As MobileMe is being discontinued in less than 2 weeks, many users are discovering that publishing their website to an FTP server sometimes produces cryptic errors that prevent your website from being published.
This is actually a bug in iWeb, and in most FTP publishing tools. Fortunately we have fixed this publishing bug and included it in our newest release of iWeb SEO Tool.
Now you can make sure your website lives on once MobileMe goes away on June 30th.
Plus, iWeb SEO Tool is free for users who have signed up to our iWeb Web Hosting for a year or more. Make sure your iWeb sites work perfectly with our iWeb Web Hosting and iWeb SEO Tool.
After switching from MobileMe to a real web hosting service many users are finding that their web.me.com website is still appearing in Google, and often higher than their new website.
This happens because your web.me.com website has been around longer and your new website has the exact same content. Google is not likely to show two websites with the exact same content so you need to make sure you do this as quickly as possible once you move to a real web hosting service.
1) The first thing you are going to want to do is create an XML Sitemap for your new website. You can do this very easily with Sitemap Automator. Follow the instructions for publishing and verifying your website with Google Webmaster Tools (Hint: We have video tutorials on the above page that explains how to do this step by step.)
2) Delete the content from your web.me.com website. You can do this by mounting your iDisk in the Finder (or longing in to your iDisk at http://www.me.com) and going to the Web/Sites/ directory. Delete the contents in this directory.
2a) Advanced: Instead of deleting your content in step 2, you can also use a meta refresh with a refresh rate of 0 to redirect traffic from your web.me.com website to your new website. If you have set up your new website with our Web Hosting services we can help you with this. Otherwise you will need to contact your web hosting company.
3) The changes will not be reflected immediately. If you did step 2 above and you do a search for your website the web.me.com address will still appear in search results for about a week but will go to a non-existing page. If you did step 2a above your web.me.com page will still appear in search engines but will redirect to your new website. Eventually your new site will start to rank higher than your web.me.com page and your web.me.com page will be removed from Google’s search results.
4) Bonus: If you want to completely remove your web.me.com website from Google and other search engines as quickly as possible you need to create a robots.txt files that disallows search engines from indexing your website. To do this create a plain text file called robots.txt and enter the following code exactly as shown below in it;
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
Then put this robots.txt file on your iDisk in the Web/Sites/ directory. Again, if you are using our web hosting services we can do this for you. Otherwise you will need to contact your current web hosting provider.
That’s it for moving your iWeb website from MobileMe to a real web hosting service. Don’t worry, even though Apple has discontinued MobileMe, iWeb will continue to work for a long time as long as you have it installed on your computer. If you are looking to optimize your iWeb site for Google and other search engines, take a look at our iWeb search engine optimization training courses.
With MobileMe, users were able to password protect their entire iWeb websites. Now that MobileMe is being discontinued, users need to find a new option for password protecting their sites. One of the biggest drawbacks to MobileMe’s password protection is that users must password protect the entire site, and not just individual pages. In this tutorial, I am going to show you how you can password protect individual pages on your site. This demonstration uses RAGE Web Hosting so be sure you have your cPanel username and password handy.
If you have yet to sign up to RAGE Web Hosting, you can do so now and follow along with the tutorial. If you have any questions, please feel free to let us know.
Video Transcript:
If you have a subscription to MobileMe, you are able to password protect your entire iWeb website. You weren’t able to password protect individual pages, but rather the entire website would need to be password protected. But now that MobileMe is being discontinued, this feature will no longer be an option for users. In this tutorial, I am going to show you how you can password protect individual pages on your website, and even create multiple usernames and passwords for those pages.
In order to do this and follow along with the tutorial, your website must be hosted with RAGE Web Hosting. You can sign up for hosting at ragesw.com
Another few restrictions to this that I want to mention is that we’re going to be creating a new page, which means that if you already have your page created, you will either need to re-create it, or copy and paste the content over to the new page. That is going to depend on the current setup of your page, but I have a feeling most of you will be copy and paste the content.
Another restriction is that this won’t work as well with a blog, or a podcast page.
One last restriction that I will mention is that we’re going to need to create links to the password protected page as opposed to having it being automatically placed in our navigation menu like other iWeb pages.
