Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Hosting iWeb sites on GoDaddy

A website made with Apple's iWeb can be hosted anywhere you want. To host it on GoDaddy, I suggest:

  1. Get a copy of Fetch (or another FTP program).
  2. Under the file menu in iWeb, choose to "Publish to Folder" and publish to a new folder (one with nothing in it yet, probably on your desktop so it's easier to find later).
  3. Using your domain as the hostname, (e.g., example.com) and your hosting username as the username (note that it's not your GoDaddy customer number/name, it's your hosting account username) log into your web hosting directory with Fetch by choosing "Open New Connection" under Fetch's file menu (it should open at the root level of your hosting space, which is where you want to upload your iWeb site).
  4. Either delete or change the name of the "welcome.html" file GoDaddy has in your web hosting directory.
  5. On your computer, select all of the files and folders inside the folder you published your iWeb site into and drag and drop them into the fetch file window.
  6. After the files/folders finish uploading, use your web browser to check and make sure your site is online and working.

To update/add to your site, the easiest, and most consistent, way is to make your changes in iWeb, and then repeat the above steps (i.e., republish the whole thing); this should avoid updating only some of the files that make up your site.

Note: Read the comments, they may already answer your question. If your question is not about iWeb made sites hosted with GoDaddy, please either comment a different appropriate post, or contact me directly to discuss custom consultation.

156 comments:

Ruth said...

Would there possibly be an issue with the widget file that controls that navigation? Isn't it a server based widget? I have the files but the navigation is gone.

David August said...

iWeb sites do not rely on server side resources (unless you inserted some code or features that do yourself); the navigation seems to rely on javascript, and runs in your visitor's browser (client-side). Your site navigation should work fine as long as you've uploaded all of the files _and_ accurately told iWeb what your base URL is when it asks you to 'enter the URL for your site (for example, http://www.apple.com).' You may need to include the trailing slash (e.g., http://www.example.com/directory/). If the URL you enter points to the wrong directory or domain name, the navigation won't work. If your site works when browsed in the folder on your hardrive, it should work when browsed online (provided the web server isn't oddly configured to somehow modify the files or URLs). You also may want to double check that your javascript is on (enabled) in your web browser.

Blue Elk said...

A few questions regarding posting iWeb sites to a domain such as hosted by GoDaddy. If a person has more than one webpage produced on iWeb can they select just one site to post to a host? It seems the way iWeb is set up now if you redirect a site to another domain all your other sites will go as well, not just one. I have a host and a domain name now with cbeyond.com but need to set up another host and webpage for a car club I manage. I like the ease of iWeb but hate the looonnng and cumbersome address @ web.mac.com that you must use if posted there. One more, will this posting system you've described work with other hosts other than Go Daddy?

Thanks!

David August said...

You can put different iWeb sites on different servers. You can export just one site at a time to it's own folder on your computer and then proceed as I described above; select only the site you want to export and iWeb should only export that one.
This post's method of getting your site online should work for hosts other than GoDaddy, but the ftp server will have different settings (like the upload URL) which will vary by hosting provider. Also make sure that you accurately told iWeb what your base URL is when it asks you to 'enter the URL for your site (for example, http://www.apple.com),' and then upload all the files iWeb exports in the way your hosting provider requires, and you should be successful.

CandTsmac said...

You can also hold down the shift key when launching iWeb, this will let you chose the domain file you want to use. I use iWeb this way, it help with keeping things organized when working on multiple sites. I have a folder for each site by name, in that folder I have a folder for the domain file and a folder for iWeb output, works great. I would also highly suggest getting Web Site Maestro. It makes my iWeb sites load SO fast, the best 40 bucks I have ever spent.

Anonymous said...

I just restarted iweb with shift key down and then tried to publish to folder just one site, but they all published to the new folder, just the same as before. have I missed something?

I have 3 sites, one that is heavy on iweb photo pages, but is no longer being updated or changed tho i want it to stay live, one that i dont want to publish but I may in the future, and one that is small and in progress. I will be adding another photo one like the first, which will need to be updated daily. Currently it is taking about 2 hours for "publish" to finish becuase it is redoing all of these sites everytime i alter the smallest thing. There has to be some way to solve this! Any suggestions anyone?

Anonymous said...

Would you reccomend a windows or a linux plan when subscribing to godaddy to host an iweb page?

David August said...

Linux. If you ever want to add a MySQL database in the future, or add some php, it'll be easier if you're on linux. This blog is on a linux server (and uses some php).

Barbara K said...

I bookmarked your blog page where you outlined how to upload a site created in iWeb to a server such as GoDaddy using Fetch.

I did all of the above, and it was amazingly easy!

There's one issue and it may have to do with the statement you made about deleting the welcome page.

My domain name is:
www.mydomain.com

What is coming up in the url window is:
http://www.mydomain.com/mydomain.com/Home.html

The tech at GoDaddy said the opening page is being re-directed and can be fixed, but thought I would contact you before getting Apple support on the
phone.

I have a trial account with .mac now. Is there an issue because that account is still 'active' and iDisk is creating more file names?

I didn't want to start deleting stuff before checking with someone first. And, if I delete a file, I want to delete it from the right location at the
right time in the upload process.

I understand this is an 'iWeb' thing and may not be able to be changed.

Please advise, and thanks for your contribution of help to those of us
creating websites!

Barbara

Barbara K said...

I did spend some time with an iWeb tech today and what he said was my site name in iWeb was 'domainname.com' and that is why is was repeating in the url.

So we changed the site name (very top in the file structure on the left) to 'site' and that helped. Many sites use the word 'index' or something like that. If I don't like 'site' at least I know how to change it! The change was effective.

Also....... I'm seeing your reviews on web hosting sites. Did I make a mistake? Should I cancel and change before I make the announcement of my site public?

David August said...

Moving pages out of their folders may have broken links and images; iWeb sets up the directory structure, and changing it by hand may break things. If I'm understanding correctly, simply uploading things as iWeb placed them relative to each other may help. Be sure you told iWeb what your base URL is (e.g., http://www.exmaple.com/mysite/).

Blake Manion said...

HI David!

First of all, thank you for having a thread up like this and helping people - this is great!

I can't for the life of me figure out what I'm doing wrong with my site.

I made my site in iweb on my mac and published to a folder just like you said to do. I then brought up my FPT program called Cyberduck and clicked and dragged all the files into the program. It loaded, done and done.

For some reason I still cannot view my website even though the files loaded.

I searched for the welcome.html you mentioned earlier, but couldn't find it any where, so I'm assuming it's gone.

I also completely deleted all the files in the hosting program on GoDaddy and tried to upload everything again - no luck. Any ideas?

When I type in my url (blakemanion.com) I just get the welcome screen that says "page coming soon!"

Thank you!
Blake

David August said...

Blake, thank you for your thanks! Your site looks alive and well right now. Maybe you need to clear your cache and reload (or you've already fixed the problem you were having).

ChocolateNirvana1 said...

Ahha! It is a miracle! I don't know what happened, lol.

Thanks :)

Anonymous said...

Hey, I have a question. I tried uploading my site and when I visit it on my browser I get http://www.fakedomain.com/site/welcome.html
Is there a way to make it go to the http://www.fakedomain.com part with out the /site/welcome.html part? Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but any help would be greatly appreciated.

David August said...

If your page is not found, then some how either all the needed files did not get uploaded, or the files did not get uploaded to the right locations. I suggest making sure you have your files saved locally, as a back up, and then erasing the files on the server and trying again, making sure you are uploading to the right directory and uploading all the files.

