How can I have multiple websites? And how can I publish just one of them instead of all of them or none of them?

I may explain first that there's a difference between domain names (personal domains) and domain (or domain.sites2) files. Domain names are used to reach your website on the web, like yourdomain.com. Domain files instead are on the computer and used by iWeb to store its files. They are NOT directly linked to each other. You could still use your different personal domains with leaving all the sites in one domain file. Just point the personal domains to the site it applies to. There’s no need to have separate Domain files to be able to use different personal domains. For infos about personal domains yourdomain.com go to this page.

1.1 Managing and editing

1.2 Publishing, to same MobileMe

1.3 Publishing, to different MobileMe accounts

1.4 Publishing, to same server

1.5 Publishing, to different servers

Remember to always have a Backup of all Domain files. It's REALLY important to have Backups!

1.1 Managing and editing

iWeb ’09 allows you to have multiple websites showing up in iWeb at the same time and publish only one of them or publish them to different servers. That’s really great because this way you can leave them altogether and just need to setup where you want to publish the site to by selecting it and provide the needed informations.

If you don’t want to have them looking up all at the same time you can get the websites into separate Domain files which means they don’t show up at the same time anymore.

I personally have multiple websites and every website is made of multiple sites.

Example:

iwebfaq.org made of

- site

- ita

- de

- news

alaskadream.org made of

- en

- ita

- de

- photos

I have two Domain files. In one Domain file there are all the sites of iwebfaq.org and in the other Domain file there are all the sites of alaskadream.org. I wouldn’t like to have both websites’ sites showing up at the same time in iWeb because it would be too much and a bit a mess. So the best solution to me was having a Domain file for each of the websites.

1.2 Publishing, to same MobileMe

For multiple personal domains of the type yourdomain.com have a look at Chapter 4 of this page instead.

First let me say that MobileMe wasn’t built for that. The idea behind MobileMe is to have personal websites to show to your friends grandparents and so on but not the kind of websites to be seen by everybody, the commercial sites and so on. There are different reasons why I say that:

- For example if you have a single MobileMe account you can’t have more than one domain using CNAME. Which is one of the most important things to me (especially to get it on Google).

- It lacks of PHP compatibility (used by Forums, WordPress Blogs, Contact Forms and more), MySQL (Forums, MediaWiki, WordPress blogs, ...). Things needed to have a complete website.

MobileMe is pretty limited (especially for what concerns having multiple websites with multiple domains) whereas iWeb is much less limited than it seems. I’d really recommend you to have a real hosting instead of MobileMe. For informations about hosting your site on a server other than MobileMe see the Publishing and Hosting FAQ.

Anyway if you’re publishing different sites to the same MobileMe account each site should have another name displaying in iWeb.

a) From same user account on the same computer

You could leave the sites all together showing up at the same time in iWeb as iWeb updates only files that have been changed since you published last. That is not separating them. Simply because there’s no need to do so (the thing works different with publishing to folder... there you have to publish all you have in iWeb and that's where having all sites in one Domain file gets annoying).

However if you don’t like them to show up all at the same time you could also use iWebSites or better manually split them as of Chapter 2.1. After you published entering the base URL will redirect you to the last site you hit “Publish entire site” for.

b) From different user accounts (or different computers)

When you will publish and upload to the same account entering your url in a browser you will be redirected to the site for which you hit “Publish entire site” last.

If you publish two or more websites to the same account add a new page to your sites which will be an index page from which people choose which site they’d like to visit. The index page should be exactly the same on all sites and needs to be put at the top of the site’s pages list on the left side in iWeb.

As long as the sites are named differently in iWeb there should be no problem with "intermingling".

Note 1: For MobileMe publishers publishing to a single-Account. If you have multiple websites the CNAME using personal domain will redirect to the site for which you last did a ‘publish entire site’. As long as you just hit ‘publish’ the site to which you get redirected inserting the personal domain using CNAME doesn’t change. The same happens entering http://web.me.com/username/

If you have multiple sites and publish them to the same folder the same thing is happening. As you can see the result of the publishing is an index.html file and a folder with the name of the site. The index.html file is the one which redirects people to the first page of your site. When you publish a second site the index.html file gets replaced with the one you published last, thus people are redirected to a new first page.

1.3 Publishing, to different MobileMe accounts

Some people find it easier to have one User account on the computer and change the MobileMe username and password each time they want to publish another site by going into the System Preferences.

Other people prefer to have two different user accounts on the computer and login to that or the other depending on the site they want to edit without needing to change the MobileMe username and password in the System Preferences each time to publish. To achieve that have a look at this.

It’s up to you to choose which way you prefer. Whether you want to change the data in System Preferences or Login to another user account on your computer.

1.4 Publishing, to same server

To avoid problems with "intermingling" you should add a main index page on every site. That will be the page where people can choose which site they want to visit and the page displaying when you enter your base url. The page should be exactly the same on every site.

The main reason for that is the one mentioned in Note 1 of Chapter 1.3

All you need to do then is specify the connection data selecting the site and choosing FTP.

1.5 Publishing, to different servers

Simply select the site and enter the site publishing settings for the site and enter the other publishing settings for the other site. You can also have a site publishing to MobileMe and another publishing to a server through FTP. That’s all possible in iWeb ’09.

NOTE 1: If the websites aren’t completely independent from each other you will have to make “external links” for linking pages between them

Freeware application which splits your Domain file into many Domain files called iWebSites

NOTE 2: On January 27, 2008 a new version of iWebSites was released that allows you to merge Domain.sites2 files. iWebSites merges Domain files split with iWebSites itself AND also Domain files split manually.

Remember to always have a Backup of all Domain files. Also make a Backup before going through Chapter 2.1. It's REALLY important to have Backups!

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- Cédric -