[Macworld]

Post your comments for How to transition your website away from MobileMe and iWeb here

[payneok]

I like Rapid Weaver a lot. It is NOT as easy to use as iWeb but I picked it up pretty easily, however one key point. The $80 price for Rapid Weaver is misleading. There is very little you can do for $80. To make Rapid Weaver as easy as iWeb you have to buy the "Blocks" add-on and probably a few of the YourHead add-ons, making the real price between $120 and $150. The Add-ons make Rapid Weaver VERY powerful and flexible. Also the Rapid Weaver forums are amazing - a lot of very helpful people.

[spinoza2]

I guess it all comes down to amateur vs professional Web development. I've tried RapidWeaver, Sandvox, et al, but they don't have the polish or the power of iWeb. What made iWeb so compelling was it's low learning curve and modest up-front software costs, while at the same time being able to produce professional Websites.

I wished Hype would have morphed into an HTML5 iWeb replacement, but that didn't pan out.

I've gone with the cloud version of CS6 and Muse. I'll have to invest a lot more time learning its capabilities (not to mention its much higher costs), but it really is the only professional Web development platform out there now.

[Sawbilly]

Why not a mention for Squarespace.com? It's a brilliant service that enables you to build and maintain your own website (as simple as a blog or as complex as dozens and dozens of pages) entirely online -- no tools (aside from a web browser) of your own required. They've been around for years, it only takes a few hours to figure out how to use the service, you can put your own URL on your site, they have loads of handsome (and tweakable) templates to start you out with ... I've used WordPress, iWeb and RapidWeaver, and while they were all good I found Squarespace superior to them all. It costs $15ish a month to use, but it's well worth it -- for one thing, the service itself is rock solid, with almost no downtime. For another the customer service is prompt, courteous, helpful, informed, and English-speaking. A great outfit that deserves to be much more widely known than it is. Squarespace.com

[NikoNikorocksComxfn3]

 payneok, on 30 April 2012 - 05:33 AM, said:

I like Rapid Weaver a lot. It is NOT as easy to use as iWeb but I picked it up pretty easily, however one key point. The $80 price for Rapid Weaver is misleading. There is very little you can do for $80. To make Rapid Weaver as easy as iWeb you have to buy the "Blocks" add-on and probably a few of the YourHead add-ons, making the real price between $120 and $150. The Add-ons make Rapid Weaver VERY powerful and flexible. Also the Rapid Weaver forums are amazing - a lot of very helpful people.

All VERY true.

[NikoNikorocksComxfn3]

iWeb still has some very, very small usefulness. If you're looking for a way to create a decent website there are plenty of resources online that will design things like contact forms. All of these resources from YouTube videos to forms, etc. will give you an embed code which can be easily placed into iWeb.

As for publishing... there's really no reason to worry about the lost "mobileme" features. You can still use iWeb, and you can still publish to any server.

[bryhudso]

iWeb is still a much better tool, from a design perspective, than Sandvox and RapidWeaver. This is especially true it you don't use iWeb templates. The only advantage to publishing to MobileMe was enabling commenting on blog posts. I always publish to web hosts. Unless a future Mac OS update cripples iWeb (certainly likely), iWeb will be useful for 3-5 years until a better app comes along.

[bryhudso]

Squarespace is very nice, but is slow and tedious tool because it is browser based. Developing offline, then publishing is more efficient. This is a great feature of iWeb, especially when you can avoid it's horrible templates.

[doshea]

I've kicked the tires on all of the site creation applications and come to the conclusion that iWeb on a commercial server will do just fine. I created two Domain files and slowly migrated each of the sites in the MobileMe Domain to the commercial server.

I always use a blank template in iWeb and the add my own backgrounds and design elements.

Take a look at the size of the various apps and you will find that iWeb is one of the largest. It provides considerable freedom of design without the restrictions in many of the apps in frame locations, sizes, and photo gallery creation.

[billthecat]

All I'd like to do is be able to (a) post photos, ( with the ability of folks to comment (like say who's in them), © without jeopardizing privacy (so no Facebook, etc. - I want control), (d) at no cost (i.e., using my own site/hosting). Any suggestions?

[How do you turn off the automatic emoticons? <scream>]

This post has been edited by billthecat: 30 April 2012 - 10:45 AM

[Chezapeak]

Not Blocks. While useful, it's not nearly as useful as Stacks. With Stacks you can do pretty much anything you can imagine, and there's lots of free and inexpensive additions for Stacks.

 payneok, on 30 April 2012 - 05:33 AM, said:

I like Rapid Weaver a lot. It is NOT as easy to use as iWeb but I picked it up pretty easily, however one key point. The $80 price for Rapid Weaver is misleading. There is very little you can do for $80. To make Rapid Weaver as easy as iWeb you have to buy the "Blocks" add-on and probably a few of the YourHead add-ons, making the real price between $120 and $150. The Add-ons make Rapid Weaver VERY powerful and flexible. Also the Rapid Weaver forums are amazing - a lot of very helpful people.

[artMonster]

 bryhudso, on 30 April 2012 - 06:56 AM, said:

iWeb is still a much better tool, from a design perspective, than Sandvox and RapidWeaver. This is especially true it you don't use iWeb templates. The only advantage to publishing to MobileMe was enabling commenting on blog posts. I always publish to web hosts. Unless a future Mac OS update cripples iWeb (certainly likely), iWeb will be useful for 3-5 years until a better app comes along.

I have tried everything out there, and the sheer elegance, versatility, and simplicity of iWeb is hard to replace. Over time, Apple improved iWeb considerably, real shame they will abandon it. There is an app called Quick 'n Easy that is just that, quick and easy. And inexpensive. Feels like a Windows app, not very Mac like.

[carlbutler]

Has anyone tried ShutterBug? Comments please?

[modernglossy]

MacHighway has been doing Mac hosting since before .Mac and beats both Little Oak and A1 hosting on price and features