iWeb FAQ - Publishing to a folder, FTP and Hosting
iWebFAQ.org
How can I publish my site to a non-MobileMe server? How do I publish to a folder? How do I upload the site to a hosting other than Mobile me (FTP client)? My site is very large and it takes hours to upload the whole site every time I make an update. Can I upload only the pages I updated?
Chapter 1: Notes about publishing to a folder
Chapter 2: How does an FTP application work (basic)
Chapter 3: How can I avoid uploading the whole site (which is really time consuming) each time I publish?
Chapter 4: What hosting or what server should I use?
Chapter 1: Notes about publishing to a folder
If you want to publish your website to a server other than MobileMe go to File and choose Publish to a folder...
Note that some iWeb features will not work when publishing to a folder.
Among the features that don’t work when publishing to a folder are:
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-Hit counter
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-Password protection
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-Search feature in Blogs
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-Comments and attachments
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-RSS feeds (unless you specify the url when publishing)
For most/all of these features you will find alternatives on this iWeb FAQ site.
Chapter 2: How does an FTP application work (basic)
First thing to do is, of course, choose and download an FTP application. Have a look at the Useful Applications FAQ for this.
I will use Cyberduck for the example here. Cyberduck is Freeware (or Donationware), it is pretty good, really easy to use and the one I like the most...
First thing I have to do when I launch the application for the first time is configure it to allow it to access the server and retrieve/send data.
I click on Open Connection
and get a dialog window like this one:
In the FAQ’s and/or Support section at my hosting I am told what I have to insert in those fields
What the server is, what the username is to access and of course my password.
I check the Add to Keychain box (so I don’t have to insert the data each time) and click Connect.
It now is ready to connect to my server and retrieves the data from it. It displays the files that are on my server in the main window
To make things easier Bookmark the location you upload your files to in Cyberduck.
Click on 
then Click on “+” at the bottom of the Bookmarks to add a Bookmark.
Next time you use Cyberduck simply go to
click on the downward flash at the right and a drop down menu will appear from which you choose the bookmarked location on your server to connect to it.
To upload a file go to the File menu and choose Upload, choose the files to be uploaded (index.html + Folder having the same name I named my site in iWeb) or drag&drop them from the finder into the main field.
When the upload starts a window will popup displaying upload progress
and that’s it...
To delete files select them in the main window, hit ctrl+click and choose Delete.
Chapter 3: How can I avoid uploading the whole site (which is really time consuming) each time I publish?
Here are two things you could do:
1) Using Cyberduck. (THE ONE I LIKE THE MOST)
Cyberduck looks for the date a file was modified last and the size of the file. If the size of a file equals the size of a file on the server this file will not be uploaded.
All you have to do is Synchronise using Upload. And here’s how it goes:
Open Cyberduck and insert the data to connect to the server as explained in Chapter 1.
Go to your Bookmarks and select the server you want to use.
Go to Action
and choose Synchronize
Now you will have to choose the folder to synchronise with, thus the folder you publish to from iWeb (The folder containing the index.html file and the folder named with the name of your site).
A popup window will display. There choose Upload.
Click Continue.
Cyberduck now compares the files on your computer and on your server and uploads only the files that changed since the last time you published.
From time to time delete all files from the server and re-upload the whole website to delete obsolete files from the server (files that aren’t used anymore). I do that once every 4 month, about three times an year.
2) Manually select the files you want to be uploaded. Say you change something in the index file, you can go to your ftp client select the index file and then upload only the index file and the folder that contains the documents (like pictures) used in the index file or whatever file you upload.
If you add pages that do not appear in the nav bar, means that on a page you have links to that pages, in your ftp client you can select the pages you added and the page you inserted the links to those pages and upload only those.
It doesn't make it all that complicated if you change the navbar and now want to upload the files you added to the navbar.
You should just remember to upload
The Scripts folder
sitename/Scripts/
and the feed.xml
sitename/feed.xml
too.
It worked for me and as you can see it's not complicated at all. Scripts and feed.xml are not huge files less then 500KB together so it will not take you a lot of time to upload them.
I like 1) the most.
Chapter 4: What hosting or what server should I use?
For in-depth informations about that read Tom Gewecke’s notes about that here.
Basically all hostings are iWeb-compatible. If you can choose what server to use to host your site choose a Linux server.
There are a lot of free hostings to be found on the web. I tried about ten or fifteen of them but I really wasn’t satisfied by any of them. I found them to be pretty unstable, sometimes even signing up for an account was a hassle and the support was poor. I’m glad I switched to a paid one...
The only problem is that there’s a jungle of hostings out there. As always in a jungle there are good hostings and there are bad hostings. The good hostings care about their customers, the bad ones don’t.
But it’s pretty difficult to know which hosting is good and which one is bad. Unless you know someone who has a website and ask him whether he’s happy with the service his hosting company provides or not.
I can only talk about the hosting I know which is where I currently host all my websites:
definitely on the good side of the jungle! 
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-Toll free support (they got all my questions solved within 24 hours until now)
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-Multiple domains (one free)
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-E-mails like me@mydomain.com
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-Unlimited space
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-Unlimited data transfer
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-MySQL, PHP Support, ...
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-5.95 $ per month (which to me is really cheap)
and more...
(If you signup select the Linux platform not the Windows platform)
I would really recommend you HostExcellence since I’m using it for my own websites.
I know that it’s working great and that their support is great too. I wrote some basic instructions on using HostExcellence which you can read
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OTHER HOSTINGS:
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Another really good hosting seems to be Hostgator which also has a really great customer-support service. This recommendation is based on fifteen real customer reviews. I didn’t try it myself.
- 600 GB of space
- 6000 GB data transfer
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-7.95 $ per month
- Multiple domains
- MySQL, PHP Support
and more...
(If you signup select the Linux platform not the Windows platform)
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Another often used hosting is GoDaddy. 
While GoDaddy is great for Personal Domain registrations it doesn’t seem to be as good for hosting too. A lot of users complain about the poor customer support provided for GoDaddy’s hosting. I didn’t try it myself.
If you have any other great (or not great) experiences with hosting companies please share them on our Forum to get the jungle solved!
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- Cédric -