David August said...

It seems that you are not succeeding in uploading the /site/Welcome.html file to the GoDaddy servers. Assuring you did step 5 of my original post is essential; you must drag and drop _all_ files. You may want to hire someone to help you. In addition, changing file names or case without also changing the links within the HTML file will likely make things fail to function as intended.

olive dear said...

Just wanted to say thank you for this brilliant post! I was expecting lots of difficulties with hosting, but your instructions made it so simple.

David August said...

Thank you so much! I'm glad I could help, and thanks for the positive feedback, it is much appreciated.

David August said...

Laura- If you have re-done all of the steps of my original post, including using an ftp program like fetch, not the GoDaddy file-manager, to upload the files as output by iWeb, in the folders as output by iWeb as well, and you still have problems, please contact me here, outside of this comment thread and we can discuss what your options are.

David August said...

>I'm having problems with my files showing on my
>site once i publish them using my ftp server
>(cyberduck) this is my main site so all the pages
>have to be out of their folders, some pages show
>and others don't and my links are broken. can you
>help with this problem?

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by 'all the pages have to be out of their folders,' but if you want all the files to be in a flat file structure (i.e., no sub-folders, all files at the root level) then iWeb alone will not be the tool you want to use; I'd recommend instead either changing to an ftp program that will accommodate iWeb's directory structure (like fetch) or using something other than iWeb.

iWeb puts various types of files in various different folders, and creates links, image tags and other things with that specific directory structure built in to the URLs in the code. While you can manually revise the code to accommodate any directory structure you want, you'd likely be using a text editor and manually hand coding much of your site (i.e., no fun, may as well hand code from the start). iWeb, like most graphical web authoring tools, does not create particularly easy to modify code; it's code and directory structures are unintuitive since they aren't designed with manual modification in mind.

David August said...

>I'm seeing your reviews on web hosting sites.
>Did I make a mistake? Should I cancel and
>change before I make the announcement of my
>site public?

While there may be downtime as you change from one host to another, if you keep the same domain name, the public should still be able to locate your site with your domain name.

Hosting is vaguely like a house, and a domain name it vaguely like a phone number: you can move from one house to another, but as long as you keep the same phone number, and it is set up to correspond to the phone in the house you are currently in, you should still get your calls (or web site visitors to break the metaphor).

Anonymous said...

Hi David,

Your instructions are great & clear! My site was up & running quickly...... Do you have any suggestions as to Meta Tags?? It seems Iweb files when published on GoDaddy do not conform to SEO... when running on .mac they do?

Is there any way to embed tags into IWeb?

Thanks,
Andrea

Anonymous said...

Dave,

Thank you so much for your easy-to-follow directions on hosting iWeb sites! I used Host Monster instead of GoDaddy, so the filename I had to delete was different, but otherwise it was an incredibly easy process. I sincerely appreciate your demystifying a process that I was expecting to be difficult!

David August said...

I'm so glad I could help! Your comments are wonderful encouragement, thanks!

Anonymous said...

Wow! Dave, thank you so much for this thread. It was tremendously helpful to get my iWeb site posted on GoDaddy.

I have a question for you though. When I go to my site after uploading the pages my "home" page loads just fine but I'm unable to click to the links (other pages) on my site. Any thoughts? Please help if you can. Thanks!!

David August said...

iWeb often makes links that require JavaScript in order to work. Confirm that you have JavaScript turned on in your browser's preferences (often termed 'enabled').

Also make sure you've uploaded all of your site's files; without the external JavaScript files, many functions of an iWeb site may not work as designed.

Anonymous said...

Thanks, David. I appreciate your help and quick response.

JavaScript was previously enabled but I did go ahead and remove the external .js files. The issue I was having, however, is still occurring.

I'm able to navigate to the other pages by removing "home" from the web address and typing the other pages in; ie: contact us, about us, etc. but what is interesting is when the other pages load some of the menu links previously not working now work? It's not consistent though because once I go back to the home page the menu links stop working again. Any additional thoughts as to what may be happening? My site is up at www.carpetaces.com if that helps you.

Thank you again for your help!

Adam

David August said...

Removing the external JavaScript files that iWeb created will make your page not function as iWeb intended. First test your page locally by opening your local copy and make sure it works there. If it doesn't, redo the steps of the original post to recreate all the files in a fresh empty folder and test it again. If you'd like more personal consultation, please contact me directly.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for your help, David.

Adam

bmacq said...

I hope you can help me. I recently downloaded iwebsites to use with iweb. It works great, however, my two different websites are now the same. When I uploaded I can only get one to show up. I host them both on godaddy. I've even tried rebuilding them. The site that is showing up is www.podtrip.tv, the one I'm trying to get is www.capemayzoo.org. When I click on that site the url:http://www.capemayzoo.org/PodTrip/Welcome.hmtl
Can you help me?

David August said...

You must insure that you exported the sites seperately; if you export the same site twice, or overwrite one site with another, you will end up with the same site twice. You also need to host each site its own location. Most FTP programs, including fetch, with let you replace one site with another just by uploading the second site; they will not always warn you. Best option: export one site, upload it, test it to make sure it works, then start over with the other site; treat each site as totally seperate. Most likely you have not successfully exported each site by itself, independant of the other and into a totally seperate folder on your computer. Different versions of iWeb will handle this differently.

Steve said...

Dave,

I am attempting to use iweb to publish a site. I have downloaded fetch and purchased hosting from godaddy.

Everytime I attempt to even log into fetch, it tells me the server is not accepting my password. So I haven't even gotten past step one. I spoke with godaddy and my password and usernames are correct. Is there a setting that I need to address?

Thanks!

David August said...

In step 3 of the original post I emphasize that using your hosting username (not your customer username or number) is required. Also, make sure the username and password are the right case. If you have caps lock on, or you don't capitalize the right things, your log in may fail.

Make sure you actually are connected to the internet since fetch and other FTP programs may respond to no connection the same way they respond to the wrong username and password.

If the server, username and password are correct, and you can connect to the net but still can't log in, make sure you aren't behind a firewall or a proxy that disallows or interferes with an FTP connection.

Scott said...

I am getting ready to upload an iWeb site to godaddy and really appreciate your instructions.

The thing I would like to know is if there is an easy way to update the 'blog page' as I add to it without going through the hassle of collecting and uploading the entire site every time I have a new blog entry.

Any help you could give me would be munch appreciated!

Thanks!

David August said...

There is not an easier way. iWeb does not intend for you to do things by hand, and therefore puts things in all sorts of non-intuitive places.

Though possible to upload piecemeal, it's complicated, varies widely depending on specifics of your site, and may break your site and its features.
You'd have to decide/figure out which files that iWeb makes changes to (html, JavaScript, images, etc.) in various folders, and then upload those files, and then be sure that you remove any files that iWeb decided not to create or deleted in light of the changes you made. Quite complex.

If it's too much of a hassle to re-export and re-upload the whole thing, you may want to consider using a system other than iWeb to manage your site's content, or publish to the me.com systems that iWeb is primarily designed for and that it knows how to use for periodic partial updates.

I know that's not a fun answer, but iWeb's ease, means less control.

diana said...

Hi David,
you've helped so many people, I thought I'd give my issue a try.
I have a regular, non iWeb website through go daddy. However, using iWeb, I've created a blog and some photo pages.
Your comments on updating the blog have convinced me to just keep using my .Mac account for that one, so I'm just going to link to that page from my site, but I would like to use my GoDaddy account for the photo pages, particularly because they take up more space than I have on my .Mac account, and the space is plentiful on my GoDaddy site.
So, I created the pages, saved to a folder, made sure all the links worked, etc. The Index page, referring to the photos pages I created in Dreamweaver.
Problem is, the photos don't show up on the photo pages! Only the top text part!
Any idea what I might be doing wrong?
Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

David August said...

