iweb replacement?

Question

Level 1

4 points

iweb replacement?

I'm now trying the Adobe beta product they're calling Muse (code name). It's very close to the drag and drop iweb experience, and the pages are looking good.

What is aggravating is that when the product does ship, you won't be able to buy it... only pay a monthly or annual fee to "subscribe" to it. Probably will be a dealbreaker for me.

Have already burned through trials of Sandvox, Weebly, WebAccapella (which was not terrible), RapidWeaver and a couple of other also-rans with no true success yet.

I've tried iWeb publishing to a folder then uploading to my domain with spotty results, and the publish to FTP simply does not work for me because my ISP cannot read the password iWeb is sending.

I still hold out hope that Apple might choose to license the sale of iWeb to a third party, or itself offer some new/improved version before this summer. The product does after all have a built-in customer base of thousands like us who were plunking down a hundred bucks a year (plus the cost of iLife) to maintain iWebsites.

Posted on Jan 20, 2012 3:07 PM

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Answer 1

Roddy

Level 6

17,265 points

Jan 20, 2012 4:13 PM in response to RRRoll

There have been many of topics about replacements for iWeb in this forum.

iWeb sites transfer perfectly well to a hosting service via FTP...

http://www.iwebformusicians.com/iWeb/Publish-Website.html

If you are having problems with your host, change to one that works OK and will give you some help...

http://www.iwebformusicians.com/iWeb/Website-Hosting.html

"I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link."

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Answer 2

RRRoll Author

Level 1

4 points

Jan 20, 2012 4:48 PM in response to Roddy

Yeah.

I guess I didn't really open this discussion so you could post an ad for a hosting business, Roddy.

Good luck with your efforts on that deal.

If anyone wants to discuss their luck with different iWeb replacements, I'm still open to suggestions.

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Answer 3

Old Toad

Level 10

207,751 points

Jan 20, 2012 5:17 PM in response to RRRoll

When you published your site to a folder on your hard drive what 3rd party FTP client did you use? Have you tired either Cyberduck or Transmit?

Are you saying the problem is with your internet service provider and not the hosting service? If that's the case I don't know how you can fix it. If your ISP is also your host provider then I suggest you contact their customser support to see what's blocking your attempts. If you can't get it to work there are many hosting services out there, including HostExcellenct, that will work very well with iWeb or any 3rd party ftpo client.

I'm not posting an ad just recomending a service that I use as a paying customer like Roddy and find to be extremely easy to setup, use with many features and excellent 24/7 customer support.

As for iWeb replacements they have been discussed many times already as Roddy has pointed out. Just search this community for "iweb replacement" to get a list of the topics. But rest assured the recommendations you will see are not ads for any specific product, just user recommendations just like HostExcellence in this topic.

OT

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Answer 4

Roddy

Level 6

17,265 points

Jan 20, 2012 5:17 PM in response to RRRoll

You said that you wished you could keep using iWeb but you had problems publishing to your host. I am pointing out that you can continue to use iWeb if you get some decent hosting.

The page I directed to you has a free hosting servcie that you can try to see if you can publish your site OK before you commit yourself to any hosting service of your choice.

As I pointed out, the topic of iWeb replacements has been thouroughly discussed and just about every alternative has been covered. A quick search of this forum will give you lots of reading matter on that subject..

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Answer 5

Old Toad

Level 10

207,751 points

Jan 20, 2012 7:56 PM in response to RRRoll

I forgot to address the continued use of iWeb:

It's now confirmed that iWeb and iDVD have been discontinued by Apple. This is evidenced by the fact that new Macs are shipping with iLife 11 installed but without iWeb and iDVD.

On June 30, 2012 MobileMe will be shutdown. HOWEVER, iWeb will still continue to work but without the following:

Features No Longer Available Once MobileMe is Discontinued:

◼ Password protection

◼ Blog and photo comments

◼ Blog search

◼ Hit counter

◼ MobileMe Gallery

All of these features can be replaced with 3rd party options.

I found that if I published my site to a folder on my hard drive and then uploaded with a 3rd party FTP client subscriptions to slideshows and the RSS feed were broken. If I published directly from iWeb to the FPT server those two features continued to work correctly.

There's another problem and that's with iWeb's popup slideshows. Once the MMe servers are no longer online the popup slideshow buttons will not display their images.

Click to view full size

However, Roddy McKay and I have figured out a way to modify existing sites with those slideshows and iWeb itself so that those images will display as expected once MobileMe servers are gone. How to is described in this tutorial: #26 - How to Modify iWeb So Popup Slideshows Will Work After MobileMe is Discontinued.

In addition the iLife suite of applications offered on disc is now a discontinued product and the remaining supported iApps will only be available thru the App Store from now on.

HOWEVER, the iLife 11 boxed version that is still currently available at the online Apple Store (Store button at the top of the page) and those copies still on the shelves of retailers will include iWeb and iDVD.

