Making the Switch from iWeb to another Web Host on iWeb ‘09

MobileMe was officially discontinued by Apple as of June 30, 2012 and now, many Apple website owners are wondering what they’re to do. After all, you can no longer publish your website through MobileMe, so you’ll have to find another option, right? Right! It’s sad but true. If you once ran your site through MobileMe, unfortunately you must make the switch. Here’s how you can do it through iWeb ’09 (version 3.0). In order to begin this process, you’ll first need to make sure that the host supports FTP (File Transfer Protocol) before moving on. You’ll also have to make sure that your website is the appropriate size, as deemed by the host.

First open up the software and choose the name of your site from the bar found at the left of the page. If you have more than one site, you’ll need to complete the process one separate time for each website. Start by choosing the first site you want to publish. Once you’ve chosen, a dialogue box known as the “Site Publishing Settings” will pop up. Then from the drop-down menu in the same box choose “FTP Server.”

You’ll then be asked to enter some basic information. Some of it is optional, while others are required. The optional choices will be the site name and the contact email. The information that you’ll be required to fill in is: the FTP server address (which is why you need a host before you begin;) a username you’ll be using when you publish to your web hosting service; a password; a directory and path; and a protocol and port. Keep in mind that even though these last two will be required by a few web hosts, they won’t be required by all.

Now breathe a sigh of relief, because you’re almost done! All that’s left really is to test your website. You can do this by clicking on the “Test Connection” button. This will bring up all of your information all over again so that you can confirm it. Once you’ve made sure that’s everything is okay and looks just as it needs to, you can then publish your site. This can be done by clicking on the “Publish Site” button. Once that’s done, your website should be up and live, and visible by anyone that browses the Internet.

If you’re using an earlier version of iWeb, you can still publish your website using another web host, and it can actually be much simpler. For this all you have to do is open iWeb and choose “Publish to Folder” from the “File” menu. iWeb will then save all of the published results to a folder called “Sites” located in your Mac Home folder. After that you can just upload all those files to the FTP-supported web host you’re using.

Apple’s discontinuation of iWeb and MobileMe has certainly put some kinks in the process of publishing a website for many Apple website owners. But no matter what version of iWeb you were using at the time it was officially cancelled, its’ very easy to switch your files to another web host.