New Mac User » .Mac

Use MobileMe (.Mac) To Host Multiple iWeb Sites

Matt — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 02:02:19 +0000

In order to have MobileMe (me.com) host multiple domains you will need to have a basic understanding of how to use domain forwarding. I want to let everyone know upfront that this process may or may not be supported by apple, but it works very well.

For my example I will be using my domain registrar GoDaddy.com, your register may differ bit in the process but for the most part it will be the same.

For this walkthrough I am going to assume that you have not started anything. The first thing you will want to do is register your domains. As I have stated, I use Godaddy.com. If you want to use Go Daddy I would suggest using a coupon code, either GB3 or Todd. These codes don’t help me but they do help podcasters I like to listen to. One you have your domains registered you are ready to get started designing your sites in iWeb. For this example, I am going to use 2 domains I have had for awhile but have never used, Mac101.info and Mac101.org.

After you open iWeb you will need to create your 1st site. For my sites I am going to use 2 very different themes that I have on review the Jumsoft.com’s theme package. For Mac101.info I used the Paradise Bluebird theme (see the screenshot below)

To add the second Site to iWeb, all you need to do is right click in the page area on the left of the program and select “New Site”. For the second MobileMe hosted site I used Mac101.org. I decided to use the Business Bright theme from the Jumsoft.com iWeb theme collection. ( See the screenshot)

Once you have your sites ready to publish, head into the File menu and select “Publish to MobileMe”. The process is pretty straight forward, but it may take some time to complete so go get a soda and come back.

Once the sites are pushed to MobileMe, iWeb will display a message telling you its done. It’s a good idea to use the “Visit Site Now” button on the message. This will give you the information you will need to forward the domain. You will notice it will take you to the first site you setup. For me that was http://web.me.com/promptcs/Paradise_Bluebird/Welcome.html

Now we need to go over to Go Daddy , or your domain registrar. You will need to log into your account and navigate to the domain settings. One you are in the domain settings area click on the domain you are going to forward first. I am going to work on the Paradise site first so I am going to click on the Mac101.info. This is what the screen should look like. ( I have blurred out a lot to protect myself.)

Then you will need to hit the forward button on the top. It will display the box as seen below. You will need to copy and paste the entire http: link that iWeb sent you to earlier. Again for me this is http://web.me.com/promptcs/Paradise_Bluebird/Welcome.html. Then select the “302 Move Permanently ” radio button. Next you will need to click on the masking tab. You may want to enable masking so that your url will show up as your domain not as the url of MobileMe. If you want the tab to read anything special or you want any extra meta date entered then you should enter it here. Once you finish you will need to click “OK”. This forward may take some time to process, it is not immediate, so give it up to an hour before you get nervous. Test it out and you should see your iWeb site. Mac101.info

Now that we have the first domain forwarded we need to get the second domain done. We will need to get the web address for the second site. It is not hard to get at all it is the same as the first with the difference being the Title of the site. My first was Paradise_Bluebird my second site is Business_bright. That would make the web address http://web.me.com/promptcs/Business_Bright/Welcome.html. All I need to do now is follow the instructions all over again. Mac101.org

I hope each of you are able to get this to work with your registrar, if you have any problems leave a comment below so I can try to help you out.

UPDATE: If you are having an issue with your www.yoursite.com not going to the new site then you need to make sure that your www. cname is pointing to the at record or @ in godaddy. if it is not just edit the cname and type @ in the points to area.

Similar Posts:

Get .Mac for 69.99 From Amazon

Matt — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 04:01:46 +0000

Did you know that you can still get .Mac from Amazon.com for 69.99. By the time you receive it and sign in the new ME.com could be ready to roll out. If not you will be ready at the time of launch and not have to wait on Mobile Me to get shipped to you. You will also save 30.00 on the new service. If you get the new ME.com service let us know your address so we can send you a line.

Get .Mac from Amazon Here.

Similar Posts:

Use iWeb To Share Your Family Photos

Matt — Thu, 29 May 2008 20:00:56 +0000

If your family is spread out and the best way for you to share your pictures is on the web then this is for you. I love to share my pictures of my family online but don’t like not having the control over them that I may have to give sites like flickr and others like it. In this post I am going to show you how to use iWeb to take total control over how you share your photos online.

