[ph0ust]

hi all. i am creating a simple, personal web site using iweb. within iweb, one seems able to publish the site to mobileme, however i can't get any details about mobileme web hosting no matter where i look. i guess my questions are:

1) does mobileme let you host a web site as part of the service?

2) if so, what are the service features (e.g. bandwidth limitations, can i use my own domain, etc.)?

3) how does it compare to the typical, cheap personal hosting services one might typically consider (godaddy, register.com, and the litany of small name companies that do this)?

thanks for the help!

[besson3c]

Unless things have changed, MobileMe doesn't support any middleware languages (e.g. Perl/PHP, etc.), databases (MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc.), hosting of domains, or anything that you'd get via a hosting provider. Unless you are compelled by the other MobileMe features, you can do far better (and cheaper) in a webhost.

[Maflynn]

Originally Posted by ph0ust 

1) does mobileme let you host a web site as part of the service?

Its not a true hosting service as compared to other companies. The MobileMe is built to integrate with the apple products like iweb. While you may be able to manually upload a website, the lack of third party products limit its usefulness to static pages. That being the case iWeb is a great tool.

2) if so, what are the service features (e.g. bandwidth limitations, can i use my own domain, etc.)?

From what I could find on the net, 100GB seems to be the bandwidth. By the way all companies have bandwidth limitations. Even the ones that advertise unlimited or huge amounts. (They use other metrics to limit the actual usage)

Check out Web Hosting Talk A great site and forum to see what's out there for the price and not be sucked into the type of companies that offer everything for pennies, i.e., you get what you pay for.

3) how does it compare to the typical, cheap personal hosting services one might typically consider (godaddy, register.com, and the litany of small name companies that do this)?

The services that apple provides with its mobileme package compares very poorly but then its a little bit of apples and oranges. The MobileMe suite isn't about webhosting but providing consumers with a suite of tools, one of which allows them to have a static website published.

[tooki]

MobileMe does allow you to use your own domain, provided that you are also using iWeb 08. It's called "personal domain" and basically involves setting your CNAME record for your website to "web.mac.com" and then telling MobileMe about it in the account settings.

Look at my website, www.antoniotejada.com. It's hosted on MobileMe.

[ph0ust]

ok. so it sounds like i can use mobileme *with* my own domain as long as my site is rudimentary and using only features available to me in iweb08? is that about right?

my site is pretty rudimentary. the most i might want would be to change the display of albums and photo pages, which i am not sure how i would do (i suck with web languages). i know i could find cheaper pure hosting alternatives, but mobileme also provides calendar/address book syncing and backup capabilities.

i have google apps set up, but it seems to segregated between apps and the documentation sucks a$$. i'd like to use either google apps or a more blended option like mobileme.

thanks for the help.

[TETENAL]

That's right. You can use your own domain and have it point to your MobileMe site. You can also use other software like RapidWeaver, DreamWeaver or even hand-code to create static pages to publish on MobileMe, but for dynamic pages like blogs and so you are limited to what Apple offers with MobileMe and iWeb.

[gregjsmith]

I use the personal domain feature with RapidWeaver (with blog). It does have the "middleware language" limitation as noted. I have 20 GB Storage, 200 GB/month data transfer according to my account info. The more storage you buy the higher the data transfer limit is I think (I could be wrong).

[sergiobevi]

I have used both GoDaddy's Website Tonight (their website creator service) and Google Apps to set up my webpages and iWeb is 100 times better. You get much more customization. The fact that you can just pick what kind of page, whether it's blogs, photos, etc. and customize them is a real plus. I just bought my domain name from GoDaddy and I have it pointed at mobileme. You even have the option to mask the name so all it shows on the address line in your browser is your domain name from GoDaddy, it never shows the web.me.com address. Also, it is MUCH easier and obviously much faster to work on a local application versus a web app. And at the end, you just hit publish and you're done.

I have always looked for ways to publish my own webpage and I find iWeb 08 and MobileMe to be the perfect combo. I do my own designs in Illustrator and Photoshop and then just import them to iWeb.

