My iWeb site won't publish

Question

Figuring I've seen some reasonably nice looking sites published via iWeb, and having all the tools supposedly integrated to incorporate podacasts, movies, etc., AND having been a .Mac/Mobile Me subscriber since 2005, with rather little relative benefit compared to other cloud/hosting services I could have used, I decided to give iWeb and Mobile Me a spin with a real project, something sort of arty. So, fine, I have created a Site, and created decent workflows for a very frequent podcast, and hit the "Publish" button.
And waited.
As typically happens with me, I have added a challenge to this mix, in that I have another domain which I would like hosted via MobileMe, so I looked up the directions for the redirect, and dutifully edited the DNS registry for that domain to get aliasing (CNAME: web.me.com.) to work, which according to everything I can see, has. Two days have now passed, and still no site on either the MobileMe address or the aliased domain.
I believe I have done everything correctly. ANy suggestions as to how I can get my site up and running?
Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Here's how to have multiple sites in a single MMe account with one or more sites having a domain name.
A. All sites are in the same Domain.sites2 files
1 - only one site can use the CNAME method of domain name forwarding and it must  the top site in the left hand pane of iWeb.
Click to view full size
2 - the other sites must use URL domain name forwarding which directs the domain name to the site's full MMe URL, http://web.me.com/MMe_Username/Site_Name,  or, if there is no domain name, just MobileMe's full URL.
B. Each site is in its own Domain.sites2 file.
Again, only one site can use CNAME forwarding.  This presents a problem since CNAME forwarding directs the domain name to the basic MMe account URL: http://web.me.com/MMe_Username/ which uses an index.html file in the root folder of the account, iDisk/Web/Sites. Each time a new site is published or an existing site uses the File->Publish Entire Site a new index.html file is created in that root directory, iDisk/Web/Sites folder, directing the browser to that particular site.  This file is what the CNAME method uses to find the site it represents.  Therefore some steps must be taken to assure that the index.html file in the MMe Accounts root directory always points to the correct site.  This can be accomplished is three ways.
1 - don't use the CNAME method.  Just use  URL forwarding .  This, IMO, is the simplest method as it doesn't requre any additional effort on the user once the domain name has been set up.
2 - use the following method suggested by Wyodor in this topic: Is it possible to have multiple sites when using ur Domain name?   
In iWeb domainfile 1:
Create a dummy site : _dummy
with a blank page.
Create your working site : Whatever
Add pages
Publish both Sites to the same same location on the same server.
Your _dummy site is now the default Site.
Check.
In iWeb domainfile 2:
Create/Use your CurrentSite.
Move a page to the top of the Site and back. Publish the Site.
iWeb will create a new index.html file in the root of the server and from now on CurrentSite is the default site.
Check.
From now on, never move your Whatever Site to the top of the list in the iWeb sidebar and never change the page in the _dummy site.
Simply do not touch your _dummy ever again. And never forget that.
3 - use Ethmoid's suggested method in Using two sites - setting one up with separate domain? or republishing the entire site that uses  CNAME forwarding.  Just making a minor change and publishing the site changes does not create a new index.html file. 
The entire site must be republsihing in order to get that new site.  
Or keep a copy of the CNAME site's index.html file on your Mac and replace it manually in the iDisk/Web/Sites fodler when necessary.
NOTE:  the CNAME method provides a shorter URL:  http://www.Domain_Name.com/Site_Name/Page_Name.  CNAME does not have masking.
The URL forwarding displays the full MMe URL:   http://web.me.com/MMe_Username/Domain_Name/Page_Name.   With domain name masking that will be shortened to:   http://www.Domain_Name.com for every page of your site.
However, with masking visitors will only be able to bookmark and enter at the first page of the site.  If a page is refreshed the visitor is taken back to the first page.  Also search engines will only be able to index the first page of the site.
OT