The first thing we need to do is set up a simple iweb site so lets open up iWeb and get started.

Once you have iWeb opened lets create a new site for our photos. Start by selecting a theme and in that theme the “My Albums” page type. For my example I am going to use Darkroom.

After you have the new page opened lets make the page our own. First I would double click on the Page title on the left and Rename the page. I made mine “Chandler Family”. Next you should edit the text on the page to make it what you want. I am going to leave it alone for the most part because I don’t want to confuse anyone.

After you have customized it as much as you want it is time to start adding photos. (This is a good time to save the file if you have not yet so you don’t mess up the work you have done to this point). Open the Media Browser by clicking on the “Media” button on the bottom of the preview area. Make sure that the photo tab is selected. If you have your photos organized by events then just drag the event you want to share to the iWeb preview area right on top of the blank album. You will notice that there will be a new page added under the “My Album” page, or what ever you renamed it to. This is what will be displayed when someone clicks on the album page.

If you want to change the lay out of the My albums page just select the first album and a H.U.D. will display titled “Media Index”. In the Media Index you can change:

Number of columns
the animation effect that is used when someone mouses over the album, the skim effect is the same that iphoto has when you mouse over the event.
Whether or not there will be an RSS feed for this page (Allow Subscribe)
Whether or not you want the title of the album and the number of photos to be displayed
You can even choose what the album look like on the page (Index style). This is fun to play with, each template uses different ones as a default.

Now that the page is set up, oh yeah, save again, lets get some more albums in there. To do that open the Media button again and find the event or album you want and just drag it over to the preview area.

Now we need to deal with each of the photo pages that have been generated. Select one of the photo pages and select one of the photos on the page to bring up the “Photo Grid”. In the Photo grid we will be able to customize the page to our liking. There are many of the same options as the Media Index. In the Photo Grid you can:

Select the number of columns
Spacing of the photos
How many of the photos will load on each page
The amount of caption lines you want to display (I set mine to 0 because I don’t rename my photos and the names look funny)
Change how the photo is displayed on the page using the Album Style drop down

You will need to do this for all of the photo pages you have made. For good design try to keep them all the same. For example if you set the captions to 0 lines do it on all the pages.

There are a few other things that we can do to help make the site better for your family. I would love to let them comment on the pictures. To do this we need to allow the comments on the site. This is a very easy thing to do in iWeb. All you will need to do is open the inspector and make sure that you are on the photo tab. Move down to the moments section and check the “Allow Comments” box. If you want to enable or disable any of the other features that go with the comments do so now. After you check the “Allow Comments” box you will be presented with a confirmation window. Make sure you read and agree with it and press the OK button.

There is one other thing you may want to consider, if you want to make sure that you and your family are the only ones who can view and comment your photos and such then you will want to enable passwords.

To enable a password for the site (yes it is the entire site) you will need to open the inspector. Make sure you are on the Site tab (it’s the blue globe on the very left side of the inspector) and click the password button. Putting a check on the “Make my published site private” will enable the password boxes. Just enter a Username and password and you are ready to go. If you have any questions about the password feature the “help” link has a real nice explanation for you. The password feature is not available unless you use .Mac

Now all you have to do is publish this site to your .Mac account or your private domain. I put this one out for you to look at (newmacuser.com/family).

Similar Posts:

iWeb with Godaddy Domain

Matt — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 04:23:27 +0000

Here at the New Mac User we have secured a lot of domain with our hosting Company GoDaddy.com. This past week we wanted to set up one of them with the iWeb personal domain option. We ran into a few snags so i thought i would post how we go it to work. If you have not done so already you will need to place your personal domain information into iWeb(this is done in iWebs File > Set Up Personal Domain). then you can get started below.

Head to GoDaddy.com and log in.
Click on my domain names.
Click the link for your domain.
Click on Total DNS Control and MX Records
Click on the little pencil to the right of your “www” cname.
Change “@” to “web.mac.com”
Click OK.

When you have finished this anyone who types www.yourdomain.com they will get what you have hosted at you .Mac account.

if you want to make it so your users can skip the www part and just type yourdomain.com onto the address bar do these steps as well.

