Using a .Mac iDisk and HomePage to Create and Serve Your Web PagesApple's .Mac is a suite of services you can access. These services include the following:
The only requirement to use .Mac is that you are using Mac OS 9 or later. Because you are using Mac OS X, this certainly isn't a problem. Creating a .Mac AccountBefore you can access .Mac services, you need to obtain a .Mac account. At press time, the cost of a .Mac account was $99.95 per year. However, you can obtain and use a trial .Mac account that provides access to most of the .Mac services free for 60 days. Obtaining a .Mac account is pretty straightforward. When you installed Mac OS X, you were prompted to enter your existing .Mac account information or to create a .Mac account. If you entered your .Mac account information or created a .Mac account at that time, you are all set and can skip to the next section. NOTE If you created or configured an existing .Mac account when you installed Mac OS X, your .Mac email account was configured in the Mail application for you automatically. To create a .Mac account outside of the Mac OS X installer, do the following:
Accessing Your .Mac AccountTo use .Mac services, you need to log in to your .Mac account. When you enter your member name and password in the .Mac pane, your Mac handles the login process for you automatically if you access .Mac from your desktop, such as when you work with your iDisk. For other services, such as HomePage, you need to log in to your .Mac account on the .Mac Web page. Open a Web browser, move to www.apple.com, and click the .Mac tab. When the .Mac page appears, log in using your member name and password. Your member name will be entered for you automatically; all you have to do is input your password and click Log in. You will move to the .Mac services page; click an icon to begin working with that service (such as HomePage). After you have logged in once, you can sometimes return to your .Mac services page without having to log in again. If you can move directly to one of the services pages, such as the HomePage page, you are already logged in to your account. If you see the Login page instead, you have to log back in to your account before you can use a service. (At the time of writing, this behavior seemed to be a bit inconsistent, so you just have to try it for yourself.) To log out from your current .Mac account, click the Logout link on the .Mac Web page. If you click the "Log out completely" link, your member name won't be remembered on the .Mac login screen. NOTE Each user account on your Mac can have its own .Mac account. The settings in the .Mac pane of the System Preferences utility of one account do not affect the other accounts. The steps to work with other accounts are exactly the same as those to work with the first one you create. TIP You can log in to your .Mac account from any computer running Mac OS 9 or later by visiting the .Mac Web page and logging in.
Using Your iDisk
To learn more about iSync, p. 689. When you purchase a .Mac account, your default iDisk can store up to 100MB of data. You can increase this up to 1GB, but you'll have to pay a fee for additional storage. CAUTION Using an iDisk over a slow Internet connection can be an exercise in futility. When you use an iDisk, you are usually moving a large amount of data from your machine to the iDisk. When using a dial-up account or other slow connection, this can be quite frustrating even simple tasks such as opening the iDisk can seem to take forever. If you use a dial-up account to connect to the Internet, try to use the iDisk at less popular times of the day (such as early in the morning) so that the performance will be as good as it gets. The speed might still annoy you, but at least you stand a better chance of being able to tolerate it. A good choice for dial-up users is to create a copy of your iDisk on your Mac and choose the manual synchronization option. Then, you can move files to and from the local copy of your iDisk. When you are ready to put those files on the Net, you can perform synchronization. This might take a long time to do, but you don't have to be at your Mac during the process (unlike if you work with your online iDisk to move files). The good news is that using the iDisk is faster under Mac OS X than it was using previous versions of the Mac OS. Configuring Your iDiskYou can configure your iDisk for your Mac OS X user account by opening the iDisk tab of the .Mac pane of the System Preferences utility (see Figure 14.2). Figure 14.2. Using the iDisk tab of the .Mac pane, you can configure your iDisk; here, you can see that I have 100MB of space available, but I am currently using only 14MB.To configure your iDisk, perform the following steps:
Working with a Local Copy of Your iDiskIf you chose to create a local copy of your iDisk, you can open it from the Finder by clicking its icon in the Places sidebar (see Figure 14.3). In the resulting Finder window, you will see the folders on your iDisk. At the bottom of the window, you can see the current space being used along with information about the last synchronization that was performed. Figure 14.3. You can access your local copy of your iDisk by clicking its icon in the Places sidebar of a Finder window.NOTE The local iDisk is actually a disk image file called Previous local iDisk for username.dmg, where username is your member name. If you set the local copy of your iDisk for manual synchronization, you can perform synchronization by clicking the Synchronize now button located to the right of the iDisk icon in the Places sidebar (see Figure 14.4). The two versions of the iDisk are synchronized; a progress bar at the bottom of the Finder window informs you about the status of the process. Figure 14.4. You can click the Synchronize button to synchronize the online and local versions of your iDisk.TIP If you open the Action button or the contextual menu for a Finder window showing your iDisk, you can select the Sync Now command to perform synchronization or the Automatic Syncing command to set your iDisk to be synchronized automatically. Working with Your Online iDiskIf you choose not to create a local copy of your iDisk, you can still work with your iDisk from the Finder. However, when you move files to and from the iDisk, you will actually be moving those files across the Net rather just between locations on your hard drive. In most cases, you should use a local copy instead. However, you can access your online iDisk directly to work with it. To do so, select Go, iDisk, My iDisk or press Shift--I. The contents of your iDisk are shown in a Finder window. If you have set your desktop preferences such that mounted disks appear on your desktop, you will see a disk with your member name as its name and an icon of a hard disk in front of a globe this is your online iDisk. If your mounted disks don't appear on your desktop, open the Computer directory and you will see your iDisk there.
