Do Yourself a Favor: Avoid iWeb
A few years ago, when I needed to set up a website to find my first job, I turned to iWeb to set it up. It was well integrated with all the other Mac Apps I used and it made setting up a website a breeze. But even on those first websites I set up, I immediately hit feature walls that wouldn’t let me do what I wanted to do. Since I didn’t have knowledge of how to manage content yet, I had no idea how to do what I needed to do and iWeb kept preventing me from doing it.
So, how does iWeb suck?
The Way iWeb Manages Content
iWeb provides a slick way to insert content into websites. The problem is that the website lives in iWeb. Whenever you update your website, the ENTIRE website gets updated, especially if you use your own domain. You can’t just write a blog post and post it. This may not seem like a big deal if you run a small website. But it take FOREVER for iWeb to build and save the site then for you to manually upload the whole thing via FTP. It’s more work than necessary.
Multiple Websites in iWeb
iWeb only let you have one website, period. You can have sites within sites, but you can’t have unique sites with unique content in them. There are add-on programs that make is easier to manage multiple websites with iWeb, but they add to the cost of iWeb and introduce an unknown quantity in your web development features (what if the program stops working, you’re locked out of your websites!).
iWeb .Me Hosting
To take full advantage of iWeb’s features you need to have an Apple .Me account for hosting. You can now use your own domain with this type of hosting, but the whole package costs $99 a year. If you opt out you won’t be able to use features such as slideshows or other advanced features.
iWeb Themes
iWeb comes with a limited amount of themes, while some of them are sleek, there are a million websites out there using them. Forget customizing them, you simply cannot. So if you don’t like a gradient or how something is positioned in the theme, you can’t change it. You can’t addon outside created themes either, so what it comes with, you’re stuck with.
Making Simple Site wide Changes in iWeb
iWeb makes it very difficult to make site wide changes. Say for example, you wanted to add a custom footer to your site. You’ll have to manually add it to every page and position it correctly. This can be a huge pain, especially if your site has more than ten pages.
iWeb Sits are Bulky
Websites made with iWeb are bulky and filled with images. While the themes look pretty, the pages take forever to load. Not only will this annoy the end user, it costs you hosting bandwidth. Imagine if something made it to the front page of Digg, your site would max out it’s bandwidth cap in minutes.
What to use instead of iWeb?
So, if you shouldn’t use iWeb, then what are your options to build robust, easily managed websites? I recommend the following Content Management Systems. I’ll post another article soon about good iWeb replacements where I’ll go into this in more detail.
Alternative Content Management Systems to iWeb
Wordpress
Drupal
Joomla
Blogger
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Comments
Thanks for the resource. They definitely have some SEO information that you don’t see everyday.
I realize this post is a few months old, but I would like to correct some inaccuracies.
admin said: “Multiple Websites in iWeb
iWeb only let you have one website, period. You can have sites within sites, but you can’t have unique sites with unique content in them.”
This is not true. Each website you create generates a file called “Domain”. You can duplicate this file and move it to another folder, open it, delete all the content and make a new site. Just name the folders that contain the domain files to match your website name for clarity. Each site just needs its own “domain” file.
admin said: “iWeb .Me Hosting
To take full advantage of iWeb’s features you need to have an Apple .Me account for hosting. You can now use your own domain with this type of hosting, but the whole package costs $99 a year. If you opt out you won’t be able to use features such as slideshows or other advanced features.”
I don’t know about “other advanced features”, but you don’t need .Me to create slideshows. Full slideshow functionality is present in iWeb.
admin said: “iWeb Themes
iWeb comes with a limited amount of themes, while some of them are sleek, there are a million websites out there using them. Forget customizing them, you simply cannot. So if you don’t like a gradient or how something is positioned in the theme, you can’t change it.”
Yes, you can change gradients and modify elements, delete elements, create elements, etc. You can actually customize the pages considerably. You can also just start with a blank page and put anything you want on it. You can decide to use the automatically generated navigation buttons or hide them and create your own buttons. The level of customization depends on the capability of the designer.
I’m not implying that iWeb is equal to Drupal or other CMS’s in terms of it’s capabilities, but sometimes it’s just the ticket. In your own words, you said “there are a million websites out there using them”. Why do you think this is? It’s because it’s simple enough for millions of non-web programmers to start with.
You’re right - the post is old and some things have changed (especially the .me integration). However, I still haven’t looked back after leaving iWeb behind. Customizing it made me want to bang my head against the wall. Thanks for the comment, always good to have another perspective.
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