Using iWeb and .Mac for blogging

When I first got my hands on iWeb I was very impressed with how simple it was to put websites together. I wrote a brief review back in early January here which also includes brief coverage of other iLife06 components. Unfortunately, I noted some severe limitations which restricted it's use for me as a replacement for the blogger.com service for instance. There have been other frustrations with iWeb too. But with the release of iWeb 1.1, there have been some massive improvements in functionality and suddenly it starts to look like a viable tool for more than just the very simplest sites.

The biggest improvements have been in the blogging area where comments are now permitted. While anyone can post comments, and they can only be moderated after the fact, there is the usual authentication (type the letters/numbers in the image above) method.

Another area that is improved is the photo album component (though this may have been a hidden feature before). It is now possible to add new photoalbums by just dragging an image from an album created in iPhoto into a page which serves as the index to the albums. A detailed photo page is created with all the photos in the album automatically. Combined with the neat AJAX-based slideshow features, it becomes incredibly easy to manage and publish new photo albums.

I have now updated my personal site and this shows both of these features in use. The blogging is sufficiently improved for me to consider moving over to that permanently. The blog search feature works well (it has never worked for me on blogger.com!), and it is easy to put photos in. There are weaknesses still - many I suspect I don't even yet know of. Most irritatingly, the main blog page has a font format that I don't seem to be able to change. You will also see that I've been forced to include a blank template entry. I should be able to hide this from the posted site, but I haven't found a way to do this.

iWeb's publishing speed has also improved, but it seems when I access the site that it's still quite slow to serve pages for whatever reason. Photos though do seem to work quite well - it's just the first page loading that seems especially slow.

Please feel free to visit both the sites I've made with iWeb - my company site, and my personal site. You can make comments or even note questions back here or on the iWeb blog, whichever suits. Remember the company site was set up to replace a site I'd created with a simple html editor which can still be seen here. The iWeb version took around 30 minutes.

I'm certainly looking forward to iWeb 2.0. With some rounding of the features (template management PLEASE), and the .mac groups feature (which I think well surpasses yahoogroups these days), Apple has truly created a simple but sophisticated web publishing system for individuals, clubs, societies, etc that anyone can truly use. With blogs, photos, calendars, file sharing/downloading well integrated, it is really very powerful indeed. You just need to have a Mac of course to do the publishing with in the first place. That restriction (obvious though it is) may be a limiting factor for greater adoption as those with Macs may feel that they'll never be able to involve other people in the process and be saddled with website maintenance forever!