Using .Mac to Publish a Website


Using a .Mac account, you can publish your own website. There are two basic ways you can use .Mac to do so. The first is to use .Mac's HomePage tools to build your web pages. You add content to these pages by placing files in the related folders on your iDisk. The second, and more flexible, way is to add your own website files to the Sites folder on your iDisk to publish that site. For example, you can create your website using your favorite web page application and then post the site's files in the Sites folder on your iDisk. Apple's .Mac server takes care of serving the site for you.

Creating a .Mac Website Using HomePage

When you build a website using .Mac HomePage tools, you create each page on the site using HomePage templates. You can also create a set of sites and place different pages on each site. People can access each site directly, or you can provide a site menu to help them navigate among your sites.

You can use HomePage templates to add any of the following pages to your site:

  • Photo Album I bet you can guess what you store on these pages. Use these pages to share your photos via the Web.

  • File Sharing Pages using this template present the files in your Public folder for easy downloading.

  • Site Menu These pages help you create a menu so visitors can explore your site by clicking links.

  • iMovie You can serve iMovies you create so others can watch them over the Web.

  • Writing These pages are formatted as personal newsletters.

  • Résumé You can publish an online résumé to land that next big job.

  • Baby Use these pages to make a grandparent's day.

  • Education These pages are designed for those involved in education. The template pages include pages for school events, a school album, teacher information, and so on.

  • Invite You can use these pages to create custom web invitations.

  • Advanced You can use this option to publish pages stored in your iDisk's Sites folder.

Before you get started adding pages to your website, decide what kinds of pages you want to have on your site or what types of sites you want to include. Add the files for each page to the appropriate folder on your iDisk. For example, if you are going to have an iMovie page, add your movie files to the Movies folder. Add photos you want to post by placing the files in the Pictures folder, and so on, until you have added the content you want to have on your site to the appropriate folder on your iDisk.

The process to add each type of page is similar. You can create pages based on any of the available templates by following these steps:

1.

Move to the .Mac web page and log in to your .Mac account if you aren't already logged in.

2.

Click the HomePage icon or tab. You will see the HomePage screen (see Figure 17.6). This screen contains the tools you need to build and edit your pages and the sites on which you store those pages. In the upper part of the window you will see all the sites and pages that are currently part of your site. You will also see the URL to your site. In the lower part of the screen, you will see the tools you use to create pages.

Figure 17.6. The HomePage web page enables you to build your own website quickly and easily; so far, my website contains only one set of pages (called a site), and that set contains only one page (called Se Using Tiger).


TIP

The page shown in bold is the Start Pageyour home pagewhich is the first page people see when they access your website.

3.

In the Create A Page area, click the tab for the type of page you want to create (for example, click iMovies to create a movie page). You will see buttons for each of the various themes (templates) available for the type of page you selected.

TIP

If you have more than one site, select the site on which you want to place the file- sharing page before doing step 4.

4.

Click the button for the template you want to use. If the page serves files of some kind that must be stored in a specific location, such as pictures for a slideshow, you'll be prompted to select the folder on your iDisk that contains the files you want to publish on the page you are creating. If the page doesn't require files in a specific location, you'll move directly to the Edit page for the page you are creating (skip to step 6).

5.

Use the tools on the "Choose a folder" page to move to and select the folder containing the files required by the page; then click Choose. You will move to the edit page that is based on the template you selected.

NOTE

If you work with a local copy of your iDisk, it must be synchronized before the files will be available on the Web. If you use the manual synchronization option, click the Synchronize button after you put the files in the Public folder.

6.

On the Edit screen, edit the text associated with the page. For most pages, this will include the title of the page, a title of objects on it, and a description of the page's contents. For pages that are designed to provide text content, this will include boxes in which you can type that content.

7.

If the page serves files of some kind, such as a QuickTime movie, click the Choose button. The "Choose a file" page will appear. The folders on your iDisk possibly containing appropriate files will be shown in the far left pane.

8.

Move to the file you want to place on the page, select it, and click Choose. You'll return to the edit page window and the file will be placed on the web page you are creating.

9.

Scroll to the bottom of the window. Check the Show check boxes for any special features you want to add. Most pages provide for a counter that shows the number of people who have visited the page (the Show check box next to the 0) and a "Send me a message"feature that enables visitors to send email to you.

10.

Click the Preview button to see how your page will look. The page will be presented as it will be when you publish it.

11.

If you need to make changes, click the Edit button and use the instructions in the previous steps to make your changes.

12.

When you are done with the page, click Publish. The web page you created will be added to your site and you will see its URL.

13.

Click the URL to visit your new page (see Figure 17.7).

Figure 17.7. Hopefully, you will use HomePage to publish more interesting pages than this one, but you get the idea.


NOTE

When HomePage creates a page for you, the URL ends in the name of the template you selected to create the page followed by a sequential number (such as FileSharing27.html). These URLs aren't likely to be easy for others to type. However, you can create site menu navigation pages on your site that link to each page. People can access your site menu at http://homepage.mac.com/membername/, where membername is your member name. This makes locating your site and moving to its pages much easier.


