When I tried iWeb

I’m not a web designer but I’m very curious and love the Internet. Back in the nineties, I made a very simple page with Frontpage in Windows. After that, my second experience with webpages was a bit different.

First year of the PhD, each student had to make a website for their own city. We had some introduction about HTML and then started with Dreamweaver. I wasn’t difficult and the city page looked just like had to. But that’s all I learnt about web creation and web designing.

Then I tried to keep my far away family informed about my life through the web. So I used Blogger; after that I used Yahoo 360, and then Live spaces. But I wanted something more customizable.

So one of the things I wanted to try was iWeb. As I don’t have a .mac account, I publish to a folder and then, using another program (Easy iWeb Uploader – Shareware) upload the site and blog via FTP. I must say, it’s pretty easy to have a good-looking personal website with iWeb. But then you want more.

After the first entries, I decided to add a visit counter and to have comments. So I register with Haloscan and Statcounter, both free. How do you use this in iWeb? It’s not difficult but you have to remember to use the additional program that makes this possible (iComments – Demo). And you have two other programs (iWeb Enhancer –Demo- and iWeb More –Shareware) to add a lot of stuff like Flicker, Google Ads and more, but I didn’t try them. If you don’t run the program after each and every time you publish the site to a folder, you won’t see those things working on the published website.

I would love this kind of features integrated into iWeb, but I’m not sure if it’s ever going to happen, as the iWeb is prepared to be fully integrated with a .mac account, where you can have the counter and the comments without worrying to enrol outside services and running other programs.

And yes, I’ve been thinking a lot about having a .mac account, but for me, I don’t think it’s worth. My Gmail account has lot more space. And you can have a lot of free services if you know where to look.

So now I’m looking forward in trying the 3 demos I’ve downloaded: Rapidweaver (may need some add-ons); Sandvox (you must go Pro for the advanced features); and Shutterbug. The 3 have the FTP fully integrated, that’s a plus I like.

There are other web creation applications like Goldfish, Flux or Freeway (Express and Pro). And for blogs creation you have iBlog or Wordpress. If none of the 3 demos convince me, later will see.