iWeb and .MAC

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Robz

112 posts

Master Geek

#16991 7-Nov-2007 15:07

I hope this is the right forum for this...

I look after the web site (http://www.islandbay.school.nz/) for a school in my "free time". The site is currently hosted on WCN (they do a great job) and built and maintained in PMWiki. The school has recently upgraded all it's devices for teachers and in classrooms to Macs, a combination of Mac Notebooks & Desktops and they are now starting to play around with iWeb. An example of some of the kids work is here http://www.islandbay.school.nz/Class_Pages_2007/VictoryPark/V3/Site/Welcome.html

So - I am trying to get more input and more regular updates on the web site. The easiest way for me to do this is to make it easier for them to update the site themsleves. I would still do some updates and maintenance (on my Windows Desktop) so would still need to be able to access it.

I was reading about .Mac accounts and iWeb and some of the funky features that come along with this but I have no experience with these at all. My questions are: Has anyone had experience with .Mac in a "non home" envionment? If so - what are/were the pros and cons of this approach? Can iWeb run on windows PC? Any other information that you can share?

The sire does not have to be graphic intensive, in all reaility (given it is a primary school) the plainer and more navagatable (is this a word?) the better.

Appreciate your help with this.

Rob

spazz

266 posts

Ultimate Geek

#94200 7-Nov-2007 23:32

Quick answer: iWeb will not run on PCs.

.Mac is neat but overpriced and not worth it. You can publish sites created in iWeb to externally-hosted sites too..

When you say you want the site to be easy to navigate, do you mean the main .school.nz one or the ones the kids are creating? Because kids don't want boring and navigateable! iWeb is easy and it makes you feel like a pro! = Much more fun for kids IMO!

http://walkingisoverrated.com

Robz

112 posts

Master Geek

#94216 8-Nov-2007 06:23

Navigation refers to the overall site. Parents need to be able to go the site and find forms, details on the school, board of trustees stuff etc.

I think the kids pages should be and can be what ever they want....

ChrisGNZ

6 posts

Wannabe Geek

#94739 11-Nov-2007 22:08

Hi Rob

iWeb is qutie amazing, from the point of view that someone who has never created a webpage before, and knows no HTML can use the iWeb templates, along with their iPhoto and iMovie collection to create quite a nifty looking website in a short amount of time.

To answer some of your questions in no particular order... (caveat: I am by no means a Mac OS / iLife expert/geek)

iWeb is for Mac OS only. To be more specific, it is a commecial app, sold as part of a product called "iLife". iLife is bundled free with new Macs.

I think the idea of using iWeb as a classroom tool to encourage children to create their own web-pages is a great one. My 8 year old has no problem using iWeb on our family iMac.

The problem is, as you have pointed out, .MAC is rather expensive, and probably out of the reach of most schools already limited IT budgets.

The alternative to paying for .MAC is to look at how to enable the kids to publish their iWeb site to a local classroom/schoole webserver:

1) setup a Mac OS X Server (or if the budget does not reach, a Linux server)

2) configure Apache web server with user webpages under each user's home folder
    the url would look something like: http://classroomserver/~username

3) setup each account so that the network share is mounted at login - AFP (apple file protocol) to a Mac OS X server is easiest, or you could try configuring AFT support for Linux if you are familiar with Linux

4) for each user, mount their webserver folder on the desktop via AFP

5) use the "Publish" site option in iWeb to publish direct to the above-mentioned mounted folder   - presto!

Hmm, i guess the executive summary of this post would be:

i) iWeb is for Mac only, and works most effectively with the expensive .MAC service

ii) you can publish a iWeb website to a folder and use your own webserver

iii) to make the "publish" feature of iWeb work in a user-friendly and failsafe manner suitable for primary school children requires a lot of behind the scenes work to automate the processes. You would really need someone with quite a bit of Mac OS Server or Linux server experience, and preferably with shell scripting and, to go even further PHP development skills to create a Class Administrator web-based app to enable a teacher to setup class accounts, etc...

If I haven't put you off already, here are some links to help:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=iWeb/2.0/en/6838.html (Apple docs on how to publish iWeb to a server other than .Mac)
http://netatalk.sourceforge.net/   (Apple File Protocol for Linux)
http://www.notmacchallenge.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=474   (the notMAC challenge - build your own .MAC server)

Hope this is of some small help
Chris