iWeb 2.0.4 publishes only to mobileme? multi-site setup?

[JButler1983]

I currently have 2 sites that I created and manage in iWeb.

The first site is my personal site that is hosted with .mac, which as of July'08 was converted to mobileme. I have updated this site many times since the mobileme conversion and it works well and without issue.

The problem is, the second site I manage is NOT hosted on my mobileme account. I use an FTP client to load the files onto the FTP server that hosts the second site.

Before the mobileme takeover in July, iWeb used to store the website .html and image files locally on my harddrive in my home directory under "sites"

This directory is still there, however I noticed that all the files are quite dated and do not match updates I have recently done to either of my 2 sites.

I have searched through iWeb preferences and have found no place to change this setup or to have it save the files to my harddrive rather than straight to mobileme only.

Could it be that the mighty Apple is telling us we can only publish to their hosting service with iWeb??!! I don't do well with dictator-like companies...

 

[sickmacdoc]

There is certainly no conspiracy to force publishing on Apple's site first off.

The current versions of iWeb store all information when you save a site (including images, etc) within the domain.sites file package in the following path:

/Users/your user name/Library/Application Support/iWeb/domain.sites

You can navigate to that file and control-click (or right click) on it, choose Show Package Contents in the contextual menu and you will see the current image files (and all the other files that iWeb needs to define your site when opened for editing) within.

I don't believe it stores .html files as they are created on the fly when you are publishing your site- be it to MobileMe OR to a folder on your hard drive if you choose "Publish to a folder..." in the File menu.

If I remember right, the only time it saved any files in the "Sites" folder was when using Version 1.0x verisons of iWeb, but the storage method is as above now- and the dates I found on some files in my "Sites" folder would tend to agree as the latest ones in there are dated shortly before I installed iLife 08 which introduced iWeb Version 2.0x.

BTW- Although iWeb by default stores all your sites in one single domain.sites files, I have found it MUCH more straightforward to publish single sites when iWeb is used in conjunction with the free utility iWebSites which manages domain.sites files and creates a new one for each site (or however many sites you want in one domain.sites file for that matter).

Using a separate domain.sites file for each site simplifies and speeds up the publishing of any single site quite a bit. I discovered that utillity after I had gotten up to about 6 sites in iWeb and realized that Apple seemed to have really made it tough to manage multiple sites with it since it republished all the sites even if you only made a change in a single site within it. Anyway, if you would like, check it out/download it from iWebSites