Okay so now that we’ve discussed those, let’s get right to it. First open up your website in iWeb. Click on the Add Page button, and select the My Albums page from the White website template. The default name for this page will by My Albums, but let’s rename it to something different. You can name it whatever you want, but I am going to name it login. This name will appear in the URL so make sure whatever you choose, you don’t mind other people seeing it.
The next thing we’ll do, is disable almost everything on this page. Our goal is to have this page be a blank white page. So you can highlight everything on the page, and hit the delete key. You will notice some things disappear while others remain.
The next thing we’ll need to do is click on the Inspector button and click on the Photos tab. Then deselect the option to Allow visitors to subscribe. This will get rid of the Subscribe button. Then with the Inspector window still open, click on the page tab and deselect the options to Include page in navigation menu, as well as Display navigation menu. This will take this page out of your main navigation menu, and also take away the navigation menu from this page which is exactly what we want.
In the end, all that you should see is the empty photo album that says Drag Albums here. If you see more than this, then you may have done something incorrectly.
Our next step is to add the page that will be password protected. Click on the Add Page button, and select Movie. You can choose this page from any of the templates. Make sure that this page is located below and slightly to the right of the page we just modified before. It should look like mine. This indicates that this page is going to be in my login page’s directory.
You can name this page whatever you want as well. This is the page that users will access once they type in the username and password you have provided the with.
We’re almost done in iWeb. So far, we’ve made our blank page, and our page that will be password protected. But now, how will our users know where to login? This is completely optional, but we can now make a login link. To do this, click on the Text Box button and type in some anchor text for your login link. Next, highlight the text and click on the Inspector button. Then click on the Link tab, and select Enable as hyperlink. Then select One of my pages from the drop down menu, and select your password protected page. Note, this is not the blank page, which for me is called login, but is the page beneath the login page which is called sign-in. Now I’ll just place the text box where I want it to go on my site, and then I will copy the text box. I am copying it because I want to place it on every page on my site. To do this, I am just going to click on each page and paste the text box.
Now we’re done with iWeb and onto our last step, which is to make the Login directory password protected.
When you signed up with RAGE Web Hosting, you were given access to what is known as cPanel. When you have logged into cPanel, scroll down to where it says Security and click on Password Protect Directories. In the pop up window, leave Web Root as the selected option, and click the Go button. You should now see various files and folders. My website is called Jeremy’s Golf Shop so I will click on the tiny folder image right next to that. If you don’t have a folder for your website, you can skip this step and continue with us on the next step.
Once in the folder, we will see all of the folders associated with our websites. Now we must click on the folder name that we want to make password protected. So we know I want to password protect the Login page so I will click on it.
To enable the password protection, check the box that reads Password protect this directory. Then give the protected directory a name and click Save. If you ever want to remove the password protection from this page, just uncheck the option to password protect the directory.
Now we can create usernames and passwords by filling out the fields in the Create User section. You can create multiple usernames and passwords that you can give out to different individuals or organizations. When you are done creating your users, click on the Add/Modify authorized user button. We can now visit our websites and test the password protection.
Click on the link for the page that you password protected, and a popup window prompting a username and password should appear. Type in a correct username and password, and you can now access that page. If you click cancel, you will be told that you are not authorized to view the page.
Many of our customers use Apple’s website building program called iWeb. We speak to many of these users on a daily basis, and a very common thing we hear from them is “I am brand new to all of this, where do I begin? How can I use your company to make my life easier?”
If this sounds like you, then read the remainder of this article. We will cover the basics of our products/services and how each of them can really benefit you. The level of difficulty for all of our software is low. We have training videos for absolutely everything, so no need to worry about being in over your head.
Strongly Recommended
1. So someone has told you that you need to change your title tag. Not sure what that is? Our FREE SEO For iWeb Walkthrough Video Course will teach you everything you need to know about making your iWeb site more search engine friendly.
2. Google can’t find your site? This is not surprising. Use Sitemap Automator to get your site listed in all major search engines.
3. Have you noticed that your iWeb site loads slow? Your customers have noticed too! Slow loading sites means users clicking the back button. Use WebCrusher to drastically improve your website’s loading time.