To learn how to set the preference for disks being shown on the desktop, p. 121. TIP Look for the Synchronize symbol to the right of the iDisk volume in the Places sidebar of the Finder window to tell the difference between the online iDisk and a local copy of your iDisk. If you don't see any symbol, you are working with the online iDisk. If you do see a symbol, you are working with a local copy. Telling the difference on the desktop is easier. The online version has your member name as its name, whereas the local copy is just called iDisk. TIP If you use more than one .Mac account, you can download and use the iDisk Utility application to make working with multiple .Mac accounts more convenient. You can download this application from the .Mac Web site. Working with Your iDiskAfter your iDisk is mounted on your Mac (whether it is a local copy or the online version), you can work with it just like the other volumes and disks on your machine. Open your iDisk and you will see the following folders:
The Documents, Movies, Music, and Pictures folders contain elements for Web pages you might want to add to your .Mac Web site. For example, if you want to include a Pictures page on your site, you can store the images you want to include on the page in the Pictures folder. The Public folder is where you can store files you want other .Mac users to be able to access. The Sites folder is where you store your own HTML pages to be served from the .Mac Web site (rather than using the page templates that are provided for you). The Software folder contains software you can download to your Mac. Apple stores system and application software updates here so you can easily access and download them. To see what software is available, simply open the Software folder. To download any of the files you see to your Mac, drag the file from the Software folder to a folder on your machine. For example, a folder called Mac OS X Software contains applications you can download to your Mac by simply dragging them from the folder to your hard drive. The contents of the Software folder do not count against the 100MB size limit (or other size if you have increased it) of your iDisk. The Backup folder is where your data is stored if you use the Apple Backup application to back up your Mac. The Library folder contains files that support use of the iDisk, such as application support files. TIP When working with an early version of Mac OS X version 10.3, I couldn't delete files on my local copy of my iDisk by selecting them and pressing -Delete or by selecting File, Move To Trash as I do with files on other local volumes. I had to actually drag the files to the Trash icon on the Dock to delete them. I could remove files from the online iDisk using the usual techniques. This might be related to the early version of 10.3 I was using, but if you ,are unable to remove files from your local copy of your iDisk, try the good old drag method. Accessing iDisks from the GO MenuThe iDisk commands on the Finder's Go menu are the following:
TIP When you need to enter a password to access someone else's Public folder, your username is Public, which is entered for you. If you add the password to your keychain, you don't have to enter it again. The Public folder is unlocked for you automatically when you access it. Sharing Information on Your iDisk with OthersOne of the most useful things about an iDisk is that you can place files in the Public folder and then share them with other .Mac users. To share your Public folder, you can publish it so that others can access it using a Web interface. You don't have to do this for others who use .Mac because they can mount your Public folder directly (as you saw in the previous section). However, publishing a File Sharing Web page can be helpful to users who don't or can't use .Mac. To create your File Sharing Web page, follow these steps:
You'll see a screen confirming that you have successfully published the page, and you also see its URL (see Figure 14.6). Figure 14.6. The contents of my Public folder have been published to the File Sharing page located at the URL shown in this window.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 (in Figure 14.7, you can see the URL ends in 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 and link to each page (you'll learn how later in this section). People can access your site menu at http://homepage.mac.com/membername/, where membername is your member name. Figure 14.8. Anyone who accesses the files on this Web page can download them from my iDisk's Public folder.To make files available from your iDisk Web page, drag them into the Public folder on your iDisk. When you do so, they will appear on the iDisk Web page (see Figure 14.7). 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. Other people can download these files by moving to the Web page and clicking the Download link for the files they want to download. TIP Anyone who can access the Web can use the files you share. This includes Windows PC users as well as users of Macs running Mac OS 9 or earlier. Using a .Mac Web site is a great way to share files because it is easy to upload files and others can also access the files easily. Using a Web site is better than emailing large files because the recipient can choose when he wants to deal with the files (especially for those people using a dial-up connection to the Internet). And you don't have to worry about an email application properly decoding the files. NOTE For some file types, you can preview the file before you download it. When this is possible, the Preview icon appears in the Preview column. Upgrading Your iDiskYou might need to have more space available than the 100MB that is provided as part of a standard .Mac account. In fact, if you want to create a Web site with