What has happened to iWeb and mobile me?

Question

Hi
am looking to create a website.  thought I'd use iWeb but cannot find detail on Mobile me.  Has it all been superseeded?
Thanks

Answer 1

Apple's iWeb, part of iLife, was originally designed only to upload to MobileMe in a seamless one-click operation. With its easy for methods for creating basic websites with no technical knowledge it enabled thousands of non-technical users to create and publish their personal websites.
With the demise of MobileMe this hosting has ceased. Up to and including iWeb '08, it was only possible to publish to other hosts by 'Publishing to a folder' and then uploading that local folder to a website host using a separate FTP client. From iWeb '09 an FTP method was built-in, making it easier to publish to a host other than MobileMe.
In order to upload your existing site in iWeb '09 and above:
Click on the name of the site in the sidebar: the publishing settings pane will open. Set 'Publish to' to 'FTP'. Enter the name of the site and a contact address (if desired).
In the 'FTP Server Settings' section you will need to know the server address (your hosting service can tell you that), and your username and password for that service. Your site will be published in a folder with its name at root level of the server, with an index.html file at root level (which will overwrite any index.html file which may be there already). The 'Directory/Path' field may need to include a path such as '/webspace/' or 'ht_docs/' - this is dependent on your hosting service and they should tell you this. If you want to publish within a folder you can add that to the path.
You can then click the 'Test connection' button so that iWeb can check that it can get access to your server space. You should enter the URL of the site in the 'URL' field so that rss feeds and internal links have the correct address.
To publish using an earlier version of iWeb:
From the File menu choose 'Publish to a folder'. You should create a folder somewhere convenient specifically for this and choose it when publishing to a folder: this folder should not contain anything else.
You now need an FTP program (FTP is the 'protocol' used for uploading) to upload the contents of the folder to your server.Cyberduck is free (donation requested): Transmit is $34 but I think better. You will need the server address (your hosting service can tell you that), and your username and password for that service. You can drag the contents of your folder to your webspace, or create a folder there and drag the contents to that if you prefer.
Some facilities that iWeb provided when hosted on MobileMe will not work on other servers: comments on weblogs and photos, password-protecting your site (some hosts may provide this), searching in the weblog, and a hits counter (again, some hosts can provide code for this). Slideshows in iWeb will work on other hosts than MobileMe (they use different code when FTPing which doesn't depend on scripts hosted on MobileMe as the MobileMe version does); however there is an issue with the 'buttons' which control the slideshow which are images hosted on me.com - these depend on images which used to be hosted on MobileMe. The poster 'Old Toad' on the Apple Forums has provided a workaround, described at http://oldtoadstutorials.net/No.26.html. Although iWeb continues to work Apple have removed it from sale, which is another point to consider before committing to it.
If you have not yet started a website and are tempted to use iWeb, I would advise against it; as it's no longer for sale and won't be updated, there is always the possibility that a future system upgrade may break it. The nearest programs to iWeb in facilities and general ease of use are RapidWeaver, which I think is preferable to iWeb anyway, and EverWeb, which is designed to be similar to iWeb but with more facilities.