MacRumors, a popular Apple rumor site, posted an article today that supposedly marks iWeb to MobileMe publishing as a casualty of the iCloud transition. iWeb allowed non-technical types to develop websites and publish them to the server of their choice… including MobileMe. In an email to a frustrated Apple fan, Steve Jobs indicated that MobileMe web publishing would not make its way over to iCloud. Apple introduced web publishing with HomePage, part of the original iTools package. After a few years, Apple transitioned to “.Mac” with improved HomePage features. Eventually they created iWeb and began offering web publishing to .Mac servers. iWeb publishing continued through the MobileMe transition and still works today. Apple has not release a major update to iWeb since January of 2009 and will pull the plug on the web publishing service along with the rest of MobileMe June 30, 2012.
iWeb users will still be able to use the software after that date, but the ease of MobileMe publishing will cease to exist. Users will need to transition to FTP publishing through a web hosting company or publish the content locally and host it themselves. If you haven’t upgraded to iWeb 3 (part of the iLife ’09 package… or later), we’d suggest doing it now to get the latest and greatest FTP capabilities. We’re recommending FTP publishing for our clients who do not have the resources or time to learn new software. In fact, we can host your iWeb projects through our hosting services at www.macworkshosting.com. $200 per user, per year gets you an incredibly fast server with direct, incremental iWeb publishing. If you have a few sites to publish, don’t worry about it… we’ll still take care of you. Please note that several built-in features are MobileMe-only, including:
- Hit counter
- Password protection
- Search feature in your Blogs
- Comments and attachments
- RSS (works if configured correctly)
If you’d like to migrate to a robust and future-proof solution… we offer custom development for standard websites or we can introduce you to other iWeb-like solutions so you can build it yourself. Give us a call and we’ll help you tackle the transition.