iWeb was a template-based
WYSIWYG
In computing, WYSIWYG ( ), an acronym for What You See Is What You Get, is a system in which editing software allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed d ...
website
A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wi ...
creation tool developed by
Apple Inc.
Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company ...
The first version of iWeb was announced at the
Macworld Conference & Expo
Macworld/iWorld was an information technology trade show with conference tracks dedicated to the Apple Macintosh platform. It was held annually in the United States during January. Originally ''Macworld Expo'' and then ''Macworld Conference & Expos ...
on January 10, 2006 as part of the
iLife ’06 suite of digital lifestyle applications.
iWeb '11 was released on October 20, 2010 as part of the iLife ’11 suite, though it was not updated from the previous release (version 3.0.2).
iWeb allowed users to create
website
A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wi ...
s and
blog
A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order s ...
s and customize them with their own text, photos, and movies. Users could then publish their websites to
MobileMe or another hosting service via
FTP
The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and data ...
. In addition to its ability to publish to MobileMe, iWeb integrated with other services, including
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...
,
YouTube
YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...
,
AdSense
Google AdSense is a program run by Google through which website publishers in the Google Network of content sites serve text, images, video, or interactive media advertisements that are targeted to the site content and audience. These advert ...
and
Google Maps
Google Maps is a web mapping platform and consumer application offered by Google. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360° interactive panoramic views of streets ( Street View), real-time traffic conditions, and rou ...
.
Apple ceased development of iWeb in 2011.
Overview and features
Page design
iWeb allowed users to create and design websites and blogs without coding and included a number of Apple-designed themes, each of which had several page templates with coordinated fonts and colors. Users could customize these pages by replacing placeholder text and by dragging and dropping their own photos and movies into the document. Templates included blog, podcast, and photo and movie gallery pages as well as standard "Welcome" and "About Me" pages.
iWeb integrated with other applications in the iLife suite. The iLife Media Browser is a list of all the music, movies, and photos stored in
iTunes,
iMovie, and
iPhoto
iPhoto is a discontinued digital photograph manipulation software application developed by Apple Inc. It was included with every Macintosh personal computer from 2002 to 2015, when it was replaced with Apple's Photos application. Originally so ...
. Content could be dragged from the Media Browser window and placed in the open page. Local files could also be dropped directly into the page.
Nine interactive "widgets" were included with iWeb. Among other functions, these widgets let users embed YouTube videos and Google Maps, include a countdown timer and add
RSS
RSS ( RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many di ...
feeds.
Publishing
iWeb featured built-in support for publishing to
MobileMe, a suite of online applications developed by Apple, and to other third-party web hosts with FTP. Once account information was entered, users simply clicked a button to publish their entire website. iWeb could then publish updates to the user's
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...
profile to notify others of changes to the website.
Limitations
iWeb was in its third version at the time of discontinuation, and had a limited feature set and some unresolved bugs. Some limitations included:
* Separate CSS files were created for each page, rather than a single stylesheet for the entire site.
* No option to directly edit the HTML code of templates. HTML support was limited to small snippets that could be embedded into the page.
* Password protection was not supported on non-MobileMe-hosted websites.
* Creating templates required third-party software and was overly complex.
* Comments on blog pages were not supported on non-MobileMe-hosted websites.
Discontinuation of iWeb in iCloud transition
In June 2011, rumors emerged that iWeb would not be developed further.
On June 30, 2012 Apple discontinued MobileMe. All iWeb websites hosted on MobileMe disappeared if not hosted elsewhere. Apple provided instructions of how to move iWeb sites to another host.
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Iweb
MacOS-only software made by Apple Inc.
Web development software
Products introduced in 2006
Discontinued software