With the introduction of iWeb '09, Apple pumped up the volume on its entry-level website authoring tool, making it more functional and flexible for novice users while adding enough power -- multi-site publishing options, FTP upload to unlock users from MobileMe, more capable RSS/podcasting tools and widgets, and links to social media sites like Facebook -- to merit a second look alongside midrange/prosumer apps like Sandvox, RapidWeaver, Flux & Freeway. Since the app is included in iLife '09 and bundled with every new Mac, it's likely to be the authoring app of first resort for many Mac users.

If you want to get the most out of your iWeb '09 site, we're proud to say there's one guy who has your back: our own Steve Sande, who has revised his Take Control of iWeb ebook for the latest iLife version. The $10US digital title (also sold in printed form for $23.99) reviews all the new features, covers advanced tricks and techniques, and walks the reader through the creation of a sample site (online here). Steve did a great interview about the book on Chuck Joiner's MacVoices podcast last week.

In the interest of sharing the iWeb love (and thanks to Tonya & Adam Engst at TidBITS Publishing), we've got an exclusive discount on Steve's ebook just for TUAW readers. Follow this referral link to place your order (be sure to click the big orange "Buy eBook" button) and you'll get a 30% discount off the ebook; it's normally $10US, but for you? $7. 143 pages + an appendix worth of iWeb goodness -- enjoy!

If you just can't get enough of books from current and former TUAW team members, you can check out Steve's guide to making the most of your classic iPod, Scott McNulty's WordPress book, or multiple titles on iPhone development and maximizing your iPhone/iPod touch from Erica Sadun.

Apple has begun sending an email to MobileMe customers about a pending service change. Specifically, .Mac HomePage will be discontinued on July 7, 2009. While existing pages will remain live at their current addresses for MobileMe users, they'll no longer be able to edit them or add new ones. If you want to delete an existing page between now and then, simply visit the HomePage application.

Groups will also be discontinued on July 7 when Apple shuts down all group email address, group HomePages, message boards and iDisk "Groups" folders. Your data will be safe, however, as Apple will move the "Groups" folder to a new folder on your iDisk called "Groups Archive."

While I never used Groups, it's kind of sad to see HomePage go. I can remember building homepages on my old 333mhz G3 iMac. It was so easy to make a quick-and-dirty site for sharing photos, etc. with grandma. No, it wasn't the cleanest code ever produced, but it was fun back in the day.

Of course, Apple recommends that customers consider MobileMe Galleries and iWeb as an alternative. You can get the full run-down here.

Earlier today, Apple released updates for iWork '09, iWeb, iMovie, iPhoto and iLife Support. As usual, the cryptic descriptions of each disclose very little about their contents. Along with the usual "...overall application stability improvements," the iWeb update fixes FTP issues (what those are we don't know) and iPhoto fixes issues with Faces, Places, photo sharing, and slideshows.

You can grab them now via Software Update. They range in size from 1.4MB (iLife Support) to 88.8MB (iPhoto Update). A restart will be required. As usual, let us know if anything goes wonky after installation.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

Along with the other changes to iLife '09, iWeb was quietly upgraded to version 3. While the changes aren't as dramatic as those seen in iPhoto and iMovie, they do move iWeb further down the path to being a good web design tool for beginning to intermediate users.

I'm in the process of writing a new edition of an iWeb book, and I took a month to go through iWeb in detail during my research. Click the Read More link below to see what's new in iWeb '09.

Here's a useful corner of Apple's enormous website. The "Find Out How" pages feature tutorials on things like Mac and wireless basics as well as web, music and MobileMe tips.

We've written about it before, but Apple has recently added tutorials for iLife '09 apps, including iPhoto and an iLife '09 overview. The tips are super handy, and even an old salt like me learned something new. For example, did you know you could publish to FTP with iWeb? I didn't (of course, I never use iWeb).

Of course, you can check out our own Mac 101 series as well. Here's to education!

While it's a bit too late for our Back-To-School series, here's an announcement for those in education (student, teacher, parent, or administrator) who use iWeb to create school or personal websites.

Jumsoft has announced five new iWeb themes specifically for education. The iWeb Education Themes run the gamut from Primary (at right) and Teens themes for younger students, Cool Class for everyone, and College and University for those in the post-secondary educational world.

Each theme consists of a number of templates for the various page types found in iWeb: Welcome, About Me, Photos, My Albums, Movies, Blog, Podcast, and Blank.

The themes are available for US$9.99 each, or as a package for US$29.99. iWeb 2 is required to use the new themes.

Although I've written a book about iWeb, I often tell my clients to avoid using it for their websites if they're planning on hosting anywhere but on MobileMe. Why? When you post to MobileMe from iWeb, you "Publish" and your site is uploaded. Minor changes to a site only take a few seconds to upload, since iWeb uploads only the changed files to your web server. That doesn't happen when publishing to other servers. Instead, you publish to a local folder, and then usually upload the entire folder to your web server. That can take a long time with a large site.

Plyxim's Easy iWeb Publisher 3.0.3 fixes that problem. The shareware ($7 donation requested) application makes it simple to publish to any web host. It's an ftp client that takes the local folder you've published your iWeb site to, compares it to the folder on your web server, and then uploads just the files that have changed.

