.Mac Individual vs. Family membership for email, website, etc.?

[Veritas&Equitas]

Alright, here's my situation.

My fiance is starting her job as a teacher here in a few weeks, and would like her own website for her students to visit for classroom news, etc. We have iLife '08, and I'd like her to use iWeb to build the page. However, instead of using her .mac URL that we'd get if we got the .mac membership, how easy is it to set up her page so that it automatically goes to her own domain name?

(ie her whole site would be of the www.goodteacher.net, www.goodteacher.net/welcome, etc. instead of gallery.mac.com stuff)

If this is easy to setup, how could we setup the whole .Mac situation? For instance, can she just use her normal teacher email address from her school district instead of a new .Mac email?

I'd like to create my own email address using the .mac membership, and my own website. Here's what I'd like to do:

Make my own website, with my own specific .mac email address (which I would use Mail.app for retrieval). If we get one individual membership, would this be possible to build 2 websites, using my specific .mac email address on one of them, and her own school district email address on hers? Or do we have to buy a family membership?

If I gave her the password/access to the iDisk and everything else, she could access it. However, if we only had one account, I assume all of her bandwith from her website and mine would be lumped together? If we got a family membership, would we still have to share this bandwith on the website, iDisk, etc?

I'm not too familiar with the inner workings of the .mac thing, and can't find what I'm looking for on the .mac page. I really appreciate all your help!

 

[poppe]

Alright, here's my situation.

My fiance is starting her job as a teacher here in a few weeks, and would like her own website for her students to visit for classroom news, etc. We have iLife '08, and I'd like her to use iWeb to build the page. However, instead of using her .mac URL that we'd get if we got the .mac membership, how easy is it to set up her page so that it automatically goes to her own domain name?

(ie her whole site would be of the www.goodteacher.net, www.goodteacher.net/welcome, etc. instead of gallery.mac.com stuff)

If this is easy to setup, how could we setup the whole .Mac situation? For instance, can she just use her normal teacher email address from her school district instead of a new .Mac email?

I'd like to create my own email address using the .mac membership, and my own website. Here's what I'd like to do:

Make my own website, with my own specific .mac email address (which I would use Mail.app for retrieval). If we get one individual membership, would this be possible to build 2 websites, using my specific .mac email address on one of them, and her own school district email address on hers? Or do we have to buy a family membership?

If I gave her the password/access to the iDisk and everything else, she could access it. However, if we only had one account, I assume all of her bandwith from her website and mine would be lumped together? If we got a family membership, would we still have to share this bandwith on the website, iDisk, etc?

I'm not too familiar with the inner workings of the .mac thing, and can't find what I'm looking for on the .mac page. I really appreciate all your help!

Have you looked at the online training they have? -- http://www.apple.com/ilife/tutorials/#iweb -- I found this to be very helpful.

Do you want her email to appear on her website? If so then you can put a hyperlink of the email that will make it possible for them to reply to her email address.

Also I would recommend taking the classes that Apple offers. I am scheduled to learn some iWeb stuff because of a online store I am creating.

 

[Veritas&Equitas]

Have you looked at the online training they have? -- http://www.apple.com/ilife/tutorials/#iweb -- I found this to be very helpful.

Do you want her email to appear on her website? If so then you can put a hyperlink of the email that will make it possible for them to reply to her email address.

Thank you for the help. Actually, I do understand these basic elements of iWeb, and web design in general. My questions don't revolve around the actual interface, but how you actually setup the infrastructure (pointing of .mac domain to her specific domain, and data storage between the two sites). But thanks anyways!

 

[filmgirl]

Hmm, I'm not sure - I'll look into it on their site for you - but to me, it sounds like what you are looking for is something more akin to a web hosting plan, rather than what .Mac might be intended to provide. Other than setting up iWeb to connect to the FTP server on your domain/host, I don't think anything else would really be required in that set-up (and most good hosting packages allow a large number domains and separate directories/pages on the same account - I've got three different sites/blogs running off of the shared web server I pay $10 a month for - and that includes domain ownership, e-mail, 300 GB data storage and 2.5 Tb bandwidth). I haven't played around in Tiger enough to see if I can get iDisk like functionality using my web server, but I'm sure there are free or near free alternatives if that is something you really want.

