personal domain on MobileMe, repetitive URL addresses and personal site?

Question

personal domain on MobileMe, repetitive URL addresses and personal site?

Okay, this may be two topics, but I don't know how to describe it briefly enough for the subject line to get it all across. At least not at the end of a long day.

I have a website I designed and published via iWeb '09 promoting my home motorcycle service. I have the domain name registered through GoDaddy.com. I followed the instructions posted in another thread linked to GoDaddy's MobileMe instructions, and also used MobileMe's personal domain instructions to the point where it appears to work, but I still feel like I'm doing something wrong. The domain name is below.

www.bltmoto.com

However, when you type this into a browser, it forwards to my PERSONAL site which is also in the same iWeb file, which is basically just a blog and some pictures. It takes you to:

http://www.bltmoto.com/crat/HQ.html

...when I'm trying to get it to bring up this content:

http://www.bltmoto.com/BLTMotoService/Home.html

I was under the assumption that my personal site would remain located within the web.me.com domain, but it appears not if it's part of the same iWeb file. Is this correct? So hypothetically, if I was to get a domain name for my personal site, like www.chrisratledge.com, or whatever, could I get it to work independently of my moto service site within the same iWeb file? Would I have to duplicate the file and delete one of the other ones to keep them separate, or would that not work either? In other words, in iWeb, when you choose "New Site," will it always be like a subdomain (don't know if I'm using that nomenclature correctly) on your account?

Also, is there a way to truncate my URLs for these sites? Like when I type in www.bltmoto.com, it would exist and displays in the URL field of the browser as:

http://www.bltmoto.com/Home.html

instead of:

http://www.bltmoto.com/BLTMotoService/Home.html

Also, the page names in iWeb I designate also appear directly as typed in the URL address line and at the top of the browser title bar. Is there a way in iWeb to change this? I'd like the Title bar to display the company name and page info, such as:

"BLT Moto Service Home"

instead of just

"Home"

Is there a way to change or modify this within iWeb, or is this strictly a HTML code modification?

I know this is a lot and hopefully I've been clear enough in my description, please help if you can. Thank you

15" MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6)

Posted on Oct 2, 2009 7:40 PM

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Answer 1

Ethmoid

Level 6

11,482 points

Oct 3, 2009 1:34 AM in response to Chris Ratledge

What you need to do is publish the BLT MotoService site again. When you use CNAME forwarding you always forward to web.me.com, so because of this the site that you have published first will be connected to your domain name. The other one will too, but unless someone knows the name of that site they can't get to it. If the first site is published first, then this will be the first linked to your domain name and will come up.

Basically, iWeb site structure is to produce a url that is http://www.domain.com/sitename/pagename. The only way that you can change this if you are publishing to MME is to change the way in which you forward your domain name - change CNAME to ordinary web forwarding and then your url will be http://www.domain.com for every single page of your site. The only draw back to this is that individual pages of your site cannot be bookmarked, just the whole site.

Your only other option is to purchase a hosting account from GoDaddy and upload your site directly - if you do this you can upload just the contents of your site folder rather than the whole folder itself and this will then give you the domain name www.domain.com/pagename. RSS feed will not work though, as you have broken iWeb's site structure and I see that you do use this so it might not be a viable option for you.

Why not reduce the sitename to BLT and cut out the Moto_Service part. This would shorten it a little?

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Answer 2

smokenaxs

Level 1

105 points

Oct 3, 2009 7:23 AM in response to Chris Ratledge

Chris,

I use i*Web SEO Tool* (rage software) to help change title tags and meta data. It seems to work fine for what I need. The software is pretty easy to use and understand. If you check out my site you see the page name is Why Plan but the Title is something different.

Good luck,

JY
_* http://www.customdisney.com*_

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Answer 3

Oct 3, 2009 9:07 AM in response to Ethmoid

Ethmoid wrote:
...the site that you have published first will be connected to your domain name....If the first site is published first, then this will be the first linked to your domain name and will come up.

