7:37PM on 1-10-2006
This is great news. I was discussing just this issue on NewsVine a few minutes ago and was directed here. I think this is a wonderful tip, however, for iWeb to truly spread it's wings with the public and demonstrate it's ability to bring down all other web publishers it really needs to have built in and "Applefied" FTP abilities.
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John Henry Brown said 8:45PM on 1-10-2006
Apple's .mac has it's own web publishing called HomePage. Apple did not update HomePage and probably never will again. Instead they took the upgrade that HomePage should have received and stuffed it into iLife. Which means that .mac is now incomplete. $100.00 per year isn't enough for Apple, In order to get all of the features of .mac they want me to pay for iLife every year as well. What a swindle. Why don't they just start renting iLife software by the month as well? Maybe next year.
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rishabh said 9:29PM on 1-10-2006
Its such a great app, too bad there isn't an ftp built in. Damn !!!
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Jonesy said 10:21PM on 1-10-2006
I'm more interested in the code it spits out - I guess it's too much to expect it to be CSS2 standards compliant?
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Andrei said 12:14AM on 1-11-2006
And I am also wondering if one could do iWeb-like publishing without iWeb itself... Will the content go to homepage.mac.com/username or an alternate location, like iweb.mac.com/username?
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Ryan said 1:15AM on 1-11-2006
I have Panic's Transmit to do the FTPing so hopefully it lets me spit everything out to a local folder in iWeb. I ordered it so I'll let you know when I get it.
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shirster said 7:42AM on 1-11-2006
Just watching Steve introduces it @ the keynote makes me wanna order a copy already ! 3 things are holding me back from clicking on that "BUY NOW" button tho -
1. Are non-.mac members allowed to post comments on blogs generated by iWeb? Or, is the commenting function included at all?
2. How about the codes that it generates? I hope it's not gonna be as crappy as FrontPage...
3. Can the templates be easily modified using CSS?
I would really, really like to switch to iWeb....
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Small Paul said 9:21AM on 1-11-2006
iWeb appears to be a bridge between iLife and .Mac, and and decidedly lacking in functionality without both of them.
I'm surprised there isn't a bundle deal with iLife and .Mac, really - or that iWeb doesn't come as part of .Mac.
But ultimately, I wonder who the market is for .Mac. Do mom and dad really want to share a bunch of stuff with people on the internet, and pay annually for the privilege? Apple had better hope they do, because anyone with a bit of web savvy can do most of .Mac much cheaper via GMail et al.
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Steve said 11:46AM on 1-11-2006
FTP? What is this the 70's? How about ssh/scp? I realize FTP is still useful and still in heavy use. But the extra authentication options you get with ssh/scp make a strong case (read ssh-agent public/private key authentication). And while we're at it, why not webdav? It's good enough for .mac...
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PodFoodShow said 1:42PM on 1-11-2006
iWeb does work outside of dotMac, just save to folder and FTP it to your server. iWeb does inform you of the items that won't work i.e. counter and enhanced slideshow. I didn't try the blog page to see if that's a problem, I'll check and post the results.
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Billy Butlin said 1:47PM on 1-11-2006
Whats FTP? But seriously, theres long been a need for a drag'n'drop desktop web creator that hides all that programming bollocks. Ive been a designer for 10 years and I wont touch website design (professionaly) until there is software that "just works" without having to go and learn some alien coding language. For me its like trying to design by writing postscript code. Iweb is not the app im looking yet for but its a step forward.
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Amos said 3:41PM on 1-11-2006
FTP needs to go away. SFTP is a more secure choice. I feel that WebDAV over SSL is the best for this sort of thing though since not only is your password and data not being sent in the clear (also true with SFTP), you can simply mount the location as a drive. You can also easily set a seperate password for WebDAV access which, depending on how careful you are, is useful for keeping your shell access seperate from your web folder access.
If your host/server supports WebDAV, then just mount that location through the finder and save the output directly to your site.
If you run Apache as your web server, mod_dav is very easy to set up. SSL is also fairly easy to set up, especially if you use CACert.org (and their docs) to grab a free web cert for your domain.
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kimmo said 12:35AM on 1-13-2006
Perhaps rsync could be used to synchronize local and remote web pages. This way only the differences in the files would automatically be transferred to the server. I don't know how iWeb is transferring or synchronizing files with .Mac but if it had an internal FTP functionality it should also provide a way to upload only the modified files or items to the server. I thik that othervice small changes to larger projects would have too much overhead.
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MacMove said 3:24PM on 1-16-2006
It's worth checking out RapidWeaver; far superior product to iWeb.
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Jim said 11:54AM on 1-18-2006
I love iweb and the whole Ilife pack. There is a little lack on the webpage if your not a .mac subscriber. I redid my webpage in 5 minuets and played with some of the features. They say the hit counter wont work with out dot mac. My slide show worked on my windows machine. Feel free to check my site keep in mind I was just testing some stuff so it will change but I give iWeb an a+ for easy and looks good.
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