How to transfer your iWeb site to a new
server
It sounds like ancient history, yet it is
just six years ago – exactly at Macworld Expo 2006 – when Apple presented what
most people called the essence of the brand’s iLife suite. iWeb, a web design
tool, got along with iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand and iDVD. As the digital
center’s newbie, iWeb played as a chain to connect all iLife apps into one
unit. With the help of Apple’s tools for network sharing – first Mac then
MobileMe – this ecosystem gave a fast and simple way to create websites which
were beautiful, sophisticated and associated with iLife apps such as text,
photo, album, video, music, blog and podcast. By several clicks and simple
configurations, MobileMe brought your iWeb site online.
Of course, MobileMe can do more than that. It
gave access based on private cloud with no ads sent to your email, contacts, online
storage and photo album, beside a way to share and back-up your assets. It was
a closed garden – maybe not Eden – but many Mac users have been with it for a
long time.
At present, both iWeb and MobileMe are being
shut down. MobileMe will have been ended on June 30th. However its users can
move to an iCloud (free, new and from Apple), which provides some attributes of
MobileMe. While iWeb is not going to end immediately, its death has already
been sentenced – Apple didn’t supply update and remove it from Mac App Store. Though,
this transitional period gave birth to a new beginning. The following instruction
guides you through steps required to update your iWeb site and host it with
some effective tools.
The
life after MobileMe
The transition of iWeb
With the fact that Apple’s web builder
was outdated, let’s carry out these steps to re-create your website at present.
It is sad but true. With the end of Apple’s
MobileMe online service, it’s time to not only move your website to a different
host but also get away from iWeb web builder completely. Every sight has warned
an end in the future because updates for Mac OS and iWeb are no longer
supplied.
During this transitional period, bear in
mind that changing a design tool may not be an emergency. You shouldn’t have to
make a thorough change at the moment. All you need to do, when MobileMe is
closed, is saving your website into a folder then moving it to a different
webhost.
However, it is time for checking other
options. There are many Mac website builders to pick – they can be either offline
software or online service. Finally, you have to choose one. Your choice will be
based on whether you still love your current website design or you prefer a
totally new one. We suggest you pursue a new one because website is always evolving.
Like good publications, website should be periodically re-designed to take
advantage of new technologies and enhance interest in visual and contextual
aspects.
Here are some basic steps for you to start.
Select
a new design tool
Your tool will be a native Mac app such as iWeb
or web-based one. Most native Mac apps all provide benefits (including designs
and features) familiar with OS X, local Time Machine back-ups and offline to
adjust website offline. You have to pay for hosting apps/services like you did
to MobileMe, Fortunately, your money that have been paid for MobileMe can be
spent for a new webhost.
Web-based site builders are often free and
they allow you to build and edit website with Flash-based tools in any newest browser.
This means although you cannot edit your sites on an iOS device you can still
watch them on iPhone/iPad in full-screen view or custom view which automatically
formats the content for mobile devices. However, web-based services cannot
compete with specific apps dedicated to WYSIWYG adjustment and integration with
iLife.
The most vital step in choosing a new
replacement for iWeb is to judge appearance and goal of the website. Does your
site either store blog posts full of texts or show photo gallery? Do you use any
templates from Apple or edit them too much? Answering these answers would help choosing
the right tool. Besides, the simpler a website get, the easier it is to be
built.
Common bloggers should consider RapidWeaver
of Realmac Software ($82, available at Mac App Store, www.realmacsoftware.com). The interface inspired by iLife
looks neat and robust. In addition, blog-building tools in Sandvox of Karelia
Software ($82, available at Mac App Store, www.karelia.com) may
not as fashionable but a variety of plugins for Twitter, Skype and IM will turn
your blog into a social communication center.
RapidWeaver
of Realmac Software
Sandvox
of Karelia Software
Web-based design tools like Jimdo (www.jimdo.com)
and Weebly (www.weebly.com) also provide powerful blogging
tools. Posterous Spaces (www.posterous.com),
which has recently been purchased by Twitter, does give tools creating free
microsites and an iPhone app helping you set up blogs quickly.
If you prefer media galleries on Mac, you
will find RapidWeaver and Snadvox very useful thanks to their integration with media
librabies of iLife. Jimbo’s Dropbox integration allows you to turn a folder
full of images in cloud into a photo gallery but in order to add videos into
your website, you have to first upload them to a service such as YouTube then add
them as HTML widget to your pages.
Designers finding way to escape from themes
and templates of iWeb will appreciate Tumult’s Hype ($52, available at Mac App
Store, tumultco.com). This user-friendly tool, for making interactive HTMl5
animation without coding, let you build own website from the very start. If
templates appear better fit, Weebly’s intuitive interface will help you change
the website’s design and features.
