Mac SEO Blog

A common error that users are experiencing when publishing from iWeb is the error communication with the FTP server. Typically, this error stems from a file on your site having an incorrect file name. This is a bug in iWeb that causes the error to appear and the site to not fully publish. This tutorial below will address this issue, and show you an alternative for publishing the entire site.

Video Transcript

If you publish your site from iWeb, and receive an error message that says “There was an error communicating with the FTP server. Try again later, or check with your service provider”, you most likely have a file on your site that does not contain a proper file name, and is giving iWeb a hard time with publishing. This is a bug in iWeb, and because of this, you will not be able to publish your site through iWeb and many other FTP clients.

Unfortunately, we are not told which file or files are causing this, so locating the issue to remove it can be difficult.

Luckily, iWeb SEO Tool is able to handle this issue and can publish the site as is. I will show this by publishing this exact same website that gave me this error.

First, I will publish the site to a local folder.

Now I will launch iWeb SEO Tool, and load the folder that I just published from iWeb.

Next, I will click on the Publish button and enter my FTP details. I keep my FTP details bookmarked in iWeb SEO Tool, so all I need to do is click on the FTP account and all my information will appear. You can do this also by first filling out your FTP information and then clicking this plus sign down here.

So now I will click on the Upload button and publish my site. I will fast forward through the publish so that you can see at the end, my site has been published successfully, and I received no error message like I received in iWeb.

I just want to remind everyone that iWeb SEO Tool is free for any RAGE Web Hosting user who is signed up for at least one year, so if you are looking to use iWeb SEO Tool to help publish your site, I highly encourage taking advantage of the free iWeb SEO Tool promotion as well.