stay with iweb? or not

Despite iWeb's ease of use for quickly producing attractive sites, now isn't a good time to start using it. Already v2 won't work with Mountain Lion, we don't know what the situation will be with v3 and Mavericks - but it's a safe bet that eventually a system upgrade will break it.

There are lots of options - the subject has been discussed in a number of threads here and I can do no better than suggest you search for them as you will get some detailed answers and a wide range of suggestions.

My own preference, for what it's worth, would be for RapidWeaver, which I've used (though not for videos) - it's similar in many ways to iWeb (though obviously quite different in detail). However as you will find many people don't agree with that and have their own favourites.

Rage Software's EasyWeb is about as easy to use as iWeb but has much more advanced features. It'll be coming out of beta very shortly. I believe it will be limited to hosting on the Rage servers much like iWeb was to MobileMe.

Otherwise do a search of this community for "iWeb alternatives" and you'll find many topics discussing those alternatives.

Personally, I use Flux 4 as it lets you start out with a blank canvas and work from there. If you also know any html coding it's easy to add from within Flux. Many of the other apps require themes/templates that they provide.

OT

I've never been much of a fan of WYSIWYG web design software. You do far too much without ANY idea of how you did it and when something breaks, it's nearly impossible to figure out why. Rapidweaver woudl be a good alternative if you want to stick with a WYSIWYG client.
Personally I prefer Dreamweaver, but it's expensive and has evolved into professional software. You'll NEED to learn HTML, CSS, and web standards compliance or it'll just go beyond you. Adobe has Muse, which is much more "user friendly" for novice designers. You may want to look at that too. http://www.adobe.com/products/muse.html

RapidWeaver can become very expensive, because of the hidden costs of purchasing the add ons that you need to do simple things and you also cannot start with a blank canvas, you need to use one of the templates.

Take a look at Sandvox, Freeway Pro/Express 6, Flux 4 and WebAcappella 4. These are all good alternatives.

I would avoid Adobe Muse, as you can't purchase it straight off and need to be tied to monthy payments which work out very costly and by the time you have made all these payments, you could have purchased Muse several times over. I would suggest that you look at the other alternatives out there which are many and varied.

Also take a look at the Content Management Systems that are easy to use, such as Joomla and WordPress. You can also create a free site by using WordPress.com, but can add your personal domain at a later date.

Ethmoid wrote:

RapidWeaver can become very expensive, because of the hidden costs of purchasing the add ons that you need to do simple things and you also cannot start with a blank canvas, you need to use one of the templates.

This is broadly true, though using the add-ons Blocks and BloxBox you can have an empty page and drag-and drop items anywhere in it. You can do quite a bit with it out-of-the-box: it includes a fair number of templates and there are many more free or purchasable ones, much as with iWeb.

If you want to avoid using templates it's possible to do quite a lot with Kompozer, which is free - I've used it for many of my pages. It's WSYWYG with full access to the HTML (though it is given to 'improving' the coding).

Just to correct my post: EasyWeb will be offered in a standalone version, i.e. not tied into Rage's hosting service, so one can publish to their existing FTP servers.

Thank you for the correction. I haven't had time to Beta test so I was hoping a standalone version would be available.

It's not going to be inexpensive, $80 and one year's free updates, but for those who what the iWeb experience it may be worth it.

So it sounds like there will be an annual fee after the first year of free updates?? That would be okay if I liked it. I would use it for business so it's a tax deduction.

Do you know if you can build multiple sites.

Not sure if it's an annual fee but rather we have to pay for each update.It's not spelled out as yet. Here's the order page: Shopping Cart - RAGE Web Hosting

Thank you for the link. I didn't realize you could actually purchase EasyWeb now. I'm somewhat spoiled by using iWebs built in FTP. So to use the standalone app I would need to get use to publishing to a folder. Of course not a big deal in the scheme of things.

But the standalone vs included hosting will be a big decision for some of us. Especially someone like myself who already has a web host and is satisfied with the service.

It still seems to be space for one website. Do you happen to know if you can have multiple sites with one web hosting account.

I'd download the demo and use it for a month to make sure that's what you want.

Good idea.

I will say though, I don't know how I'm going to be able to pull the plug on iWeb. Old story, but I started with Homepage and have used every version of iWeb. iWeb has helped me develop a successful business.

So it will be a sad day to click publish with another app and a say bye to iWeb. 😢

What they should do is create a subsiderary app that will convert domain files over to the EW format. I'm sure that would increase sales.