Continue adding pages to your site until it contains all you want it to. When you are done, you will see all the pages on your site in the upper-left corner of the HomePage window.

You can also create additional sites and then add pages to those sites using the same process. In .Mac lingo, these additional sites are called groups, meaning you can collect a set of pages and place them into groups.

To create another group on your site, carry out the following steps:

1.

On the HomePage page, click the arrow button next to "Add another site." You will move to the "Create a site" page.

2.

Enter the name of the site you are creating in the Site Name field.

3.

If you want a password to be required for someone to be able to view your site, check the On check box and enter the password in the Password field.

4.

Click Create Site. You will return to the HomePage page and see the new site you have created. The HomePage page now contains boxes for your sites and the pages on those sites.

5.

To see the pages included in a group, select the group on the Sites pane; its pages appear in the Pages pane. Select a page and a preview appears in the third column on the screen (see Figure 17.8).

Figure 17.8. My website now includes two groups of pages: One is called Cool_Stuff, and the other is the default group that is called bradmacosx.


The URL for the website you create is http://homepage.mac.com/yourmembername/. (Don't include the period shown in this URLthat is only to please my editors!)

When someone visits this URL, she sees the page you designated as the start page. She can use the links on this page to move to the other pages on your website.

You can move directly to a specific page using the URL for that page. For example, if you create an iMovie page, the URL for that page will be http://homepage.mac.com/yourmembername/iMovieTheater.html, where yourmembername is your member name. As you add more pages of each type, the names are differentiated by sequential numbers, as in iMovieTheater1, iMovieTheater2, and so on.

Creating websites using HomePage is easy and powerful. Following are some additional tips for your consideration:

  • Set the home page for each group (called the start page in .Mac lingo) for your website by dragging the page you want to use to the top of the Pages list.

  • You can see the URL for any group by selecting it. Its URL appears at the top of the HomePage screen.

  • The Home site is always the one with your member name as its URL. Any other sites you create have URLs based on this one. For example, if you create a site called Book_Information, its URL is http://homepage.mac.com/yourmembername/Book_Information, where yourmembername is your member name.

  • To add more pages to a site, select that site on the Sites list and click the Add button under the Pages list.

  • To add more sites, click the Add button under the Sites list.

  • You can delete sites or pages by selecting what you want to delete and clicking Delete. Then click Yes on the resulting confirmation screen.

  • Password-protect any sites that contain information to which you want to limit access.

  • Use site menu pages to organize your site and enable visitors to move around using links. You can also place images on site menu pages as a preview of the pages that are linked to the site menu page.

  • To add a custom page to your site, create it using any tool that outputs HTML files. Place the resulting file on your iDisk and then use the Advanced page template to publish it.

  • To place a counter on a page, use the Show check box next to the counter icon (a box with a zero in it) that becomes available when you edit the page. This counter counts the number of visitors to that page.

  • Use the Show check box next to the "Send me a message" text to place an email link on a page. Visitors can click this link to send email to your .Mac email address.

Creating Your Website by Adding Your Own Pages to the Sites Folder

Although you can quickly and easily create a basic website using the HomePage templates and tools, you are somewhat limited in what you can do. The available templates might or might not be suitable for the site you want to create. Even if you want to do more than you can with the .Mac web page templates, .Mac is still valuable because you can use .Mac to host any website you create using any other website editing tools, such as Adobe's GoLive or Macromedia's Dreamweaver. In this scenario, .Mac acts just like any other web hosting service you might use.

The general process to get your customized website on the .Mac site is the following:

1.

Create your website using the tools you prefer.

NOTE

Name the home page of your site index.html. This ensures that a viewer is taken to the right start page for your site when he moves to its URL.

2.

Test the site by accessing it while it is stored on your Mac. You can test a website by opening it from within a web browser. For example, open your site using Safari by selecting File, Open File. Then, maneuver to the home page for your site and open it. The site will work just as it will after you post it on your .Mac website (except that it will be faster, of course). You should test your site in various browsers and operating systems to ensure that it can be viewed properly.

3.

Fix any problems you find.

4.

When your site is ready to post, copy all its files and folders into the Sites folder on your iDisk.

5.

Test your site again by accessing it over the Net.

To access the website in your Sites folder, use the following URL: http://homepage.mac.com/yourmembername/. (For this to work, you must have named the home page for the site index.html.)

When you move to your .Mac website URL, you see the page you named index.html.

The website you store in the Sites folder is not integrated into a .Mac website you create using the .Mac template. In fact, any pages you create using the .Mac templates are not accessible after you copy your own site into the Sites folder because your custom site replaces any HomePage sites you have created.



Special Edition Using MAC OS X Tiger
Special Edition Using Mac OS X Tiger
ISBN: 0789733919
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 317
Authors: Brad Miser

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