PUBLISHING WEB PAGES TO YOUR iDISK

Apple's online 'MobileMe' service (the successor to '.Mac') includes an 'iDisk' - server space so called because on Macs it can be mounted on the Desktop just like an external disk (albeit a very slow one). You can use it to store files and to host websites.

CREATING AND UPLOADING

You can create web pages with any suitable application, including Kompozer, DreamWeaver, RapidWeaver, Freeway, PageSpinner, Flux and so on. You can place them in the Sites folder (some applications can upload the pages directly for you). Kompozer is free and gives you basic WSYWYG and HTML editing; RapidWeaver is a very good all-round template-based choice; Dreamweaver is extremely powerful (and expensive) and suited to advanced users; Flux, like Dreamweaver, relies heavily on css to allow object-orientated web-page creation and does allow modification of the HTML code - though less powerful than Dreamweaver it is a great deal cheaper; PageSpinner allows you to write your own HTML, displaying the results as you go.

There are two locations on your iDisk you can place your web pages. A file you place in the Sites folder has the URL http://homepage.mac.com/username/filename (again the starting page should be called index.html and you don't need to include that in the URL). Note that the URL begins with homepage.mac.com not idisk.mac.com - the latter requires your main password and leads to all areas of the iDisk including the private ones.

You can also upload to the Sites folder within the Web folder (it may not be there by default so you will need to create it): in this case the URL is http://web.me.com/username/filename; however if you are also using iWeb (see below) you should be cautious because iWeb will over-write any file called index.html which already exists at the root level of this folder.

A note about uploading: RapidWeaver can upload directly to your iDisk (the latest version, v4, will upload to the Web/Sites folder) as can Flux: however Kompozer (and earlier versions of Dreamweaver) cannot because though it has a 'publish' facility it only handles FTP, not the different protocol (WebDav) used by iDisk. In this case you have to save the file to your computer, and then upload it manually to your mounted iDisk (or use Transmit). PageSpinner does not have an upload facility anyway so you have to upload manually.

At the time of writing there is a bug in the uploading process if you do it through the MobileMe site at http://www.me.com/idisk pages uploaded this way appear correctly in Safari but FireFox treats them as if they were an application and offers to download them. The interface at http://idisk.mac.com/username does not exhibit this bug, neither does uploading in Transmit or in the Finder to the mounted iDisk.

 

iWEB IS YET ANOTHER WAY

iLife 09, which can be bought from the Apple Store and is included with new Macs, includes iWeb which can either upload pages directly to the Sites folder within the Web folder on your iDisk. In this case the URL is http://web.me.com/username/filename. It can also save them locally whereupon you can upload them directly to any server (though some of the more complex facilities may only work with MobileMe), and the version in iLife '09 can upload by FTP to other servers, a facility not available in the earlier versions.

Note that iWeb creates a 'domain' file on your computer which contains the information it uses to make and upload the actual HTML pages: you can only edit the site from this domain file - so if you want to work on another computer you must copy the domain file across. You cannot download the pages from the iDisk and edit them in iWeb.

If you are using iWeb you can make use of  the 'Personal Domain' feature which enables you to use the address of a domain you have purchased for yourself (such as 'fred.com') as the address for pages actually hosted on your iDisk. This page describes the process. 

 

WHAT ABOUT 'HOMEPAGE'?

When the precursor to MobileMe, 'Mac', was introduced several years ago it included an online web page creation program called 'HomePage' which was very basic but did have the advantage of enabling the quick creation of simple web pages from any computer. In April 2009 Apple announced that this would be discontinued as from July 7, 2009. This announcement panicked a lot of people into thinking that this meant that the homepage.mac.com URL, and even iWeb, would also discontinued, so, just to get this absolutely straight:  web sites/pages created in any other program, including DreamWeaver, RapidWeaver, iWeb etc. continue to function and be updatable exactly as before: there is no change whatever involved to the URLs or anything else. This has now been confirmed in this Apple Tech Note.

Pages created in HomePage cannot now be further updated in HomePage; the pages remain on the iDisk and show as before. In theory you could download them, modify them, and reupload them; but in practice their construction and dependence on server-side facilities makes this almost impossible. Therefore if you have not remade pages created in HomePage in some other program they are effectively frozen: but, as I said, this only applies to pages actually created in HomePage.

REDIRECTING FROM YOUR OWN DOMAIN

If you are using another program and have purchased a domain, most firms who do this for you provide the facility to use your domain address with any site, including homepage.mac.com - usually the real address shows after you move from the home page to other pages on the site, though in some cases it is possible to get round this and retain the domain address. If they provide web space you could also place a redirect page in it. Here is a simple way of doing this:  copy the following into a text editor:

<HTML><HEAD><meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;url=URL OF YOUR ACTUAL HOME PAGE"></HEAD><BODY></BODY></HTML>

Note that there must be no line breaks within the < and > tags, and of course the URL must start with http://
Save it as index.html and place it in the web space. Now people entering your domain name will be taken to the actual site (note that when this happens the site's real address will show in the address bar).

If you would prefer to keep the domain name in the address bar, then instead copy the following into a text editor:

and save it to the web space as index.html. Of course keeping the domain name in the address bar as people move round the site means that they won't be able to bookmark individual pages.

And of course if search engines index your site the results will show the real URL, not the domain's URL.

 

YOU CAN EVEN INCLUDE MOVIES

You can insert QuickTime movies and slideshows into a web page hosted on your iDisk. Most applications can do this for you, and you can also write code to insert a QT movie perfectly easily, see this note. However note that more complex facilities such as databases which require PHP or other server-side includes cannot be hosted on the iDisk because it does not provide these includes.