iWeb and publishing

Hi,

I'm completely new to this so bear with me. I want to build a simple website just for sharing thoughts, photos etc with family and friends. I have no coding knowledge at all so need to be able to put pages together in the simplest possible way. I started to play around with iWeb and liked it but now that MobileMe has disappeared (I was not a member before it went) it seems that some features (such as blog search and photo comments) won't work. So what is a rank amateur supposed to do?

Thanks

It's a shame but Apple has pretty much abandoned iWeb. You can still build sites with it, save them and then manually upload them to the host of your choice, but that's not nearly as easy as it used to be with MobileMe.

It sounds like you just want to a setup a basic blog. Fortunately, that can be done relatively easily with WordPress. And if you want to stick to iWeb for the actual creation, check out this article:

How To: Import your iWeb Blog to Wordpress | Maciverse

Thanks for that. I had a look at the article but it seems pretty complex to a complete beginner. Maybe I need a re-think.

I created my website on iWeb and host it on a service other than MobileMe. For ease of use, you can't beat iWeb; it's a shame Apple seems to be in the process of discontinuing it. I'd still recommend it if you're new to web development or value ease of use.

For publishing, I save it as a folder. I then upload it to the host using FireFTP, which is a plugin for Firefox. It's pretty simple to use and eliminates quirky uploading software or controls many hosts will give you.

I'd imagine Apple will come up with some sort of cloud-based alternative to iWeb sometime this year if they do decide to cease development of the iLife component for good.

Apple is not very likely to revive iWeb or anything like it. Other programs such as Rapidweaver and Wordpress have far surpassed what you can do with a personal blog on iWeb, and Apple never intended for iWeb to be used for business sites.