I think .Mac is supposed to be an easy solution for basic web presence that isn't that customizable. I do know that you can only have one account for the individual package (you'd have to go to the Family account - and that puts you at more than what a good, reliable web host would charge you for a year) - but I don't know about setting up domain redirection or using other e-mail addresses or whathaveyou.

 

[poppe]

Hmm, I'm not sure - I'll look into it on their site for you - but to me, it sounds like what you are looking for is something more akin to a web hosting plan, rather than what .Mac might be intended to provide. Other than setting up iWeb to connect to the FTP server on your domain/host, I don't think anything else would really be required in that set-up (and most good hosting packages allow a large number domains and separate directories/pages on the same account - I've got three different sites/blogs running off of the shared web server I pay $10 a month for - and that includes domain ownership, e-mail, 300 GB data storage and 2.5 Tb bandwidth). I haven't played around in Tiger enough to see if I can get iDisk like functionality using my web server, but I'm sure there are free or near free alternatives if that is something you really want.

I think .Mac is supposed to be an easy solution for basic web presence that isn't that customizable. I do know that you can only have one account for the individual package (you'd have to go to the Family account - and that puts you at more than what a good, reliable web host would charge you for a year) - but I don't know about setting up domain redirection or using other e-mail addresses or whathaveyou.

Do you have a link to a hosting site that is like yours?

 

[Veritas&Equitas]

Hmm, I'm not sure - I'll look into it on their site for you - but to me, it sounds like what you are looking for is something more akin to a web hosting plan, rather than what .Mac might be intended to provide.

Thanks! I'm not actually looking for a host; I'd hope to get that through .mac.

Instead, I'm just looking to get the actual domain name for $7/year or whatever it is, then use iWeb and .mac for the building/hosting of her files (so that she can get all of the extra perks that go along with iWeb and hosting it on .mac like slideshows, blogging, etc.)

I hope this is possible?

 

[netnothing]

Just a basic point that is not really stated, the custom DNS for iWeb only works for iWeb published sites. The Web Gallery feature in iPhoto '08 does not work with the custom domain names.

-Kevin

 

[Veritas&Equitas]

Just a basic point that is not really stated, the custom DNS for iWeb only works for iWeb published sites. The Web Gallery feature in iPhoto '08 does not work with the custom domain names.

-Kevin

Thanks for the help Kevin, but 2 clarifications:
1. "Custom DNS for iWeb only works for iWeb published sites."
What exactly does this mean? I play on publishing the site via iWeb, hopefully to .mac. I'm asking if I buy a domain can I point it specifically to the .mac website?

2. If I can do this, the web gallery should work from iPhoto '08 because it's uploading to the .mac site?

Thanks again for the help!

 

[netnothing]

Thanks for the help Kevin, but 2 clarifications:
1. "Custom DNS for iWeb only works for iWeb published sites."
What exactly does this mean? I play on publishing the site via iWeb, hopefully to .mac. I'm asking if I buy a domain can I point it specifically to the .mac website?

2. If I can do this, the web gallery should work from iPhoto '08 because it's uploading to the .mac site?

Thanks again for the help!

Sure...again, I don't have a .mac account, but from what I have read:

iWeb is just a tool to create websites. You don't need a .mac account to publish sites. However, if you don't have a .mac account, basically iWeb will just write all the files locally, then you have to upload them to your own site. If you do have a .mac account, iWeb integrates so it's real easy to upload. By default I believe your iWeb URL is web.mac.com/username.

With the latest iWeb and .mac, Apple gives you the ability to edit your own domains DNS settings to map that domain to your web.mac.com site.

So instead of web.mac.com/steve, you can have www.stevessite.com load your iWeb pages.

One limitation I've read with this is that you can only map the www. or any other subdomain name to the .mac site. Meaning, there is no way to directly map stevessite.com to the .mac site...only www.stevessite.com or files.stevessite.com.


As for the new Web Gallery....that's a part of iPhoto only I believe. Basically when you publish a web gallery, those files go to a different section of .mac called gallery.mac.com/username.

The web gallery does not have the option of the custom DNS domain name settings like the iWeb sites have.

Hopefully this explains things a little.

So to sum up your questions:

1) Yes, you can point a domain at your iWeb files on your .mac account
2) the Web Gallery is a different piece and does not work with your custom domain name.

-Kevin