Navigate to “Total DNS Control and MX Records”
Make sure that you are on the forwarding tab of the Menu.
Select enable and type in your entire domain name that is being forwarded, in this case it would be http://www.yourdomainname.com.
Wait an hour (www.GoDaddy.com says it can take an hour or so for the servers to make all the changes)

If you are trying to find out how to host multiple domains with .Mac then you need this article. Use MobileMe (.Mac) To Host Multiple Domains

Similar Posts:

Use .Mac “Personal Domains” Without Using iWeb

Matt — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 15:22:54 +0000

You can use the dotMac personal domain service without having to actually use iWeb ’08. To do so, simply follow the instructions on the Right about using Personal Domains. Once you’ve got as far as setting up your domain with your registrar, you can use any software you wish (RapidWeaver, Sandvox, Hand coding even) to create your own site.

Simply navigate to your iDisk and make sure you place all your html files in the following folder: iDisk » Web » Sites. Anything in this Sites folder will be used by the personal domain service. I’ve made a simple ‘hello world’ HTML file and placed it in the Sites folder. As long as there is at least an index.html file there, it works correctly.

Similar Posts:

.Mac Worth the $99 now?

Matt — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 14:09:06 +0000

As many of you know I have been a long time .Mac hater. Well today may have just changed my mind. With all the new features that .Mac is now giving us,10 GB storage to start with, it may just be worth the $99.00 a year, 8.25 a month. I realize that godaddy.com hosting is more like 3.99 a month, if you buy a year at one time there is a discount, and you get 100 gig storage and a whole host of other features. But for 8.25 a month you get you an @.mac e-mail address, the new web gallery(which i am very much looking foward to playing with), 10 gig storage, and when leapord ships the Movable mac stuff that was explained in the last Jobs Keynote. The other really nice feature is that it will work better with the new iWeb in ilife ’08. I am not sure if it is worth the money right now but I am sure going to get my moneys worth in the next few weeks when I get my new iLife and iWork applications in the mail. Keep your eyes on the feed and watch for all the stuff .Mac may have to offer.

Similar Posts:

Add Google’s Analytics Service to iWeb sites

Matt — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 17:39:20 +0000

The folks over at Echoone.com have created a really cool way to add the Google Analytics Service to your iWeb sites. This service will work as long as you don’t use the .Mac service to host your web site. Follow the link to get the program and step by step directions. Add Google Analytics

Similar Posts:

Publishing websites without .Mac!

Matt — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 13:21:17 +0000

As a follow up to the .Mac ical replacement we postedIi found this again at the A New Mac Tip Every Day Weblog. This one is not as easy but it is also a good way to beat the 79.99 of .Mac (if you buy it from Amazon.com) This does not really replace what .Mac gives you in the way of the cool little buttons like the site counter and e-mail. But who really needs that? And is is also very easy to reproduce in code form.

Another tip about how to use your Mac without .Mac. iWeb was really created around .Mac and the one-click way of publishing a website is done with .Mac. iWeb is still a fantastic website design application and you can basically do everything without a .Mac account with the “Publish to a folder” function. Apple didn’t really have the choice of including this kind of feature because they couldn’t have advertised iWeb as a full application f it required a subscription. There are still a lot of people who buy .Mac because of this kind of one-click publishing that is much more elegant than being stuck with dealing with the FTP upload of the folder created by iWeb. A developer came to the rescue by creating this cool app that makes publishing to a server other than .Mac that much more easier. The application is “Easy iWeb Publisher 1.4″. You just have to enter the FTP address with the username and password. There are many options, including per example the upload of only the files that changed. You can save this configuration and next time you upload, it will ask you to choose the configuration within a list of your websites. Screenshot:

Easy iWeb Publisher is a free download and it is available here on MacUpdate.

UPDATE: Check out the next article on iWeb I put up. Its an in-depth look on how to use it for a photo sharing site. Use iWeb To Share Your Family Photos

Similar Posts:

.Mac To Receive Substantial Upgrades Next Month

Matt — Thu, 31 May 2007 19:26:45 +0000

Steve Jobs hinted at substantial upgrades to Apple’s existing .Mac online package during his ‘All Things Digital Appearance’ with Bill Gates. Leopard and iPhone integration might just be the beginning. I can tell you this much I will not renew my subscription unless they really make it worth the 99.95 a year. Oh by the way if you want to pay less for the same thing (either for the first time or to renew) you can go to Amazon. com and Pay 79.99 and they will pay for shipping.

Similar Posts: