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If you're using Apple's iWeb to build a website, but you don't have a .Mac account, you can use Fetch to upload your website to any web server. You'll find uploading your website is easy after you do it once.

While no special settings are necessary to upload a website built with iWeb, there are two important things to be aware of:

  • On many servers, the files that make up your website must go in a specially named folder, for example, one named "public_html", "htdocs", or "www" — the exact name of the folder will depend on your server. Usually you do not need to create this folder, it will already exist. If you are unsure which folder you should put your website files in, or if your website doesn't appear after you upload it, you should contact your hosting provider or server maintainer and ask which folder the files should go in.
  • When you follow the instructions below, iWeb will put the files that make up your website inside a folder on your Macintosh. You should upload the contents of that folder, but not the folder itself. Be sure to upload all the files and subfolders inside the folder, and leave them exactly as iWeb creates them — do not rename or rearrange them.

To export your pages from iWeb and upload them using Fetch:

  1. In iWeb, choose File > Publish to a Folder.
  2. You will be prompted to choose a folder to put your website files in. You may want to create and use a new folder, so they don't get mixed up with other files.
  3. Once you've selected a folder, click the Choose button and iWeb will export the files that make up your website.
  4. Open Fetch.
  5. In the New Connection dialog, enter the information for your server, if you haven't already saved it in a shortcut, and click Connect. If you are unsure what to enter, see the What do I enter in the hostname, username, and password fields? help topic.
  6. Fetch opens a transfer window showing the folders and files on the server. In the transfer window, open the folder on the server where you want to place your website files (you can change to a different server folder by double-clicking on its icon). Remember that many servers require that your website go into a specially named folder, such as "public_html".
  7. Drag the files created by iWeb in step 3 to the server folder, or click the Put button and you will be prompted to choose which files on your Macintosh to upload. Choose the files created by iWeb in step 3. Do not drag or select the folder containing the files; just drag or choose all the files and subfolders inside that folder.
  8. Fetch will start uploading your files and folders.
  9. Once Fetch has finished uploading, visit your website to make sure it looks correct. To make sure you are seeing your latest changes, choose your web browser's reload or refresh command (in Safari, choose View > Reload Page).

Some other advice and troubleshooting tips when using Fetch and iWeb together:

  • After you make changes to your website in iWeb, you must re-publish and re-upload the entire site. Because of the way iWeb creates websites, if you only upload some of your files after updating them, your website may not work properly.
  • If you still see old pages that you changed or removed after uploading an updated website, first try reloading or refreshing the page in your web browser to make sure you are seeing the latest changes (in Safari, choose View > Reload Page). If you don't see your updates after reloading, try quitting web browser and re-opening it. If you still don't see your updates after doing that, check to make sure you uploaded your website files to the correct folder on the server.
  • When you re-publish your website after making changes, iWeb re-creates every file, even if you just made one change on one page. As a result, if you are using Fetch's Mirror command to upload your website, every file will appear to be newer than the ones on the server, and all files will be uploaded again. This is a limitation of iWeb, and there is no way to work around it currently.
  • Some websites and service providers will advise you that you need to set Fetch to use the UTF-8 text encoding in order to properly upload webpages built with iWeb. You do not need to make any changes to your Fetch settings. iWeb creates files with the UTF-8 text encoding, and Fetch 5 preserves that encoding when your files are uploaded; Fetch 5 does not modify the text encoding of files. If you are seeing funny or extra characters in your webpages after uploading them, it is most likely the result of an incorrect setting on the web server, and you should contact your service provider or server maintainer, tell them the server will not display UTF-8 webpages correctly, and ask them to fix it.
  • If you get errors such as "permission denied" or "operation not permitted" from the server when trying to upload your website files, this could be caused by one of two problems:
    • You may be trying to upload your files to the wrong folder on the server, and you do not have permission to upload them there. Double-check the instructions from your hosting provider to make sure you're uploading to the correct folder for website files.
    • Or, the problem may be that some of the files and folders created by iWeb have spaces in their names. Some file servers do not allow spaces in the names of files or folders. Since iWeb uses the titles of your webpages as the names for files and folders, the solution is to edit your website so that none of your pages have spaces in their titles, re-publish the website, and try again.

If you haven't already, you may want to create a shortcut to your server for quicker access in the future. See the creating a shortcut help topic for more information.

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