lots of movies, music, and photos on it, 100MB might not be enough for you. If you will be using the .Mac backup application to back up your data, you will definitely want to obtain more iDisk space. You can purchase additional storage space for your iDisk. At the moment, you can choose to have 200MB for $60/year, 300MB for $100/year, 500MB for $180/year, or 1GB for $350/year. To add more space to your iDisk, go to the iDisk tab of the .Mac pane and click the Buy More button. Follow the onscreen instructions to add more space to your iDisk. NOTE You can also upgrade other aspects of your .Mac account. You can add email accounts or increase the amount of email storage space you have for your .Mac email account. Creating a .Mac Web SiteAs you saw in the previous section, you can easily create a Web page using .Mac. However, you can just as easily create an entire Web site using the HomePage tools. Your site can include multiple sites, with each having multiple pages. There are two basic ways to use .Mac to publish your Web site. The first is to use the HomePage templates 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 Web site files to the Sites folder on your iDisk to publish it. For example, you can create your Web site using your favorite tools, such as Adobe's GoLive, and then post those files in the Sites folder on your iDisk. Apple's .Mac server takes care of serving the site you upload to the Internet. Creating Your Web Site Using the HomePage TemplatesWhen you build a Web site using the HomePage templates, you actually can 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 your sites. To build a Web site using the HomePage templates, you first create some pages. Then you can add sites and add each page to each site, one page at time. When you choose a page to add to your site, you choose a template (called a theme) for that page. Then, you select the contents for the page, edit it as needed, and publish it. You can also choose the start page for your site, which is the first page a visitor to your site sees (more commonly called the home page). You can use templates to add any of the following pages to your site:
To learn how to create photos to share over the Web, p. 457.
To learn how to create movies to share over the Web, p. 571. Before you get started adding pages to your site, 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 quite similar. You can create pages based on any of the available templates by following these steps:
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:
The URL for the Web site you create is http://homepage.mac.com/yourmembername/. (Don't include the period shown in this URL that 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 Web site. 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 Web sites using HomePage is easy and powerful. Following are some additional tips for your consideration:
Creating Your Web Site by Adding Your Own Pages to the Sites FolderAlthough you can quickly and easily create a basic Web site using the .Mac 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 Web site you create using any other Web site 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 Web site on the .Mac is the following:
To access the Web site 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 the site, you see the page you named index.html (see Figure 14.12). Figure 14.12. I created this site on my Mac and uploaded it to the Sites folder on my iDisk.The Web site you store in the Sites folder is not integrated into a .Mac Web site 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. Using Other Hosting Services to Publish a Web SiteThousands of Web hosting services are available for you to use. All of them work similarly to .Mac; you first create your Web site and then upload all the files onto the hosting service's servers. As with the .Mac, the hosting service maintains all the hardware and software needed to serve your site to the Web. Unlike .Mac, however, many hosting sites are free or charge only a minimal fee. Some hosting services offer more than just Web serving, including domain name registration, email, FTP, and other services. Hosting services that offer these additional services are usually fee-based. Such fees usually depend on the size of your site and how much traffic it will be generating.
To learn about domain name registration, p. 448. NOTE You might wonder why companies would offer hosting services free. Most free hosting services generate income by including advertising on the sites they host. When someone views your Web site, he also sees whatever advertising the hosting service has been able to sell. You usually don't get any say in the sorts of ads that appear on the sites, so you should investigate this before you start using a free site. Sometimes these ads can be more than just annoying for people visiting your site. Often, they can be offensive. If you want to explore the hosting services that are available, develop answers to the following questions:
After you have answered these questions for yourself, you can find many hosting services by doing a quick search on the Web. After you find a hosting service, you can create an account with it (you might also need to pay for it and provide additional information depending on the services you are getting). When you have an account, most hosting services work similarly to .Mac. NOTE One of the nice things about .Mac is that posting the files for your site to your iDisk is so easy. Many services require that you use FTP software to post your files, and sometimes they even require specific FTP applications to be used. Typically, the required applications are shareware or freeware, so it usually isn't a big deal. However, if you try to use the wrong FTP application, you can have problems. |