what's iWeb like for building a website

[morghana]

Hi.....i just saw it's possible to build a site and not be obliged to publish it as a mac account - can upload to a server

Has anyone used it. Any feedback welcome
I noticed it has 3 limitations

If you don't publish your site to .Mac, these features are unavailable:

Password protection
Hit counter
Slideshow with viewing controls

I need a password protected area on my site and hit counter. Is there a way to add these


thankyou

[Giaguara]

Those are normally set by isp - or by something else.
Try getting some third party hit counter.

[ecirtap]

If your webserver is running on Apache, you can set up pasword protection from there. (My beloved webhost, http://www.dreamhost.com, let you do this in their control panel.)

A bit off-topic, but FYI: hit counters are in the industry considered a no-no (if they are displayed to the site visitors).

patrice
http://www.patriceschneider.com/apple-osx/blog/

[mdnky]

The code output by iWeb is almost as nasty as that output by FrontPage. Definitely not a good thing, but it could be worse I guess.

There's tons of ways to password protect a page, the manner in which you choose just depends on what you're trying to accomplish. For simple things, a .htaccess based password (Apache based servers) might be sufficient.

As far as a slideshow, there's probably a comparable script out there that'll do something similar. Coppermine is a photo gallery script that has a slideshow feature built-in. To make transfers easy there is a plug-in called CopperExport which allows you to directly transfer photos from iPhoto into the CopperMine gallery—works great.

[Thank The Cheese]

Originally Posted by ecirtap

...My beloved webhost, http://www.dreamhost.com, let you do this in their control panel...

Hey ecirtap. I'm actually looking for a web host at the moment. I had a look at Dreamhost's site. Some freakin amazing deals. actually, seems a little too good to be true. Are there any hidden charged, contracts, or limitations that aren't obvious?

I mean, 20GB storage, unlimited databases, a free domain...all 7.95 per month?! And the sorage space goes up 160MB per week, too! That's sounds dodgy.

Are they above board?

Originally Posted by mdnky

The code output by iWeb is almost as nasty as that output by FrontPage. Definitely not a good thing, but it could be worse I guess.

Well, any auto-generated HTML is going to challenge web standards. Do they use tables or CSS? please tell me it doesn't generate tables. please!!



as for the hitcounter...unless your website is a tribute to the 1990's, dont use them.

[ecirtap]

Hi "Thank The Cheese"

>Hey ecirtap. I'm actually looking for a web host at the moment. I had a
>look at Dreamhost's site. Some freakin amazing deals. actually, seems a
>little too good to be true. Are there any hidden charged, contracts, or
>limitations that aren't obvious?

Believe me: no hidden charges, nothing. (They'll only start charging extra if you go over your bandwidth limit and the likes: like any other webhost.)

Also, the domain you register is *owned by you*, not by them! (A lot of the dodgy webhosts offer free domain-registration, but register it in their name, so if you ever want to move to another host, you'll have to buy the domain off them!)

The Dreamhost people are really cool; plus the customer support is also good - you will usually get a reply within less than 24 hours. (Sometimes they are even online and you can IM with them!)

>I mean, 20GB storage, unlimited databases, a free domain...all 7.95 per
>month?! And the sorage space goes up 160MB per week, too! That's
>sounds dodgy.

They do come up with all those weird deals, but they are for real!

The best thing also: you have a 97-day money back guarantee!!! So, nothing to lose, really...!

>Are they above board?

I have been with them for more than 2 years, and so far been very happy.

Not too long ago they changed the deal to "unlimited websites/URLs per account" (I am hosting 10+ URLs in the one account), so I wanted to move all my stuff over from account number 2 to account number 1, so I'd have only one account, which they said they'd do for me at $ 100/hour - eventually they did it: for free!!! (I only had to upload the websites data via FTP again, but all mail accounts, etc. they moved over for me, no re-configuring necessary.) :-)

In case you do decide to sign up with dreamhost.com, you could do me a huge favour and do so via my rewards link:

http://www.dreamhost.com/rewards.cgi?ecirtap

Even if you do not want to do so via my rewards link: I can still recommend them big time!

If you need more info: let me know.

patrice

[mdnky]

Originally Posted by Thank The Cheese

Well, any auto-generated HTML is going to challenge web standards. Do they use tables or CSS? please tell me it doesn't generate tables. please!!

Its CSS based, but its nasty looking; and semantics aren't just thrown out the window...they're launched somewhere into another galaxy. There's actually a few Mac based programs like this already and their code, while not perfect, is way better. I'd say they either rushed it to get it out, or they didn't even consider the issues such things cause.

Example pages from iWeb:

• http://theubergeeks.net/iweb/Welcome.html
• http://theubergeeks.net/iweb/Blog/Blog.html
• http://macteens.com/media/iWeb/macte.../Blog%202.html
• http://web.mac.com/samkass/iWeb/DBAD...h/Archive.html
• http://web.mac.com/bryanhooper/iWeb/...A/Welcome.html
• http://web.mac.com/samkass/iWeb/DBAD...F20CD6B8D.html

Some reviews:

• http://whatdoiknow.org/archives/002582.shtml
• http://businesslogs.com/technology/i...e_is_awful.php

On a side note...there is a program out there that seems to have been around for a while going by the name of iWeb Composer. Wonder what they think about it...

[Thank The Cheese]

@ ecirtap

thanks for the info! I'll most certainly use the rewards link and refer you if I sign up with them. Would never have known about them if it weren't for your post.


@ mdnky

good lord, you weren't kidding about the messy code mdnky. Seems to create new DIVs for every paragraph, and re-define all the styles each time. There is 5 times the amount of code there should be (at least)

This site, for example, uses 54 individual DIVs...it could have been done with 2!

I stand corrected. :/