Okay, I figured that may be the case for that issue, shortly after I asked the question, just didn't mess with the order to verify it.

Basically, iWeb site structure is to produce a url that is http://www.domain.com/sitename/pagename. The only way that you can change this if you are publishing to MME is to change the way in which you forward your domain name - change CNAME to ordinary web forwarding and then your url will be http://www.domain.com for every single page of your site. The only draw back to this is that individual pages of your site cannot be bookmarked, just the whole site.

Hmm, so I think I see what you're saying about the page structure, so no matter what I do while publishing and hosting on MME, the only way to have my domain name stay "www.bltmoto.com" is to change the CNAME setting on GoDaddy to "ordinary web forwarding" - I have no idea what that is or how to do it - but then every single site and page I publish will only have the "www.bltmoto.com" URL?

Your only other option is to purchase a hosting account from GoDaddy and upload your site directly - if you do this you can upload just the contents of your site folder rather than the whole folder itself and this will then give you the domain name www.domain.com/pagename. RSS feed will not work though, as you have broken iWeb's site structure and I see that you do use this so it might not be a viable option for you.

So is there no way to create separate websites with separate domains using iWeb, and publish them to other MME accounts or keep them separate? My dad wants me to put together a site for him that he would publish and host on his MME account. Does this mean I'd have to create it on his machine, or could I create a new iWeb file for his site and publish it to his account from my computer? Suddenly the convenience appeal of the marketed ability to host personal domain names on MME doesn't seem convenient at all.

I think maybe you addressed this on my other questions in another thread...

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Answer 4

Old Toad

Level 10

207,463 points

Oct 3, 2009 11:21 AM in response to Chris Ratledge

GoDaddy to "ordinary web forwarding

You want ordinary web forwarding AND masking. This is how I did it at GoDaddy:

Click to view full size

My tutorial site, http://toadstutorials.info , is set up that way.

At Ethmoid pointed out only your first/entry page can be bookmarked. That may or may not be a deal breaker.

You will have to remove the CNAME forwarding at the Apple end: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8990293#8990293

OT

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Answer 5

Ethmoid

Level 6

11,482 points

Oct 4, 2009 12:38 AM in response to Chris Ratledge

Yes, of course you can create multiple sites in iWeb. You can publish them to any MME account from your own Mac just by logging in and out of the appropriate MME account. You can also have them linked to separate domain names too.

Yes, if your Dad wants a website, you can create it for him on your computer and publish the site from your computer to his MobileMe account. All you do is log out of your account and then into his through System Preferences. If he has a domain name, you can also link his domain name to his site for him. If you ever want to give him the site that you have made, so he has a copy of his computer, then all you do is go to your Home User/Library/Application Support/iWeb/and locate the domain.sites file in the iWeb folder and copy this and then place it in the same spot on your Dad's computer. Then he also has a copy of the site and can make changes for himself as he wishes.

I think we are talking at cross purposes as you were asking about how to shorten the url. My reply about how to shorten the url was to get a hosting account through GoDaddy and upload the contents directly - this gives you the url www.domain.com/pagename. This reply has nothing whatsoever to do with publishing multiple sites to MobileMe etc. You can do everything in iWeb that you want to.

As far as web forwarding goes, all you do is log into your account at GoDaddy and go to manage domains and then click on web forwarding, rather than the total DNS control that you clicked on to set up CNAME. When there, just forward your domain name to web.me.com/username/sitename and include the masking so that your domain name is shown in the url rather than your MME name. I think I did explain this in one of my previous posts.

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Answer 6

Oct 4, 2009 10:35 PM in response to Chris Ratledge

Thank you all for the help and suggestions. I've decided to do the ordinary fowarding method, so I lose the bookmarkability (hello Webster) of individual pages, but my site is small so it's not a big tradeoff, more of a small annoying compromise, but not enough to make me pay even more for hosting outside of my MMe account, which has more than enough space for my current needs.

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