5/27/09
9:39 am

MacMost Now 245: Building a MobileMe Web Site Without iWeb

You don't need to use iWeb to build a Web site in your MobileMe account. All you need to do is use your iDisk and store html files in your Web/Sites folder.

Video Transcript: Hi this is Gary for MacMost Now. In today's episode, lets take a look at how to use MobileMe to create your own web site, but without using iWeb.
So with Mobile Me, you get your own space to create your own website, now usually you would use iWeb to do this, and automobile hooks up with Mobile Me and you can create various pages, blogs and all sorts of things. What if you don't want to use iWeb , what is you just want to use that space ,and put up quick little normal website, and maybe you are used to programming in html. Well you can actually go and do this. Let me show you how.
So assuming you have MobileMe all set up, all you need to do is go to your iDisk which is your complete area for storage inside of MobileMe. It includes everything that s a part of MobileMe but you don't have direct access to it. Go to "Go" and "iDisk" on finder and choose My iDisk , and then this will take you to your iDisk  folder, which looks like its on your computer, but infact its actually up on the internet, at the me.com servers. Ok, so you'll see some similar things here , which you'll see on your computer, things like Documents , folders , music , pictures that kind of a thing. You'll even see a sites folder,  and that looks like it where your website should be, and that's actually how the old .Mac servers used to work. But now with MobileMe, its actually in the web folder. Once you click on that, you'll find several folders inside, possibility depending upon what you've done with it already. In there, there'll be a sites folder , and this is your actual sites folder, where your real web space for your MobileMe account is located. Now maybe its empty , here i have got something in it because i've been using it already. Now in your web browser you can get to your own homepage, like going to web.me.com/(your)username, now there's nothing there at all, not even index at html page , you are going to get something that looks like this. So what you want to do is create a index in an html file, that goes right in there, and we are going to that by going and working on text edit , and in text edit , we are going to make sure we are in text mode and not Rich text mode. You look in format here, it say 'Make Rich text' , so we know we are in the other side of things , we are in the Plain text mode. We are going to go ahead and put in some text. We are not even going to go ahead and worry about html at this point, and we are going to save , and then we are going to go ahead and put this in the iDisk folder, inside Web , inside Sites, and you are going to do this by clicking on the iDisk icon right here, and then navigating to it and you are going to save it as Index.html.
Now we go back here , and reload the web page, and we'll find there's the little page we put  there. Now we can go ahead and replace that with some proper html pages, with all the formatting and all the proper html headers and everything like  that , and you can go ahead and build a website with more links and more things inside of it, and build it your own way  with raw html or using another tool and uploading the files to this space. You want to be careful, coz since this an essential way to go ahead and create websites inside of MobileMe, things can change, like for instance , it used to be in the sites folder, now it's in the Web/ Sites folder. So you want to keep up to date with things on MobileMe, if you want to go ahead and use the web spaces this way. Hopefully it should remain this way and these types of sites created this way should continue to work , or should atleast work if you just maintain them. 
Another thing you might want to do is set up your own personal domain so instead of going to web.me.com/username, you can actually go to a real domain name. And you go to episode 204 MacMost Now for more information about how to do that.
Hope you find this useful , until next time this is Gary Rosenzweig with MacMost Now.

Comments: 26 Responses to “MacMost Now 245: Building a MobileMe Web Site Without iWeb”

15 years ago

Hi this really cool, but I'm working with php and I want to upload my page only with php, how do I connect to the php server or can I do that?

Gary Rosenzweig

15 years ago

You can't really use PHP with MobileMe. You want a more traditional Web host that supports PHP.

15 years ago

i'm trying to take the tv shows i do for my mass comm workshop and put them on itunes so people can download them for free.so basically i just need mobile me right? which will give me my URL feed since i've already built stuff up through garageband

Gary Rosenzweig

15 years ago

You could use MobileMe for that yes. There is an iWeb option to set up a podcast and you could do it that way. You could also use just about any blogging service to create a podcast as well -- Blogger, WordPress, etc. I super-easy way to do it would be to just use Blip.tv.

peter Everett

15 years ago

I have a web folder and a sites folder, both at the root level of my iDisk - but no sites folder inside web.... I want to put my own index.html page up - where should it go?

thanks!

Gary Rosenzweig

15 years ago

Try creating the Sites folder yourself. If you have never used iWeb or anything else to make a MobileMe site, it may not be there.

peter Everett

15 years ago

yep, that's done it - thanks gary.