6. Facebook is one of the most visited websites in the world. Connecting with your customers on Facebook is a no brainer. Use MapDesign to create a custom Facebook page.
More Advanced Users
Want the most powerful SEO software we offer? Use SEIntelligence to compare your site to your competition, and use the suggestions made to improve your website all in one spot. (Warning: Could result in high rankings!)
Let’s Not Forget Hosting
Here at RAGE Software, we pride ourselves on being your businesses one-stop-shop for everything your website needs. We encourage all iWeb users to switch to our web hosting. We also take pride in our excellent customer service and exceptional iWeb knowledge – a feat no other web hosting company claims to have. Your website is important to you, and you are important to us. When you switch to our web hosting, you will not be disappointed.
We hope this article gives you a better understanding of what we do, and how we are able to help your website succeed. If you have any inquirers please don’t hesitate to e-mail us.
As most of us know, iWeb was intended for personal use, but its extremely friendly user interface and vast template selection has led many small-medium businesses to use it as their in-house solution for web design.
In this quick start guide, I am going to give users some great suggestions on the best ways to use iWeb for business purposes, and how our products and services can help you.
1) First and foremost, having a professional business domain name with a professional hosting company is a must. We still see many iWeb business sites have a me.com address. While this may be good for a personal website, it can be a big mistake for a business site. Visit our hosting page and see how we can assist users with iWeb web hosting.
2) Getting listed in search engines often troubles many iWeb users. If you have an iWeb business site, this is certainly not going to help you get any new customers. The best way to get your site indexed in search engines is by creating an XML Sitemap. Think of an XML Sitemap as a blueprint of your website, designed specifically for search engines. It will list all of the pages on your site in an XML file. You can then publish this file and notify search engines of its existence. Some users have reported being indexed in search results within 24 hours of submitting their Sitemap. Sitemap Automator will allow you to quickly and easily do this. There is also an easy video tutorial to follow along with.
3) As mentioned earlier, iWeb was designed for personal use. So when using iWeb for business purposes, there are a few obstacles that we must overcome. One of which is the website’s search engine friendliness. This obstacle is pretty simple to overcome with our tool called iWeb SEO Tool. This tool will allow you to add many important items to your site, such as Title Tags, Page Descriptions, Alt Text for images, and analytical codes.
4) The speed at which your site loads can have an impact on where you rank in search results, as well as if your website visitors decide to hit the back button or not. If you notice that your site is loading at a slow rate, try out WebCrusher and see if it helps speed up your site. The simple drag and drop method will cut out the fat and make your site load much faster in user’s browsers.
5) Some users who visit a website buy a product or contact the business owner to conduct business. Some do, but most don’t. Stay in touch with the ones who don’t make a purchase by having a newsletter signup form on your site. You can build up your list and send out e-mails about new product launches, or sales, or whatever you want. MailShoot will allow you to easily embed a signup form by simply copying and pasting some code.
6) Using PayPal to sell your products is an easy way to launch your site quickly. You can follow this popular tutorial to see a step-by-step method for adding PayPal to an iWeb business site.
7) Everyone using iWeb for business purposes should do a complete search engine optimization makeover to their site. This includes everything from making the navigation menu search engine friendly, to creating great content, to adding headers and titles. You can learn everything you need to know about SEO For an iWeb site from the SEO For iWeb Walkthrough Video Tutorial.
If you use iWeb, you already know that when you type in your website’s URL, once you are taken to your page, the URL in the address bar will forward to your domain name, followed by the site name that you gave in iWeb while publishing, followed by your page’s file name. It will look something like this;
What we will show you in this tutorial is how to shorten the URL so it only looks like this;
http://www.mydomain.com/page-name.html
The steps to do this are actually quite simple and if you are already using iWeb SEO Tool there really isn’t much more to it. It does require that you have a real web host with an FTP server, but if you are serious at all about your website, you should have one already.
For ten years RAGE Software has offered web development and search engine optimization software for Mac OS X. Today, RAGE announced the RAGE Web Hosting packages to make it easier for customers to get their entire website solutions from one company.
Two plans have been created for Personal websites which starts at $7.00 USD/month and Business websites which start at $29.00 USD/month. Click here to find out more about RAGE Web Hosting.
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