.Mac - What is it exactly?

I've had my Mac for a several months now and am loving it and I've had my own website for several years and although I'm perfectly happy with my current host I could use more disc space and the cost of upgrading to their next package puts it's very close to the cost of .Mac with tons more storage but I'm not sure I entirely understand exactly what .Mac is/does.

I know that you can upload photos from iPhoto but I am a bit of a photographer and don't use iPhoto and instead use Aperture. So I guess I can't use the gallery part of .Mac then? Also I know that you can use .Mac to have a gallery and to have a website but it sounds as though they are separate things and would have separate URL's too, is that correct?

When it comes to the website side of things, again I know I can publish straight from iWeb but again I don't use iWeb so can I still use the website side of things? Also does iMac only allow you to run HTML pages, what if you needed PHP, MYSQL, CGI Scripts etc etc?

This might sound dumb but how would anyone find say, someone's gallery on a .Mac account?

I think I already know that .Mac won't be a suitable replacement for my current site but I do have an idea for another one so if anyone has a website on .Mac that they'd like to share I'd like to see it to see what can be achieved and the same goes for anyone's photo gallery.

I have no idea what I would use it for ... I am using the 60 day trial to host html pages I am doing in a course. I thought it was going to be a social network for mac people ... but it won't even let me see Groups. I dunno ...

I use .mac for backing up my preferences and I also just created a website through .mac

Personally I wouldn't recommend it if you want to be "noticed". The only way anyone can see my site is from my signature in forums, if I choose to display it.

Mine's in my siggy.... (not the first one)

I had (or rather my wife had) a .Mac account for a year after we bought our iMac and iBook -- primarily to sync contacts and iCal between the two macs.

After a year it was clear that .Mac is a relatively expensive proposition for what you get, unless you really use all the integrated Mac stuff. Seems that folks that are "serious" about having a website need more than what .Mac offers. I found a separate program that lets me sync my stuff between Macs for $49 one time. And Go Daddy seems to offer a lot more space cheaper. Also, I wanted my own domain name for email, rather than a @mac.com address.

Still -- to each his own. .Mac does integrate very well with all the Mac applications (of course).

dotMac is for getting your Mac digital media online and connected (backup used to be very popular, but the storage space was nowhere near 10GB back then). Yeah, it does allow you to do one-click stuff -- upload photos, sync files w/ iSync, super-simple VNC -- but if you're looking for more flexibility, I don't you'll like it.

I don't believe you can run CGI, PHP, Perl scripts on the server. Definitely not SQL databi

A regular web host (I'm on HostingRails) will give you quite a lot more -- SSH access included -- if you need the additional features.

On how polished and "humane" the service is though, I'd say hosts can't really beat dotMac's integration with OS X. Which reminds me, hosts can actually create their own little clients to make things easier! (*writes down idea*).

Haven't tried it myself, though; all this is based on what I've read.

But yeah, dotMac's basically an online extension of OS X features. Kind of like the iLife of web services.