I've found that Easy iWeb Publisher works much faster than most dedicated ftp clients when syncing iWeb files that have been changed, added, or deleted. Until Apple fixes iWeb '08 to make publishing easier for people who don't use MobileMe, this is a great way to work with your own hosting.

According to Apple Support documents, personal domains will be kept intact with MobileMe. Blogger Sean Sperte noticed a "personal domain" option while watching the MobileMe quick tour. That prompted some investigation which led to this support document. Sure enough, it confirms that .Mac personal domains will remain untouched by the change:

"...If you have a personal domain setup for your iWeb site, it will continue to work without changing any settings at your registrar."

Thanks, Apple!

[Via Geek&Mild]

Just as Firefox users were upgrading to version 3 last week, many people started to miss their iWeb-created galleries as they just disappeared. Well, one iWeb user has been doing extra work to fix Apple's? (erm... Mozilla's?) problem. Joshua Ochs has posted an in-depth article on his site describing exactly what is going on -- he also provides a fix in the form of a script to patch iWeb.

Joshua says that the problem is neither with Apple nor Mozilla, but with a JavaScript library called "Prototype" which is used by iWeb. Right now there are two ways to fix the problem (neither of which are supported by Apple): you can use the information on Apple's Discussion Board, or you can download Joshua's script -- both seem to work and are free.

[via ArsTechnica]

iWeb 2 (the iLife '08 version, that is) comes with an assortment of 26 different themes, but if you're tired of trying to mod the Comic Book theme for your new blog, you may want to look at ten new iWeb themes from Jumsoft.

There's a good assortment of styles in the Jumsoft collection. I personally find the Teddy theme to be a bit twee and Flowered World is too feminine for my taste, but YMMV. My personal faves from the new collection are the sparse and paper-like Simple Info, and the pastel and plastic Business. An installer app is included to make sure that your new themes end up in the proper place on your Mac.

Jumsoft sells each theme for $9.99 or you can buy the entire pack of ten themes at a 30% discount for $69.99. If you're an iWeb fan and want some additional design options, take a look at the new themes.

In addition to releasing the iWork update last night, the updated status on MacBook Air and Apple TV today; Apple just now issued an update for iWeb '08. In Apple's normal long-winded explanation of the update, they say "This update addresses compatibility with Mac OS X."

The 17.2 MB iWeb 2.0.3 update can be downloaded through Software Update (Apple Menu > Software Update) or by downloading the update package from Apple's support downloads website.

Thanks, Adam!

The folks at Apple have had a busy day. iWeb 2.0.2 is now available, with the following changes:

"This update to iWeb addresses issues with upgrading iWeb 1.x websites, and fixes some common publishing problems, and supports general compatibility issues."

I haven't experienced any issues with iWeb. If you have - and if this update provides the fix - let us know.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

The new app smell has hardly left iWeb '08 and already Software Update brings a dot rev for it. iWeb 2.0.1 'addresses issues with upgrading and publishing iWeb 1.x websites.' Rather terse, as most of the recent Apple update descriptions have been lately.

If you've been having trouble with iWeb 1.x websites in iWeb '08, this update is for you. Download here or through Software Update.

Thanks, Robert.

For most users, iWeb keeps things simple by creating and managing a single, all-encompassing site file stored in your home directory. The downside for anyone who would like to create more than one site with iWeb, however, is that the app doesn't offer any easy way to do so; users have to drill into ~/Library/Application Support/iWeb/ and either manually move or delete the single site file in that folder, or pick up an app like Multisite for iWeb or iWebSites. Both of these apps allow you to easily create independent iWeb site files that can be published to different local folders and subsequently uploaded with external FTP apps to anywhere you chose.

Fortunately, both apps have just been updated to work with the new iWeb '08, though note that iWebSites is at a 2.2 alpha stage, as the developer isn't positive all the kinks have been worked out yet. While I haven't used either of these apps, a quick perusal of their features sets reveals that iWebSites has a unique trick up its sleeve: it can merge two different iWeb site files into one, though it apparently can take a while. Anyone have experience with these apps?

Multisite for iWeb is available from Clarkwood Software for $19.95 with a demo available, while iWebSites is offered as donationware from Cocoadrillo Software.

I need to come right out and say it: I am really, really excited for iWeb and all the new .Mac changes. With the first version of iWeb, Apple didn't seem to quite 'get it' yet; everything you could build into your pages had to more or less come from your Mac desktop. In a web 2.0 world though, that just doesn't cut it for so many aspiring iWeb users. Many of us have Twitter accounts, pictures on Flickr and stuff we create at zillion of other sites that we'd like to integrate into a personal website, and iWeb 2.0 reveals that Apple finally understands this.


Finally melding the power and ease iWeb brings to publishing your Mac's media with the rest of the internet is iWeb's arguably biggest new feature: Web Widgets. While this page is a little skimpy on details, we can now embed code snippets from the endless community sites cropping up on the web into our iWeb pages. As an awesome bonus I can't wait to see in action, iWeb also offers a live preview mode that will include these widgets, so you can see your site in action and be sure everything gels before publishing.


This feature doesn't get its own page at the new iWeb site, but hopeful iWeb power users will likely appreciate the fact that you can now publish your sites to personal domains. Details are even slimmer for this one, but it sounds like Apple finally shared some of Mac OS X's built-in FTP abilities with iWeb, allowing us to set up our own personal sites for one-click publishing.