My first guess is that the images are located somewhere either on your hard drive (so the pages displayed them when you test on your computer, but did not on the live site) or are in a directory/folder that isn't uploaded, or isn't uploaded where the iWeb pages expect it to be. Perhaps you have images in a folder "http://www.example.com/images/image1.jpg" but your pages expect them to be at "http://www.example.com/image1.jpg" or something like that.

Best guess option, build the image gallery pages as if they're their own site, and tell iWeb before the export that the base URL is "http://www.example.com/gallery/" and then upload all the gallery related files in the "gallery/" directory in your GoDaddy hosting space. Good luck!

jay said...

David..
If only everyone could create forums dedicated to such topics, thank you so much! But i have a problem. :/ So.. I recently purchased the domain name www.tabletwizard.com from godaddy.com. i downloaded fetch and it installed perfectly. i then followed your instructions and connected to the server just fine. then in the window it showed different files. none of which were the "welcome.html" which you said to delete. instead i deleted all possible files that were there. it left one that said it couldn't delete ".ftpquota". was that a problem? then i dragged my iweb folder that i published to into the window. it took some time but it finally seemed to finishing uploading. did i actually need to take the files out of the folder or am i fine? i checed and my page still isnt working, it just has the go daddy "coming soon" page. CAN YOU PLEASE HELP ME! thank you so much

David August said...

The _contents_ of the folder iWeb creates in the export must be uploaded (step 5 of the original post), not the folder itself. Uploading the entire folder will likely create your site at "http://www.example.com/iWeb-folder-name/" instead of at "http://www.example.com/" and may also make links and such fail to work.

jay said...

so i went back and deleted the folder that i uploaded, then dragged the contents of the folder over. still doesnt seem to work. ah im so frustrated,. :/

jay said...

it goes through and in the little status bar at the bottom tells me exactly what its uploading, then at the end it says "widgetcommon.js" is complete. i have no idea... please help

David August said...

Jay, the placeholder page currently on your site you set up; it has your custom text displays, it is not the default placeholder that GoDaddy sets up after a domain is registered. Since you set up this placeholder, you will need to, in your GoDaddy account reconfigure things to no longer use the GoDaddy template.

As long as their systems are set up to display the template their systems create, they will show what currently displays, not the iWeb site files. How to set up your account to no longer display the GoDaddy template depends on what you set up, how you set it up, and what products you've bought from GoDaddy; it is beyond the scope of this post.

Diana said...

Hi David,

When I created the iWeb pages, the photos are originally taken from my iPhoto library, which is on my external HD. I create the pages and save to a file on my desktop.

Thing is, the links its creating are to a folder on my desktop. I don't know how to work around this.

So, for instance, if I want the pages to go here:

www.mywebsite.com/blog

how can I do that? Instead, they're going here:

file:///Users/myname/Desktop/Photos/webpage.html

How can I avoid this? (Does this make any sense?) It seems dumb--if I save it to a folder, then it creates all the links to that folder, and inevitably, the folder is going to be moved, and none of the links work.

Sigh. Thanks!

David August said...

I think the issue is with how you put the image into iWeb. Currently you have the iWeb page referring to image files on your computer directly; you must use iWeb to place the images into the page.

The version of iWeb you have will change this, but the basic way is to choose, using the the media option within iWeb, which image you want (out of your iPhoto library). This means you must first put the images into your iPhoto library. Letting iWeb integrate the image file into iWeb's own data is necessary so that it can place all the files for your site, including the image files, into the exported folder as needed.

Make sure that you accurately told iWeb what your base URL is, as I mention above.

Diana said...

Huh. So, you think that the problem might stem from the fact that instead of pulling the photos from the Media manager thingy in iWeb, I dragged them from iPhoto and dropped them in?

Hm... Ok. I'll redo the pages and try again.

I did get the website naming right, per your suggestions.

THANKS SO MUCH for sticking with all of us on this!!.

Diana said...

Oh my gosh! I just tested this out with a page of about 6 photos, and IT WORKED!!!

The pages I'm trying to upload have a LOT of photos, so it's taken me a while, but if this works, oh, I'll be thrilled. THANK YOU!!

Diana said...

David, you are a life saver. It all worked. THANK YOU a bazillion times, thank you. :)

If anyone wants to see the pages, links to them start here: http://www.thefaithfultraveler.com/blog/

All of the photo pages were created in iWeb and uploaded to GoDaddy. The blog is just iWeb to MySpace. There's plenty of room for that.

Nick said...

After reading this, am I to understand that I cannot use iWeb's built-in "Publish Site" feature? I just keep getting an error "communicating with FTP server". Funny thing is, when I "test connection" iWeb actually puts the test-file out there, but then complains about that communication error. Thanks for your insight!

David August said...

Yes, iWeb is built to support dot mac/mobile me. Using anything else with iWeb's built in publishing features means you are on your own.

Eric Rhoads said...

Dave
I uploaded my iweb created files to godaddy to host (due to limitations of macme) and only the main page shows up. Nav is missing and as a result the other pages dont show.
Godaddy says that its a mac problem and something is wrong with the java script. Any ideas? If not any hosts you recommend?

David August said...

The host is not the issue. If you have not successfully uploaded all the files needed, you would have problems with the navigation and/or JavaScript. JavaScript on pages made with iWeb are not affected by the host; they run in the web visitor's browser.

Best to start the process over, and test the page/site local copy on your computer before you try to upload. If it doesn't work on your computer, likely not to work after it is uploaded too.

Anonymous said...

Thank you! Sometimes it's the little things...in this case your instruction to "use Fetch PUT the files in the folder" iWeb created, as opposed to "PUT the folder" did the trick for me. Many thanks!

chrisweb said...

I need big help I have a web site with godaddy for my church. My problem is today I put in a css file and then deleted it some how it will not goaway it is still there weird I deleted all of its files every thing but is still there and putting up a new file will do nothing to over ride it on the web take a look at christfamilychurchnashville.org how do I over ride this.
can someone help me here.

thanks

David August said...

First of all, iWeb generated sites are not intended to be edited by hand, I recommend re-exporting the site completely. Secondly, it's not clear why overwriting the file is a problem. Aside from being inelegant, having an unused css file online is not often going to create problems as long as what is being used is setup as needed; it likely only takes up a small amount of disk space but otherwise need not be removed. Thirdly, if you have attempted to remove and/or delete a file from GoDaddy hosting space and the file persists, this could be an issue on GoDady's systems as may require their access and diagnosis. Best of luck!

David August said...

You can't have those functions through iWeb on GoDaddy. As noted above, iWeb is not designed to work with GoDaddy, so they aren't made to do anything other than put a static (i.e., unchanging) site online when used together (even though seperately they can do other things).

For a blog, you can republish the site as my original post suggests after each blog post; any other way is very complex.

For email, iWeb is not an email program, and while GoDaddy as company offers email service, it is as seperate as your telephone is from the mailbox the US Postal service uses for you (email and website may be associated with the same domain, as phone and mailbox are with the same house, but there is little other connection). Best of luck.

Katrina said...

David,

You are awesome. Reading this post and your responses to other people's comments has been incredibly helpful; I can't thank you enough!

