Is using iWeb without a MobileMe account futile

Question

I have no need for a MobileMe account so it's way overpriced compared to an average host.
I was able to do this much - publish an iWeb site to a local folder and use my Mac as a host (This shouldn't matter but I used the Safari server with MAMP - i.e. Macintosh Apache MySql PHP) to get more functionality than the one with Leopard. Using Port forwarding allows the Mac to be a host, but obviously this isn't a good solution if you understand IP. The RSS and Podcast features worked except for the comment functionality and the search didn't, but I can work around that.
I started out using this method because the only other publish option was "Publish to a folder". (which you select on your local file system) I really want to publish to a remote host. I don't know of any way to do this here, but perhaps there is:
So one question is: Is there a way on Leopard to make a folder a kind of alias for an HTTP address:? Or some other clever method of using publish to folder publish the files to a host via HTTP.
Mobile networking is a huge trend and Apple shouldn't have to shut out the few of us that don't want it now by not having a publish feature in iWeb that allows you to use a host of your choice. It doesn't matter why iWeb was written this way. I'm just really frustrated because it's a waste of 80$ for me if I can't get this to work.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, because I'd certainly like to be wrong about this. But not including a publish feature that allows you to select a remote host seems rather suspect.
Ok, I had what I thought was a very acceptable and reasonable workaround, which has very desirable features. I came up against another limitation that I find really hard to live with, if I can't find an easy workaround. iWeb generates a lot of files in a folder structure. So, I tried reading them into Adobe Dreamweaver (which is by far the best XHTML editor available and adheres to the newest w3c standards.) When I tried this, half of the site just didn't work, and the scripting was not functional in IE 7. I'm sure tons of other stuff doesn't work and I didn't even bother to go through it all. Using Dreamweaver would allow me to publish to a host of my choice and it would also allow me to do things that iWeb can't do.
I like iWeb, especially for it's podcasting implementation, but it's obviously is very limited. I always assumed that since HTML is such a ubiquitous and well established standard that I just assumed iWeb HTML could be read with most any HTML editor, especially Dreamweaver. If I wanted any advanced functionality I could get it there, and use iWeb for the podcasting and simple sites.
Is iWeb so proprietary that it's generating HTML and supporting files that can't be edited in a product as superb as Dreamweaver? Has anyone had any luck editing the files produced by iWeb in another HTML editor? I would have thought this was a given.
I'm hoping that someone can give me some workarounds. Otherwise, it will confirm my theory that Apple is forcing MobileMe as a host for iWeb sites, which is really restrictive and unnecessary.
This is extremely frustrating and so if anyone has any workarounds to these problems, I'd really appreciate hearing them.
Otherwise, I just wasted 80$ on iLife, which I don't appreciate. And if getting iLife 09 is the workaround, I think I'd need to be convinced that it can both publish to any host and that it produces files that are compatible with Dreamweaver to even consider it.
Thank you for your help,
-Frank

Answer 1

fpatrick08,
My 2 cents, I though about getting mobileme service but the $99 per year stopped me. After I got my hosting with another company I found out that amazon sell the service for $69 per year. I still do not use mobileme but with Cyberduck and some work around it work pretty decent. You can see it by yourself here: http://www.wesdotphotography.com/Home.html
Hope this help
Thierry
+PS: I may receive money if you click on the google ads in my site+