Andrew Collins

15 years ago

That's great - only one problem, when I go to i-disk it brings up the old set of folders so there's no folder called 'web' even though I only just set up my mobile me account. I tried doing plain text into the 'sites' folder but it didn't work - can you help....???

Gary Rosenzweig

15 years ago

You can create the "Web" folder and put "Sites" in it yourself. It gets created for you if you use any of the services that will put something there -- like iWeb or a Photo Gallery, etc.

Andrew Collins

15 years ago

Thanks - that worked!

Andrew Collins

15 years ago

Hi Gary, can you help me with this? I was able to follow your instructions as above and also pointed my own domain name towards mobileme and that all worked fine. I couldn't figure out how to 'publish' a whole page with images etc using only idisk so I started using iWeb. But when I published a simple page which iWeb said was successfully done I couldn't get to it either with my own domain name or through my mobileme address...I keep getting 'page not found'.

Gary Rosenzweig

15 years ago

Hard to diagnose without tons more information. It sounds like you are doing the right things. Keep investigating. Look through the iWeb help. Try again and try different settings. If you still can't figure it out, then maybe a visit to the Genius Bar.

Cree

15 years ago

Hey Gary,

I just signed up for the free trial of MobileMe last night. I googled to find your site. When I did as you directed (Finder->Go->iDisk->My iDisk) I don't have a web folder. Did apple change something or am I for some reason not working correctly? I have Mac OS X 10.5.8. When I use the MobileMe website, I also don't see a Web folder. I'm so confused.

I've tried to use the Public folder, thinking that might be the right thing, only it seems to just be a place to download files. Any idea what's going on?

Gary Rosenzweig

15 years ago

If you have never created any sort of Web feature in MobileMe, such as a page with iWeb, or a photo gallery with iPhoto, etc., then the Web folder doesn't exist. Just create it yourself and add a Sites folder to it.

Cree

15 years ago

Ah! Well thank you. That was a rather dense moment if I may say so.

Annie B

14 years ago

Hey Gary,
\
I have a powerbook G4 with OSX 10.4.11 Can I use Mobile Me with this computer? Also - I presume from your above video that I can create a website with password protected video?

Annie B

Gary Rosenzweig

14 years ago

According to Apple, Mac OS X v10.5.8 is the minimum requirement to use MobileMe. So, you would need to upgrade.
Yes, you can protect photos and videos with a password http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3334

Tim

14 years ago

Thanks very clear and helpful.

Jim

14 years ago

Hi Gary
Could I create a site using Flash and then insert it the same way? I have tried the basic test as shown in your video, and this works!
Thanks in advance.

Gary Rosenzweig

14 years ago

Not sure what you mean. You can use Flash, yes. But Flash is just one element in a Web site -- like images, text, video, etc.

kim Eubanks

14 years ago

i just updated some photos on iweb and published entire site again... now it does not exist! please help!! it's my photography website!!

Gary Rosenzweig

14 years ago

Try publishing again. Or giving it some time. If that doesn't work, then you'll probably need to get an expert to take a first-hand look. You can try the Genius Bar or see if you can find someone else to help.

idmethods

14 years ago

great vid, got things going in regards to my domain and even forwarding via godaddy. i then uploaded my index.hml to the site folder and also the images folder with the images needed for the page, but they are not loading. meaning the page loads completely blank, no pics showing. where or how do i need to store the images folder on iDisk to get them directed to the html file. thanks ahead of time

Gary Rosenzweig

14 years ago

Try the Web/Sites folder, not the Sites folder. MobileMe changed how this works.

Jamie

13 years ago

Hi Garry,

I have just used rapidweaver to put a site up on my Mobileme account for testing before fit goes online properly and it keeps asking for passwords when pages are navigated to, particularly when the gallery page is opened. Any idea how to get rid of this. I don't really want my client to have my Mobileme password

Gary Rosenzweig

13 years ago

Check to see how that gallery page is set up. If the permissions are set right, you shouldn't need a password. Use the web interface for MobileMe and look at that gallery's settings.
Better still -- test using a regular server. I don't see how you can test a non-MobileMe site properly at MobileMe. It is such a odd server environment.

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MacMost Now 245: Building a MobileMe Web Site Without iWeb

Comments: 26 Responses to “MacMost Now 245: Building a MobileMe Web Site Without iWeb”

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