I have only one website problem left. I want to know how to change the title of a page as it appears on the browser, above the URL - for example, right now as I write this, that title area says, "Blogger: Dave Tips - Post a Comment." With iWeb, the only way I can find to change the title is to change the name of the page I am working on, which then is also reflected in the URL and navigation menu. I know it's possible to have the page title say one thing, and the nav menu and URL say another, because a friend of mine did it with his iWeb site - but doesn't know.

Does this question make any sense at all? And can you help me??

Thanks so much!

Katrina said...

Never mind, I figured it out! Widget/html snippet. Thanks anyway for all your other bits of wisdom!

Kevin and Crystal Elworth said...

Anyone having issues with the blog pages being posted using Fetch and Godaddy?
Have done everything according to directions, and every page works apart from the blog. Any ideas?

Anonymous said...

Excellent, easy directions - worked without a hitch. Can't thank you enough!!!

Anonymous said...

hi! im not good with this computer stuff so this site has been a GREAT help! I have tried to host my site on godaddy. When i type in my password and click publish, i get a message telling me my password is incorrect. I know it isn't though, as i can login to godaddy using this password
who's problem is this?
can you help me fix it?

David August said...

I believe the problem is you are bit using a seperate FTP program to upload the files and folders that make up your site. iWeb is not designed fit GoDaddy so "clicking publish" in iWeb and entering your GoDaddy username and password will likely fail as you described. Please read the original post and the previous comments.

Erin said...

I bought a domain name with EZ-domainnameregistration.com (exactly the same as Godaddy) and i currently have a iweb site that i have designed and publish using Mobleme. I followed all of the instructions on mobileme to set up my domain for mobile me to host it but still nothing is working. I just get a page that says "www.erinsphotoclonmel.com is parked here free by ez-domainnameregistration.com" I added the cname as i was supposed to, (Host: web.me.com and Points to: www.erinsphotoclonmel.com) I have been working on this for HOURS now and cant figure it out. Should i still need to use fetch even tho i am using mobileme as my host? If so what host name do i connect with fetch with? web.me.com? I am clueless HELP!!!

David August said...

Since you are not hosting your site with GoDaddy, but with MobileMe, your question is beyond the scope of this blog post. I suspect you did not modify the me.com domain cname since apple is unlikely to allow you to update their domain, that was a little unclear in your comment.

A good, though imperfect, metaphor for hosting and domain names is that domain names are similar to phone numbers, and hosting is similar to telephone service. In the US one can now keep the same number and change phone companies (in most cases). So to can one own a domain and change hosts while keeping the same domain. As phone numbers are "pointing" to a specific phone (that rings when dialed from another phone) a domain name "points" to a specific hosting service's machines, set up in it's domain records (including the cname record). Hosting services never "point" to a domain. Your house doesn't "point" to your address either, that would be backwards.

Setting up your domain name to "point" to the hosting space you have with MobileMe will entail changing your domain name's records with your domain registrar (in your case this sounds like GoDaddy) and will likely include an ip address you would get from MobileMe that you would enter in the aname record for the www subdomain. Remember, www.example.com is the www subdomain of the example.com domain name. Best of luck!

Jennifer said...

Hi, I'm new to the MAC and iWeb. I just created a test/draft site in iWeb and I would like to host it. I'm still researching which to use, but it's only 5 pages and I am looking at GoDaddy.com (unless someone can suggest a better site). My question is, on GoDaddy.com when purchasing web hosting, it asks for the operating system. It is MAC X, but that is not available. Which should I choose? Linux or Windows?

David August said...

Please read the earlier comment about this that answered the question. This site runs on Linux.

Anonymous said...

If I use iWeb to publish to folder then ftp to GoDaddy with Fetch, will I be stuck with my iWeb site name in the URL like this: babachanian.com/lawoffice/?

I want to be able to publish and have the URL look like this: babachanian.com

I am especially interested in having root folder access for search engine opimization reasons, as MobleMe (where my site currently is hosted) makes root folder access impossible (I can only access babachanian.com/lawoffice/ which makes Google optimization difficult.

Thanks for your blog!

MariaT said...

MT When you update in iWeb, should I delete the previous folder in FETCH before placing the new information?

David August said...

The URL of your site has to do with how iWeb constructs it, and is unrelated to GoDaddy's services. How to have iWeb place your homepage at the root level of your site (http://www.example.com/) and not in a sub-directory (http://www.example.com/directory/) is beyond the scope of this post and varies depending on the version of iWeb you are using. Try iWeb help to adjust its behavior.

David August said...

"delete the previous folder in FETCH" is somewhat confusing. Folders exist on your local disk drive (probably the hard drvie in your computer) and directories exist on the remote server, likely GoDaddy's hosting machines.

If you are asking whether you need to delete the files on GoDaddy's hosting machines before uploading your files to it to update your site, the answer is no; Fetch will replace any files with the same file names at the same locations and leave any old files that are not replaced untouched.

If you are asking whether you need to delete the folder on your local disk before you "Publish to Folder" to update your site, then please note my suggestion in step 2 that you use a folder "with nothing in it yet", and no, you do not need to delete any previous folder; just use a new empty folder with a new unique name for your new updated site to be published into by iWeb.

vera said...

Hi David,
I followed a lot of what you advised, deleting files off the godaddy account, changing topmost left to site name on iweb ie Vera_Tilley_Art instead of www.veratilley.com and re-uploaded and every thing worked just fine.

Then the fun started, when I used iweb SEO Tool to add meta tags, page descriptions, photo tags (the one's that weren't in frames) and that worked except for the blog page were instead of the blog summary, there was a tag "blog summary widget".

Then I did a stupid thing and downoaded a trial version of Dreamweaver and opened some of the iweb files in that. To cut a long story short, i couldn't work it out, uninstalled that version .

Ever since, whenever i edit and upload the iweb site , files are missing when uploaded to local folder (it only saves some of it, and same happens on the host - I get "500 internet server error" and nothing else. Rang tech help, he reinstalled some things that were supposed to be there in the first place but weren't like the index, said to try in half an hour. it's been 2.5 hours and still nothing is working. hope you can help!

David August said...

Dreamweaver likely deleted and/or modified your iWeb files; the two programs are not designed to be used together. Best bet is to revert (i.e., go back to) a version of your site that you have saved from before you used dreamweaver that is untouched; restore from backup. Then proceed using iWeb and the above instructions since that worked for you before. Introducing dreamweaver to your web publishing brought unknowns into the process and created unknown results. Best of luck.

vera said...

Thanks Dave, I see that in iweb 'help' I can only revert as far back as any published changes. I used to overwrite the same file in my documents - so didn't keep any earlier versions. Unless there's a way of retrieving that from my hosting account.Apart from that I'll have to re-do the whole thing. (at least I know what I'm dong now, so should be quicker.) Thanks for your help!

Vera said...

Ok, now I've rebuilt the whole website to the way it was when it did work,deleted files off godaddy and re-uploaded - still didn't work. Went to the godaddy help page, they talked about permissions set to 775 or 644 among other things. Decided to try that first, my account page looked different to what they described, but clicked on both folders- the 'Root' and 'Vera_Tilley_Art' then went to permissions (no numbers there) but put a tick in all the check boxes ('inherit', 'read', 'write' and 'reset all children to inherit') . That worked - up and running again (only this time I've made a backup)
Should I be not ticking one of the boxes? (one had in brackets that users see directory - not sure what directory that is and whether safe to do so)
Btw, great page!

Anonymous said...

Dave, Thanks for your help. It seems to have worked the first time. Great directions.

sonia said...

