Website! .mac with iWeb or Rapidweaver?

Hi. I am building a website in iWeb. I have a domain name through godaddy.com.

I chose iWeb to design because I have the program. I haven't put a lot of time into it yet.

What I want to know is: is a .mac account, with forwarding and masking from godaddy.com the best option for me? A few words about me.

I am a musician and producer. There will be music and video at my website. I am certain I can keep the size under the 1GB .mac account offers... but I want to make sure this is a good option for me in terms of the forwarding, and the bandwidth .mac offers.

If you feel this may not be my best option...

Are there any other web hosting services that allow me to upload from iWeb created website?

If not, are there any other programs that allow you to build a website and then upload to either their site or to Godaddy.com?

I actually have Rapidweaver 3.5...which I never thought I would use. Does that program deal well with audio and video files (all Quicktime; I make music in Logic, video in Final Cut Pro). If I did use Rapidweaver, would that allow me to be hosted directly by godaddy.com?

I would still like to have a blog, password protection, and the things a .mac account offers me. Are these things available when you are hosted at a site out in the PC centric world, with a website created on something like Rapidweaver? Or is a mac user best off with iWeb and .mac?


Thank you very much for any replies!

I used a .Mac account, an iWeb website, and Godaddy URL forwarding for almost a year with no problems. The site had a few high-res images and a demo movie, around 100MB.

I've since outgrown all of that and moved to Dreamhost. I've swapped my domain over for $10 and I'm now much, much happier with my website. I'm able to run server side scripts (PHP, MYSQL), the website loads much more quickly, and the site is getting better exposure now that it's not a masked URL.

I also ditched iWeb for Dreamweaver and an HTML/CSS tutorial book.

surfwax95 said:

I used a .Mac account, an iWeb website, and Godaddy URL forwarding for almost a year with no problems. The site had a few high-res images and a demo movie, around 100MB.

I've since outgrown all of that and moved to Dreamhost. I've swapped my domain over for $10 and I'm now much, much happier with my website. I'm able to run server side scripts (PHP, MYSQL), the website loads much more quickly, and the site is getting better exposure now that it's not a masked URL.

I also ditched iWeb for Dreamweaver and an HTML/CSS tutorial book.

Click to expand...

Okay, Surfwax, thanks so much for writing. It's helpful to know you were successful with godaddy>.mac for a while anyway.




If I uploaded from Dreamweaver to Dreamhost, could you still have a blog, password protection, hyperlinks, and all that stuff? And update and edit whenever you like? Thanks again very much.

If anyone else has any comments or advice, don't let Surfwax95's thoughtful post deter you! I want to hear from you.

I have both a godaddy web domain and I tried the .mac account trial. I used iWeb to throw up a quick blog, but I decided that I would never keep at it, so I took it down.

I still continue to use Dreamweaver as my main web design software and I upload via FTP to my godaddy domain, works perfectly!

Thanks for responding, todd51! I spent most of the day yesterday trying out software Rapidweaver trial, a friend's Dreamweaver, and iWeb, and researching web hosting, and what i've found is:

i like iWeb. It just seems to work for me and the kind of website i want to set up. Short of learning Dreamweaver, iWeb seems to be the right solution for me.

But, i don't want a .mac account. I don't think i want it. I think i want to go with Dreamhost, as Surfwax did. I like what they offer for the money. I think it's great.

What i want to do then, is set up a website that features my music, some pictures, has links to different pages depending on what your needs or interests are regarding the music. A page with videos.

The ability to email me. Also, sometime soon, i would like to give users the ability to click on a link, make a paypal payment, and then download a video!

The ability to post comments. I understand I lose this when I use iWeb, but what if I installed Wordpress?

Thanks again to all.

What I'm seeing for you is this:

Dreamhost as server.
iWeb as main website creation.
Wordpress for blogging.

Dreamhost provides a free and easy way of installing Wordpress onto your server, once you purchase it.

I have a discount code to Dreamhost, if you decide to go with them, I can send you that code.

Christopher said:

Thanks for responding, todd51! I spent most of the day yesterday trying out software Rapidweaver trial, a friend's Dreamweaver, and iWeb, and researching web hosting, and what i've found is:

i like iWeb. It just seems to work for me and the kind of website i want to set up. Short of learning Dreamweaver, iWeb seems to be the right solution for me.

But, i don't want a .mac account. I don't think i want it. I think i want to go with Dreamhost, as Surfwax did. I like what they offer for the money. I think it's great.

What i want to do then, is set up a website that features my music, some pictures, has links to different pages depending on what your needs or interests are regarding the music. A page with videos.

The ability to email me. Also, sometime soon, i would like to give users the ability to click on a link, make a paypal payment, and then download a video!

The ability to post comments. I understand I lose this when I use iWeb, but what if I installed Wordpress?

Thanks again to all.

Click to expand...

iWeb is fantastic with the .mac account, there's no doubt about that. The publish feature is just awesome and as easy as you can imagine, rather than uploading all the information via FTP. If you like the way iWeb works and are happy with the simplicity, then by far keep up with it!

I would have kept up with it, but I personally don't feel the need to buy a .mac account. I don't like using iWeb with my godaddy account becuase I don't like the way iWeb automatically organizes the files.

surfwax95 said:

What I'm seeing for you is this:

Dreamhost as server.
iWeb as main website creation.
Wordpress for blogging.

Dreamhost provides a free and easy way of installing Wordpress onto your server, once you purchase it.

I have a discount code to Dreamhost, if you decide to go with them, I can send you that code.

Click to expand...

That's exactly what I'm seeing for me. Thanks, surfwax95. Talk soon.

I don't know about you guys. Although, Im sure alot of you will agree that its better to learn and understand the code first. Become comfortable with it. Of course you can do this over time.

The main benefits that I found were firstly I knew what exactly was going on with the source code and secondly .... You just feel good about it!

I've been using iweb for my personal website since january 2007. and it does work well. but I don't have the comment box for people to drop-off their comment.
Then, I knew rapid weaver. but can you guys help me, how to collaborate iweb and rapid weaver? I mean, I'm very comfortable using iweb, and don't plan to change that (since I really don't have knowledge about web programming - that's why I love iweb).

Thanks before..

I am a big fan of both RapidWeaver and WordPress. Not so much a fan of iWeb. I don't think iWeb is a serious contender as of yet. Once it is, I will be sure to jump on board there as well.

If you have RapidWeaver 3.5 you can publish nearly every form of media with the plugins available, especially quicktime. I am also on the beta team for 3.6 and the new features are incredible WRT blogging, theme modification, etc...

WordPress is certainly powerful too and there is an unbelievable plugin development community so if there is something you dream of doing with WordPress, there is sure to be a plugin for it. I wouldn't even limit WordPress to being just a blogging tool either as most moderately creative people can twist it to do just about anything they like.

iWeb is not nearly as flexible as either of the above tools, but it is somewhat easy to use and does come with iLife.

I used to use .Mac, now MobileMe, with RapidWeaver but always had problems. I now use DV Host's RapidWeaver hosting and find it much better, and it's cheaper than MobileMe!

I moved my email over to Google Apps, so I have my own email addresses at my own domain.

Unless you really want to keep a MobileMe account, I think DV Host works better with RapidWeaver.