Free trial versions of these tools are all
available via download or web-based services and they are as free as registrations.
Choose
a new webhost
Once you have used MobileMe to host your
iWeb site until now, you need a new hosting package. Most packages cost less than
$60 per year and depend on storage and monthly bandwidth. If you choose a Mac
app for the new site, consider hosting service suggested by app developers. By
this way, people supporting your software and those providing hosting service
will easily get on well together.
For example, Karelia Software suggests A2
Hosting (www.a2hosting.com) for Sandvox websites.
Realmac Software recommends Little Oak (www.littleoak.com) for
RapidWeaver.
Web-based design tools provide free hosting
but include many prices depending on features. Weebly’s free package supplies unlimited
storage and bandwidth but uploading is limited with data under 5MB. Pro package
starts at $27.5 for 6 months and increases uploaded data’s limit to 100MB. Jimdo’s
free package contains 500MB storage and unlimited bandwidth. Besides, annual
package costs $90 and provides more storage starting at 5GB.
Replace
features of MobileMe
Moving from iWeb to a new design tool has
more meaning than just learning other ways to edit a website. Some handy iWeb
features that you could count on – especially protection for password, blog and
photo’s comments, blog searching and view counting – needed MobileMe hosting to
work. Luckily, you can receive most of these features plus even enhanced ones
by using similar opponents from your new design tool and host.
While Sandvox doesn’t offer password
protection at present, 10-dollar Lockdown (Loghound.com), a plugin of RapidWeaver,
can hide particular pages from public eyes. It requires website’s host use specific
software on its server; though a free trial lets you try before buying it. Jimdo
provides restricted password protection for free package when Weebly ask for
money to protect your website’s password.
Sandvox has come closest to setting up a
system for iWeb’s commenting photo and blog via adding more comments from
Facebook, Disqus and Intense Debate into any page – it even put separate
comments for every single photo of a gallery. RapidWeaver supports commenting
system from Disqus but only in blog pages. Weebly and Jimdo provide similar commenting
system on their pages. No tool presents iWeb’s blog searching feature though each
of them can create RSS feeds that visitors can look for by a RSS reader.
Sandvox
of Karelia Software
Copying iWeb’s old-styled hit counter is
the easiest with Page Counter feature from Sandvox. No other tool supplies the
same built-in feature yet each of them may use third-party HTML plugins to do
that. Moreover, each tool can use Google Analytics to monitor visitors
specifically.
Stream
your iLife media
Whatever website you did create with iWeb, it
certainly contained images, videos and other media that you want to transfer to
the new website. How you will do this depends on the selected design tool.
If your media files are still in iWeb’s
relative libraries, using a tool with iLife integration will give you fast
access to them, like you did with iWeb. Without iLife integration, you need to first
export file to a Finder folder then upload them manually to your website. Otherwise,
you can also upload iLife media to serives such as YouTube or Flickr, and then add
these files into your web pages via a HTML plugin. Share option in the menu bar
of iPhoto or iMovie all manage to do this well.
Once having added media files to your iWeb
from many different sources, you can move them from their original locations. However,
they will be available in iWeb documents and you can enter them quickly by publishing
the website to a folder on Mac. This adds an extra benefit of exporting website’s
properties in an easy-to-access format in case that iWeb is malfunctioned or it
is, in other words, error in future versions of OS X.
Choose your website in iWeb’s sidebar then
select Local Folder in menu Site Publishing Settings’ Publish To. Select a
destination and press Publish Site button. In the next folder, you will see
folder named after each image gallery on website. In every gallery folder is
Media folder consisting of folders for its images. An image having the highest
quality will be used to name your photo file. You can search for podcast and
movie file in the website’s Media folder.
Recreate
your iWeb site
Recreating your iWeb site depends on the
website and the tool you chose. You have to make a decision by yourself but
with some general rules. The most important is that you need to build your
website from scratch.
Unfortunately, there’s no way, which is
similar to saving a Pages document in Word, to export website from iWeb. But if
you get stuck to themes and templates of Apple, your job will be easier.
For instance, we chose to recreate a
website in Sandvox which provides blog, gallery and basic document page, like
iWeb. Using these pages is a quite simple process: match page’s styles with our
site’s pages then fill new pages with media. Copying texts from old website and
pasting them into new one took more efforts. However, we managed to finish the
new website within less than 2 hours. Though, the allotted time is dependents
on your website’s content but the result will be worth it.
No one is fond of recreating the website
that they have been hard-working to build. Fortunately, if you ever consider
recreating your website, there are available tools which are able to make your
process more convenient and interesting.
Mac
apps, such as Rapid Weaver and Sandvox, provide familiar features.