David,
I love your site and it has helped me so much with uploading my iWeb site to godaddy! THANK YOU!
My site is up and I know how to reload it when I've made changes (I use Fetch and it works great!). Everything was fine until Monday this week when I had updated one of my photo albums and after uploading it: the album did not show on the website anymore. I thought it might be too large (90 pics) so I split it into 2 albums (45 pics each). But after uploading again: neither of the 2 is showing on the website (all other albums work fine). What am I doing wrong?
My friend mentioned it might be a corrupt file, but if so: how do I find that file and how can I fix it?
I even checked to see that the albums had been published to the folder I set up on the desktop and they're there so I don't know what else it could be.
Your help is greatly appreciated!
Sonia

David August said...

The most decisive, though risky way to get rid of a corrupted file in your hosting space is to delete all the files you host with GoDaddy and then, as if for the first time, upload everything from files you know to be intact. This is risky because as with the deletion of any file, once it is gone you won't get it back; make sure you are alright with destirying those copies before you do so. Best of luck!

Jim said...

Hey Dave, can I host an iWeb 09 site on my personal HP MediaSmart Server?

Thanks so much.

David August said...

Yes, you probably can host an iWeb site on your server, but it's a bit beyond this post's topic. iWeb creates the files the same way, and getting them
onto your server is likely specific to your server and configuration. If you'd like my help, please let me know.

David August said...

Manually setting the permissions of the files and directories in your GoDaddy hosting can possibly make things less secure but can be neccessary for the server to allow the files to be publically accessed.

Anonymous said...

Hi David, I uploaded my content exactly like you said through fetch, but when I visit my site get this:
"Forbidden

You don't have permission to access / on this server.
Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request."

In fetch there are three folders, the first being the one I copied into it from iWeb, php_upload and stats.

I'm not sure what I did wrong! Anything you can do to help would be great

David August said...

Not sure exactly what is happening, but it is possible instead of uploading the contents of the folder, i.e. "...the files and folders inside the folder you published your iWeb site into..." (step 5 of my original post) that you uploaded the folder itself.

Or possibly the permissions in your hosting space are oddly not allowing the files to be read. Hard to say, but going through the steps I outlines in the post as specifically as possible may help. Best of luck.

Anonymous said...

Hi Dave I tried reuploading the files through fetch like you said, when I click the visit site button it works perfectly except the url is http://cake-box.ca/Cake%20Box/Cake_Box/Home.html, so when i try visiting http://cake-box.ca/ then I get the 404 Not Found error. Im not sure what wrong!

David August said...

Not quite sure why, but you seem to have 2 folders named "Cake Box" which could be how iWeb made the site (depending how you set that up) or you are not in the root "web" folder when uploading the contents of the folder iWeb made. Perhaps you can open the "Cake Box" folder on your desktop and see if it contains many files and folders, or only another "Cake Box" folder.

The %20 in one of the folder names is a space character that has been escaped (since spaces as spaces are not allowed in URLs). Hard to know if iWeb, fetch, GoDaddy's systems or something else did that. Basically, make sure you are putting the right files and folders in the right directory on your hosting server and you should be good.

Otherwise, you can redirect a web page to another location and have the root level redirect browsers to the currently working location.

Anonymous said...

Hi. Thanks for the directions. I'm trying to get a basic site up for a friend of mine. They just purchased the economy plan for hosting on godaddy, but they picked linux as their operating system. I noticed that their are only two options to choose from linux and windows. Should they get it switched to Windows? Can't upload anything now, cause they said I gotta wait 24 hours for the account to get set up. Thanks!

crockies99 said...

Okay, I got the site up, but it doesn't look anything like it does on iweb at all. Is that something I'm doing wrong on iweb or is that a file transfer problem? Thanks. The website is www.lamazeofthedead.com

David August said...

There is no reason to switch to window hosting; iWeb doesn't create sites that rely on either platform. My earlier comment discusses linux or windows; this site runs on linux.

David August said...

@crockies99 it is hard to say what may be wrong with what is live at lamazeofthedead.com, but it seems key files (like style sheets) either did not get uploaded to the place iWeb needed them to be uploaded to, or didn't get uploaded at all.

I mentioned earlier that you must be sure you have both "...uploaded all of the files _and_ accurately told iWeb what your base URL is when it asks you to 'enter the URL for your site (for example, http://www.apple.com).' You may need to include the trailing slash (e.g., http://www.example.com/directory/)."

Perhaps begin again, re-export your site and re-upload all of it, being sure you have told iWeb what it needs to know to understand where the exported files will live.

I hope that helps and good luck!

Anonymous said...

Hi!
I'm so new at this so pardon my ignorance. I have a GoDaddy account, bought a website. I also used iWeb and am ready to put it up online.

But what is my "hosting account username" with GoDaddy if it's not the customer number? I seem to be stuck at this step, because I can't figure that out.

thanks for your help!
LB

David August said...

No one can tell you your hosting username except you or GoDaddy. When you set up your account with them, you, or they, should have configured this. I recommend calling their customer support. Best of luck.

Vivian said...

Hello David,

I don't know what is wrong but I followed all the steps you outlined but when I visit the site I get "Safari can’t open the page because Safari can’t find the server

what am I doing wrong?

vivian

David August said...

Most likely you've done everything right, but the domain name is either too new to lead your browser to find your server (so wait 24-48 hours and it would work) or it is set up incorrectly in the DNS system.

If your domain (like example.com) is new, it will take time for the DNS information to spread through the internet and allow you, and others, to reach your site (like at http://www.example.com).

If your domain name, like example.com, is not set up properly, the DNS system won't be correctly tell your browser, and the rest of the net, how to connect to http://www.example.com.

If more than a day or 2 after your domain is set up for your website has passed and it still doesn't work properly, contact your domain registrar to sort it out (possibly your domain registrar is GoDaddy, which is your host, though they don't have to be the same company).

Vivian said...

Hi David!

It's me again. Well my domain is actually over a year old and I probably should have mentioned this before but I didn't realize the relevancy until now. Before I made an iweb page, I actually made a page through google apps. I remember adding various cnames in the DNS Control of my domain on godaddy to get the google apps webpage working. I still like the email and calendar functions of google apps but I like iweb better for my web page.

I am afraid to push the reset to default settings button on go daddy under the boxes:
A (Host)
CNAMES (Aliases)

I know there is this:

"google578967594anfj" (something like this) points to "google.com"
"start" points to "ghs.google.com"

I do not know whether these are supposed to be deleted or changed?

Thanks for the patience

vivian

David August said...

Vivian, it sounds like you are doing some complex things with your domain. They are beyond the scope of this blog post.

If the previous page you made with google apps is/was hosted on Google's servers, it's possible the www.example.com entry for your domain is pointing to their systems, not GoDaddy's (and therefore not your iWeb built site hosted with GoDaddy). I recommend ensuring the www of your domain points where it needs to; a call to GoDaddy support may be needed.

If your domain is set up fully and properly to send traffic accessing your www to the GoDaddy server space you have, then perhaps retry the proceedure in the initial post to upload your iWeb site to GoDaddy.

Hammock Guards said...

David - great thread. Using iWeb with GoDaddy, is there some reason the widgets (counter and countdown) won't show when I upload? Thanks....

David August said...

Hammock,
Both the counter and countdown code you are using likely are the MobileMe versions and require things that only exist on MobileMe's servers; you cannot use those on GoDaddy's servers. Any MobileMe specific features that rely on their servers will only work if you host your site on MobileMe's servers.