Just check out my website at www.prffl.com to see what kind of work you can do with iWeb.

I love it!

[besson3c]

sergiobevi: great looking design on your site, but I hope you are sold on the virtues of a well coded site? No offense, this is meant of a critique of iWeb and not your work, but the code on your site is really quite bad. If you are hoping for your site to succeed, and/or it is a source of revenue for you, putting in the time to code it properly is well worth your time. I hope this is seen as constructive criticism and not a personal attack

[auto_immune]

I am confused - how can he have a great looking design and at the same time
have really bad code?

[sergiobevi]

besson3c: Thanks for the compliments and criticism... Trust me, I don't know a thing about coding and I really don't have time to learn, so it works perfect for me... the only issue I find is that the page takes a little while to load, more than usual... I tell everyone I can to download Firefox and it really makes a difference...

[besson3c]

Originally Posted by auto_immune 

I am confused - how can he have a great looking design and at the same time
have really bad code?

I'm not even sure how to answer this... Why do you think that this would be impossible?

I don't mean this in a confrontational way, just wanting to know how to best answer your question

[jasong]

auto_immune, think of a house with a bad foundation. It may have a jacuzzi bath, home theatre system, game room, high end kitchen with marble countertops, and all the other bells and whistles, but underneath it all is still that bad foundation that you can't see unless you get down into to the basement with a flashlight and start poking around.

A web site can have beautiful graphic design with horrific coding underneath. I should know, I worked on one of those for years

What this means is variable. A poor infrastructure may limit your ability to add and extend the site. It make it work poorly (or not at all) in newer/older browsers. It may mean nothing more than the site taking a few more seconds to load.

From my perspective as a retired web developer, I find the iWeb/MobileMe combo to be good enough. I use it to post pictures and videos of my baby for family members to see. iWeb integration with my Mac is excellent, and the process of creating and maintaining pages is fast and easy. Sure, I could make something cooler/nicer/cleaner/faster/compatible/customizable/etc. by firing up my old copy of BBEdit, but now that I am not a web developer, I find that I just don't care about those things, and neither do my "users." A number of the critiques against iWeb/MobileMe are coming from people who place a higher value on those capabilities, which is certainly a legitimate position to take, but isn't the position for everyone. Bottom line is if someone is looking for brain dead publishing of photos and videos from their Mac, it's hard to do better than MobileMe.

[besson3c]

jasong: I agree, but I would suggest that for a business that uses their site as a means to make money that they steer clear of editors like iWeb. In addition to everything you've said above, there is also Google pageranking to consider. However, for family photos and personal for-fun type stuff, iWeb is great

[ph0ust]

this is a great conversation! thanks for all the input. it seems like iweb/mobileme is a good way for me to go. while i might find a hosting service that is a bit cheaper, with mobileme i get not only the web hosting service, but also backup and syncing. given that my site is really, really simple and for personal use (not business), i don't think i can go wrong.

i guess one last question would be: is it worth trying to figure out google apps web hosting features instead of using mobileme? obviously, google apps is free. problem is that documentation is HORRIBLE. i've read a few articles, but damn near nothing that is helpful beyond a general description in a paragraph of two outlining only high level features.

i ask this last question because my domain's email is with gmail now. i understand that now i can host my calendar there and sync it between computers. it would be cool to do that with my address book as well, but not sure how well that would work.

[olubolu]

Originally Posted by tooki 

MobileMe does allow you to use your own domain, provided that you are also using iWeb 08. It's called "personal domain" and basically involves setting your CNAME record for your website to "web.mac.com" and then telling MobileMe about it in the account settings.

Look at my website, www.antoniotejada.com. It's hosted on MobileMe.

how do i go about using my own domain name and then getting mobile me to point to it?

[Maflynn]

Here's the Apple KB Article that details how to do it.

Its quite easy, I did it for mine, I just added a cname record, told mobileme and voila, its done.

[sharpy]

Also if you're interested in hosting custom code with MobileMe (excluding PHP, SQL as mentioned earlier) you can host a custom website using iDisk.

I found this particularly handy when creating a simple website for a uni assignment .

Sharpy.