This may be of some interest to you: Life After MobileMe.

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Answer 6

Jan 20, 2012 8:53 PM in response to Old Toad

Thank you so much for posting this information.

You just saved me a lot of transition grief. I was about to migrate a domain to MobileMe and use iWeb for the blog software. I cannot believe I missed that iWeb was going to vaporize... I have to say I am going to be dissapointed, as I surely appreciate the seamless custom configuration publishing on iWeb.

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Answer 7

RRRoll Author

Level 1

4 points

Jan 20, 2012 9:40 PM in response to Old Toad

I appreciate your advice, OT.

Getting with a different hosting company is not my concern right now, I was just mentioning that issue, discussed in other iWeb threads, of passwords which don't pass muster with the application's "publish to FTP" option. I actually ran across your Cyberduck recommendation elsewhere and gave it a whirl. Again, the same result. Will take it up with the unfortunately named FatCow on Monday.

My search centers on a new software solution to replace iWeb. Unless a viable substitute product (or provider of a new and improved iWeb) comes along, it's only a matter of time before our once-friendly favorite web publishing app begins to languish without active support.

I was offering a review of my experience with Adobe's Muse in hopes of "shaking the tree" regarding recent new software others may have tried. I've been reading these discussions regularly since Apple announced the June demise of iWeb, and still haven't seen an application that comes close to iWeb, but my fingers are still crossed!

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Answer 8

Ethmoid

Level 6

11,482 points

Jan 21, 2012 1:07 AM in response to RRRoll

Please get this right - the June demise as you put it is MobileMe and NOT iWeb. You can continue to use it - it is an application and will not just stop working.

On 30th June 2012 MobileMe will cease to exist and iCloud will take over, but will not provide hosting services, so you have to find alternative hosting before that date. iWeb will still work and you can still use it with both Lion and Snow Leopard.

As for alternative software, you could also look at Freeway Pro/Express, Flux 3, Coda, PageSpinner, WebDesign by Rages software.

If you have hosting you can also take a look at the Content Management Systems such as Drupal, Joomla and WordPress.org - these can be installed easily on a server, but not sure if FatCow provide these services? You could take a look at online site creation with http://wordpress.com, http://www.weebly.com and http://www.wix.com if you want to produce a flash website.

For your info. if you looked at his site, you will see that Roddy does not run a hosting company at all - he is a musician who has created his own website using iWeb and creates help pages for forum users like yourself.

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Answer 9

Ethmoid

Level 6

11,482 points

Jan 21, 2012 1:09 AM in response to Hummingbird2011

No, you did not miss anything about iWeb vaporising - that is MobileMe and NOT iWeb. Please note the difference, iWeb and MobileMe are not connected and even when MobileMe disappears at the end of June, you can still use iWeb.

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Answer 10

Jan 22, 2012 3:28 AM in response to RRRoll

re. RRRoll

Is there a single information page which provides a list of ad-free, paid, simple, Mac friendly, iweb compatible alternative hosting services for our iweb sites?

I am a busy teacher and simply wish to continue using iweb as it is and not to do any tinkering with current pages (many years of work). I thought MacWorld or MacLife mags online would be helpful but not really; just suggestions like using DropBox but that didn't work for me.

Thank you.

Michael

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Answer 11

Wyodor

Level 6

19,930 points

Jan 22, 2012 5:52 AM in response to Michael Vallance

Not really a single page (About 67,700,000 results) but see if this gets you any further :

http://www.google.com/search?q=webhosting

I use http://www.one.com

They are 100% iWeb/Mac agnostic, since it is irrelevant which application or hardware you use.

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Answer 12

Old Toad

Level 10

207,751 points

Jan 23, 2012 11:20 AM in response to Michael Vallance

This may be of interest to you: Life After MobileMe.

OT

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Answer 13

Jan 23, 2012 4:30 PM in response to Old Toad

Terrific ... thank you.

michael

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Answer 14

Dlawn

Level 1

39 points

Jan 24, 2012 11:51 AM in response to RRRoll

Have you tried Freeway? I started with iWeb, which I really liked, but it had limitations. I moved over to Freeway. It is not quite as intuitive, but much more powerful in many ways. It worked for me and you may want to give it a go.

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Answer 15

Joe Gramm

Level 5

6,407 points

Jan 24, 2012 3:03 PM in response to Roddy

Hey Roddy, Old Toad, Ethmoid & Wyodor

I don't mean to hijack this topic, but you're all here. iWeb still meets my needs, but I've read other topics where you are indicating that your working with other website builders. Is this because iWeb will not be suitable for the mobile Internet eventually. My sites, with a few exceptions, seem to load and display OK on iPhone & iPad. But I'm assuming that's because the browser(Safari in my case) is reformatting my sites to fit the mobile device. I guess I'm confused about the impact HTML 5 will have on iWeb built sites in the future and why are you switching.

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