I recommend using JavaScript versions for counters and countdowns. In fact, if you want to know more than how many visitors you get, I suggest Google Analytics which will give more complete analytics (and only require you add a small block of code to the end of your HTML pages just before the </body> tag). Specifics are beyond the scope of this thread.

Anonymous said...

Im confused on how to use fetch with godaddy?
my domain is from godaddy but what to i put in the first box that pops up on fetch?

David August said...

Step 3 of the original post discusses what the values are for the input feilds in Fetch's 'open new connection' dialog box. If step 3 doesn't answer your question, please comment again with what else you'd like clarified.

Peter said...

Hi Dave,
I successfully uploaded my iWeb built site to GoDaddy using fetch, however I have a page which should show 3 movies (m4v's). It doesn't even show the jpg thumbnails. Any suggestions. Thanks!

David August said...

If the jpg files that are the thumbnails are not online at the location the HTML iWeb wrote expects them to be, they likely won't display. If the movie files aren't online where they need to be, they too won't work. Make sure the page functions as intended by opening the copy of the page on your computer (in the folder whose contents you uploaded with flash) with your web browser. If it doesn't work locally on your computer it will likely not work after uploading either and needs to be fixed either within iWeb, or another authoring program (or by hand coding). If it works locally, but the uploaded version won't work, something likely didn't get uploaded to where iWeb expected it would be, or didn't get uploaded at all. Try re-uploading everything (all movie files, image files [jpgs], and HTML/CSS/JavaScript). Good luck.

Anonymous said...

Just a comment. You're instructions were wonderful, and I've gotten everything up smoothly. I realized in the process that something might have changed with iweb over the past year. By using the FTP publishing option from iweb, I can publish straight from the program without using a second program like fetch.

My site was completely created in iweb, and hosted on Go Daddy.

Anonymous said...

I was wondering if you can use the photo galleries function in mobile me with network solutions as your host? I would switch to Go Daddy, but will that complicate things with my business email already at NS?

Anonymous said...

Hi David, hope you can help me. I have website created in iWeb and planing to host it through GoDaddy and also I'd created webgallery in Lightroom and uploaded to my harddisk which is in index.html file format. Can LR gallery be directed to my site through GoDaddy? Thanks in advance!

Irina

David August said...

Lightroom is beyond the scope of this post. You likely can combine pages made in iWeb and many other programs and host them all on GoDaddy. However, this is almost always complex, and requires either advanced skills, or hiring someone who has them. Good luck!

Anonymous said...

Hi David,
I built a site in iweb and published it to my url on godaddy. But words seem to shift everywhere. Things that should be in italics aren't and tabs that should be there aren't.
Not sure what to do.
Cheers
Andrew

David August said...

As said in earlier comments for simlar issues, make sure you uploaded all the files just as iWeb created them, and that you told iWeb what your web address is before exporting (e.g., http://www.example.com/ ). If you can browse the local copy of your site and it looks and functions as intended, but the remote (i.e., the one on the Internet, on GoDaddy's servers) does not, it is likely an incomplete upload or incorrectly entered base URL.

Stacy said...

Hi Dave,

I would like to use the same password protection that iWeb uses for a MobileMe site for which the index page was modified outside of iWeb. Do you happen to know how I can find that code? My apologies if you have covered the topic before - I didn't see a post on it.

Thanks in advance!

- Stacy

David August said...

Password protection usually happens on the server side (i.e., on MobileMe's machines for MobileMe sites) and therefore you can not use one server's systems on a different server. You best best is likely to use http authentication on a linux GoDaddy server which is far beyond the scope of this article.

Anonymous said...

hey david
i am having trouble uploading videos. the videos are .3gp and the file is only 4mb and everytime i publish nothing appears any help would be appreciated

David August said...

I would be happy to work on your videos/site and can quote consutation for video outside iWeb's native options contact me directly.

Stacy said...

Actually, I want to post it to the MobileMe site, just not using iWeb so the authentication would be the same. I just don't know where that information is stored.

David August said...

This is a post about hosting on GoDaddy, and manually setting up the authentication on MobileMe is both complex and beyond the scope of this thread. Depending on how you have the rest of your MobileMe set up it could vary widely how you would set up the authentication without using Apple's iWeb. The short version: try using MobileMe's controls on the web site to set the authentication up.

Matt Bain said...

Hello,
I am in the process of posting an iweb site to godaddy and am having a lot of issues with the pages displaying properly. None of my photo albums are viewable on the photos page, and when I use internet explorer all of the text boxes are messed up. I have published the exact same site to mobile me and not had a problem, and I also published it to my own server and not had a problem, which leads me to believe it is a problem on godaddys end, but they insist it is iweb. Any advice? thx

David August said...

Have you exported your site into a local (i.e., on your computer) folder and with your Internet disconnected does it function perfectly when you browse it? If yes, then I suggest doing the upload to GoDaddy as I describe in this post, and ensure iWeb knew the correct base URL before export (e.g., http://www.example.com/ ). If the local version does not function properly locally, then it is not GoDaddy's issue. Follow my steps in this post, starting with empty, fresh hosting space and folders.

Yasmine said...

I recently bought a domain through my blogger account, and during the past month have developed a website through iweb which I would like to upload to replace my blog.

I have been struggling to upload it. Please help

David August said...

The first step is likely to get hosting space with GoDaddy, step 2 likely is to point the domain to the GoDaddy hosting space (likely changing the domain's dns records with the registrar). Step 3 would be the upload as described in my post. Specific details for your specific individual situation would be needed and are beyond the scope of this post. If you'd like to retain my services to assist, contact me directly. Best of luck!

The Bennefield's said...

LOVE this blog!!!
Maybe you can help me with something.
I created a site with iWeb and I am hosting it on godaddy.com

It is a donation site for a family member who requires a transplant.
I added several Paypal "Donate" buttons using the html script provided by Paypal's button creation feature.

The donate buttons look great in iWeb, but they show as godaddy marketplace buttons once I upload the site files via Fetch.

I used the same buttons from Paypal in a blog previously and had no issues.

Is this a html script issue with godaddy?

This is the address if you want to see what I mean (bottom of the home page)
http://teamdavid2009.com/Home.html

Thanks!
Carrie

Morgan said...

OK so this is driving me crazy, i have a site i built on iWeb everything works just fine browsing to it from my mobileMe account but when i put it on my web server none of my pictures show up? the pictures that im using i brought over from my iphoto so i know that the file ext. are good. please help.

David August said...

Morgan, can you load the images directly on your GoDaddy hosting space, meaning in your browser can you load a direct URL like http://www.example.com/directory/inagefilename.jpg ? Have you followed each step, in order, of this post?

Keeran Baal said...

hi...can please help me...i stuck right now.....i followed your steps and all my pages are showing except my photo album...any suggestions..

David August said...

Have you read the previous comments about photo album troubleshooting (comments above this one)?I believe I have made troubleshooting recommendation previously, and would suggest the same things at first and until those have been tried further suggestions may not help.

Michele said...

Hi David! We first published our site today at the apple store through the apple publishing from iweb to godaddy hosting. The website showed up perfectly on my daughter's mac and the other mac's in the store, however on my pc, husband and friends pc the writing was distorted on the web page, it didn't look like it did on the mac...also on the mac you were able to click on the about us and contact us...on the pc's you couldn't. SO...I found your blog...reposted it tonight through fetch and almost everything worked! We can now click on about us, contact us and those two pages came out perfect...HOWEVER, our home page is now messed up and the four pictures don't show up, just the red X , and the text is messed up...any suggestions...our site is www.fortheloveoftheglove.org THANK-YOU!!!

David August said...

Michele,
I've taken a quick look at your site's source code and it appears that the images are thought, but the html page, to be in a directory called "Home_files" but don't actually exist there.

Have you read the various comments before yours about images? Did you empty out the GoDaddy hosting space before uploading according to my initial post's instructions? Did you ensure iWeb would know where it was going to be uploading files (this differs a little for different versions of iWeb)?

Linda Hibbard said...

I'm trying to upload a website to Mobile Me. I've tried to get help using their support which is totally useless. Your unable to talk to a human, but have to waste your time typing. Then they still have no clue. My problem is when I hit publish it says everything is fine, but when I hit visit it takes me to Go Daddy who I bought my site name from.

David August said...

Linda, publishing to MobileMe is beyond the scope of this thread. You likely have your domain's dns pointing to GoDaddy's hosting or parked servers and until you point them to MobileMe's hosting servers they will continue to show visitors something on GoDaddy's machines.

Anonymous said...

David - great thread. Appreciate your longsuffering with all of us...

Quick question: instead of using Fetch, can one use the GD FTP control panel - from the admin account - to accomplish the same FTP functions you outline?

Many thanks.

Michele said...

Hi David!

Thank-you for your help...we are getting closer! I have read previous comments on posting images and corrected that than tried to repost..oops..did something else now. Qucik question...how do you empty out the hosting space and when you say in an earlier post to upload all files within the folder not just the folder...do you download everything like file and subfile(don't know if it is called that) but they are the files that are in the files I believe. When we reuploaded I had my daughter upload every single file and (subfile)? Hope this makes sense.

Thank-you!
Michele

Doug said...

I've added an entry to my blog but it won't publish to my blog folder, it goes straight to uploading to my website and doesn't show the new blog entry as there is no file for it in the folder. How can I get the app to publish to the folder first, before I upload it?

Thank you
Doug

Doug said...

Problem solved. Somehow a second folder was generated when I uploaded for the first time and it is this one that I need to select for future uploads. A classic case of operator error.

Anonymous said...

I hope you can help me. I have been successfully using iweb/godaddy for more than a year with no problems, then upgraded to ilife '09. UGH. now, my widgets look fine in iweb, also with iweb's "visit published site". fyi, i save to a FOLDER and then use godaddy's FTP service. however, NOW all widgets and quicktime videos are GONE after putting them on godaddy. godaddy says it's not their problem, i've already spoken to them. what changed with ilife '09 and how can i fix it so my widgets are showing again on the web? thank you in advance

Mantilla With Me said...

For over a year, I've taken your advice and used fetch and iweb to publish a site without any hassles. This week I created a new site using iweb (and tweaking with Dream Weaver). I published to a folder and then uploaded the contents (plus index) to fetch.
Unfortunately it isn't working and I have no idea what to do.
Instead of registering and publishing it as html, it is uploading on fetch as a 'document' (not a html document) and appears with a title like this: http://www.domainname.com/FOLDER/pureftpd.4bc3d1f9.04.0001

It appears as html code when you look at it in the viewer (safari or what not). I'm not sure what to do. Fetch hasn't been able to tell me what's happening other than they think it is a problem on the iweb end.

Please help someone!

Anonymous said...

I just got iWeb 09 and tried to publish my site containing PayPal Buy Now buttons. I use Fetch and the PayPal buttons did not get published. I see them in iWeb, the HTML code is there and applied, but the buttons do not appear on the website. Any suggestions? It worked perfectly using iWeb 08.

Steve said...

Dave! Awesome site! Thank you. I have an issue with one page of my site, created in iWeb and hosted on GoDaddy. The issue is with the page that has an mp3 Flash player on it. From every computer I use (Mac, Pc) EXCEPT the MAc on which I created the site, I receive the following message when attempting to open the page:Enter user name and password for me.com at http://idisk.mac.com

Can you help, please?

Cheers,

SK

Steve said...

Resolved. As I had originally hosted at me.com .certain elements were apparently pointing bac to their server. I simply deleted all elements of the site from iDisk, and started over.

Cheers,

Steve

Anonymous said...

Dave, Hope you can answer this. I use GoDaddy and publish with IWeb '09. I host a lot of videos. I now want to let iPhone viewers watch my videos. So I am trying to serve my videos and iPhone 3g viewers are having problems. Long story short, .mov's, mp4's and m4v's play on my site with a 3GS and 4G but not with a 3G. When I upload the same files to my mobile me account, the files play fine on my 3G.

Here are the links:

web.me.com/yasgur/1.m4v and web.me.com/yasgur/1.mp4

my Godaddy files are at:

www.texasmusicchannel.net/1.m4v and www.texasmusicchannel.net/1.mp4

I am trying to determine how it cannot be a godaddy issue. They say it isn't. I was on a windows platform and recently switched to linux. I have been hearing about these htaccess files but I don't have one in my root directory.

Any help would be appreciated

Jeff

David August said...

Jeff,
You links to the files on GoDaddy seem to be not found, as in the files are not located at that place. Once they are, a .htaccess file may be needed in the directory they are in to specify the MIME type of the video files. It would likely be a plain text file named ".htaccess" (without the quotes) with this as the contents (without the quotes):

"AddType video/x-m4v m4v
AddType audio/x-m4a m4a
AddType video/mp4 mp4"

I'd love to be of further help, as a direct consultant.

David August said...

Jeff,
Your video files may also be the wrong screen size for pre-iPhone 3gs phones to play. My acting reel files at http://www.davidaugust.com/reel/ play on all iPhones/iPads/iPods so perhaps their size and specs can be your guide.

Dave said...

I have a problem when trying to upload iweb website to godaddy website.I have been trying to upload my website template to my go daddy host/website. Iv looked it up and it says to click file then publish to file. When i click file all it says is publish new or publish full website. when i click eaither of those a thing for mobileme pops up which i do not want to use any help!!!

David August said...

It depends on what version of iWeb where the option to publish to file will be and what precisely it will be called. Look through your menus and you should find it.

Anonymous said...

I understand this is a totally different question but maybe you can help me, as I can't seem to find the answer anywhere. I uploaded my site and you can semi find it on Google (I used iWeb and get hosting from GoDaddy) but the problem is that under the link on Google you see information about GoDaddy instead of information about the internetpage (like you normally see) Am I missing something? I see it on a lot of pages when you type "Learn how to succeed—in life and online—with straight talk from Go Daddy's CEO & Founder, Bob Parsons®" in Google but I can't find a way to change that.

Alex said...

Thanks so much for this forum, the internet is a wild beast. So I've been trying to upload my new site and I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. I published my iweb site to a folder and uploaded the contents of that folder to my site using Filezilla. There were already a bunch of files (folders called 'language' and 'media' and things like that) on my ftp and I wasn't sure if they were interfering so I moved them to a folder called 'Other Files'. Still I can't get my website to load correctly, it just says 'Page Not Found'. I don't know what else I can try, any advice will be much appreciated.

Greg P said...

Hello Dave. Our videos are not appearing on our godaddy site. The video embedded on the welcome page (a .mov file) works fine. Videos in subfolders (they happen to be m4v files) do not appear. However, if you look at "view page source", you can see the file name list but its a lighter shade which must mean something. My son and I are ready to abandon iWeb, but I'm sure we must be doing something wrong. Thanks

Phil said...

I realize this post is showing up quite a bit of time after your original posting so apologies for that.

Some other visitors posted about their hosting changing from instead of being "mydomain.com" to with iWeb "mydomain.com/mydomain.com/Home" or some variation of that. I then saw that you can change it to appear at "mydomain.com/sites/Home". Is there anyway to change settings with either iWeb or GoDaddy to have it appear as "mydomain.com/Home"?

Is there any way to do this without using Fetch and using the native FTP uploader that comes with iWeb?

Thanks

Vivi said...

Hi David, first off, thank you for such a great post and even better responses to everyone's questions.

Here is mine...

Recently two family members have asked me to build them personal websites, so I am considering building them on iweb and having them hosted on Godaddy.

Question then is:
Since I will recommend these folks to get a domain and hosting via Godaddy, can I create multiple sites on iweb and have them uploaded to and hosted on different Godaddy accounts?

And if I am not using mobileme to host these sites, I don't have to have a mobileme account, right? iweb and mobileme are separate, right?

Last but not least, once I upload these websites to godaddy, if I no longer need to make updates to them, I can delete them from my iweb/machine, correct?

Thanks so much in advance for your help!

David August said...

Anonymous, I'm not sure exactly why your site may have a Google snippet about GoDaddy in search results, but it may be that the description meta tag is either empty or missing, and/or the JavaScript redirect that iWeb often uses (http://www.example.com redirects to http://www.example.com/Site/something-something-something ) and the starting page has text about GoDaddy. I am available for custom search marketing consulting.

David August said...

Alex, not sure why if you uploaded to the proper directory (usually web/ on most GoDaddy hosting plans I believe) why your site is still coming up not found. Perhaps Filezilla is doing something odd, or the folder structure (what files and folders are in which folders) is not getting correctly duplicated on the GoDaddy server.

David August said...

Greg, first you have to make sure that the video files are actually online at the locations the iWeb html page expects them to be. For instance is the videos are all at something like http://www.example.com/video1.mov and http://www.example.com/video2.m4v and such and both the home page at http://www.example.com/home.html and another page at http://www.example.com/video-fun/index.html both refer only to the file name of the video (i.e., "video2.m4v" in this hastily written example) without specifiying that the file isn't in the video-fun/ directory, one would expect that issue you describe.

Second, did you place the videos on both the working and the non-working page in the same way? If not, maybe one has fuctional code, the other does not.

Third, if the code to embed the video in the page only supports .mov files, and does not support .m4v files that would be a possible cause for this issue.

Hope that helps, I'm available for custom consultation if you're interested.

David August said...

Phil, there likely is a way to have your site at http://www.example.com/Home instead of http://www.example.com/Site/Home but A) it depends on your version of iWeb, and B) using iWeb's built in FTP upload is beyond the scope of this post. Basically anything is possible, but without knowing every specific of your situation there is not a simple answer. Best of luck.

David August said...

Vivi, you can I create multiple sites on iweb and have them uploaded to and hosted on different GoDaddy accounts, simply export each site separately and then FTP them as described in the original post from the separate folders.How to have iWeb keep different sites separate is largely a matter of which version of iWeb you are using.

MobileMe and iWeb are distinct from one another, and while they can be used together, you do not need both to use either one separately.

You can delete the sites' files from your computer once they are verified to be live and functional on the internet; the live sites are not dependent on the file on your computer. However, THIS IS NOT RECOMMENDED. If GoDaddy has any issues, or an accident happens (as a virus infected all my live GoDaddy sites sue to their sloppy security earlier this year), the live sites will have to be restored from back-ups. GoDaddy is not responsible for maintaining any back-ups (at least not that you'll ever have access to). Keeping the final versions of the sites, either on your computer or on an external drive or discs will allow easy restoration of the sites. Keeping the originals will also let you make any changes that may come up easily without recreating everything. A little hard drive space can save you a lot of time.

Best of luck!

Annie said...

Dave - thanks for this great post. I'm a graphic designer and publish works through iWeb, and I like to stay on the periphery of how this all actually works - so, really, this was perfect.

David August said...

Annie,
Thank you! I'm so glad you liked it.

David

KIMBERLY said...

I am using iWeb to create and GoDaddy to host my site. I recently recorded a podcast and edited it with Garageband. However, every time I try to publish the podcast in my site, it only publishes a quicktime icon. I tried publishing a .m4a then an .mp3 file. Neither worked...

I thought I could host a podcast on my regular site, am I wrong? I have a "deluxe" package through GoDaddy... if that makes any difference.

Any help greatly appreciated!!!!! Thanks!

Unknown said...

HERE IS A HUGE TIP: I was getting the pissy iWeb FTP communication error with a BLOG. The problem seems to be with iWeb's naming convention. The file in which the blog is contained names each entry based upon year, date and title. So if you do a blog on February 5, 2011 called, "Is there a problem with body odor? NO WAY, JOSE' ", iWeb creates an f'ed up 2011 file, with a "2" file in it for February, and in it, there is a "5" file for the date, and then the entry is called, "5-"_Is_there_a_problem_with_body_odor?_NO_WAY,_JOSE_'_" CAN YOU SEE HOW THAT PISSES OFF YOUR SERVER? iWeb is creating a nested series of files, but on top of that, it is naming the page with a genuinely retarded convention.

SOLUTION: SIMPLIFY YOUR NAME. That fixed 100% of my problems. My site is HUGE, so it is not the size. It is the iWeb naming issue.

Unknown said...

HERE IS A HUGE TIP: I was getting the pissy iWeb FTP communication error with a BLOG. The problem seems to be with iWeb's naming convention. The file in which the blog is contained names each entry based upon year, date and title. So if you do a blog on February 5, 2011 called, "Is there a problem with body odor? NO WAY, JOSE' ", iWeb creates an f'ed up 2011 file, with a "2" file in it for February, and in it, there is a "5" file for the date, and then the entry is called, "5-"_Is_there_a_problem_with_body_odor?_NO_WAY,_JOSE_'_" CAN YOU SEE HOW THAT PISSES OFF YOUR SERVER? iWeb is creating a nested series of files, but on top of that, it is naming the page with a genuinely retarded convention.

SOLUTION: SIMPLIFY YOUR NAME. That fixed 100% of my problems. My site is HUGE, so it is not the size. It is the iWeb naming issue.

JonL said...

@ Tony - Thank you for your post!!! This was plaguing me for weeks now!!! Having to use a FTP client was pissing me off!!! Thanks again. Jon

If you are getting a "Server Error" and you know all of your settings are correct. Shorten the length of your "Site Name" and try again!!!

MegTaylor said...

Hi I have used Dreamweaver in the past but decided to try iweb this time. I built a site www.southernlakestravel.co.nz in iweb and have both published it to a local folder for safe-keeping and also to my webserver (2day.com) . I have also tried to ftp the site in dreamweaver. My problem is that all the fites load onto the server (whether published directly from iweb or via dreamweaver ftp) BUT I can almost never get the navigation bar to show up - just appears as a little dot on the top left side. I also note a lot of the images are not loading properly. If I resize them in photoshop to fit then it seems to be more secure. When I look at my files serverside and remoteside I have the folder name, the index file then the subfolder name with all the page files and a second index file and the script files. I notice that the script files include a js navigation menu. Is there a problem with the heirarchy of these files and whether the main index page can "pull these". Should the server be looking to document or root folder. I am at my wits end to know what to do. I can click on links between pages (click on activities in the above page and then go to some of the links shown), but basically the pages load without the iweb style navigation menu showing up at all and with many of the photos only half showing. Also, why does it become southernlakestravel/southernlakestravel?

I am about to give up on iweb.

Meg.