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Is this the end of iWeb?

I was reading Twitter earlier on today and got a bit of a shock! Being half asleep though I chose to ignore what I had read and put it to the back of my mind. It was then this afternoon when I got an e-mail from Danish iWeb user Peter Vistisen when it suddenly hit me. There is a vicious rumor spreading around the WWW that iWeb has not much longer left for this world. Yep very soon our favorite app for creating our beautiful webpage masterpieces may well be no more.

How can this be I hear you cry! Well according to MacRumors Steve Jobs has announced it. AAAAGGGHHHHH!!!!

That’s right. Yesterday afternoon (Sunday 12 June) MacRumors published a copy of an e-mail that an anxious iWeb user had sent to Mr Jobs asking whether or not they would have to look for an alternative to iWeb and MobileMe once iCloud went live, and in a one word answer ‘Yep’ iWeb was given the chop. You can read the full post by clicking on the image below.

So what do we think of that? Well I am in two minds. As I said in my reply to Peter it may be me being naive but can I really believe that the head of Apple would simply reply with just ‘Yep’? I’m not so sure. I know he’s a busy bloke but really????

But on the other hand, when iCloud was announced I took a look at the iCloud web page on the Apple site and iWeb hosting wasn’t mentioned, at all! So I decided to get in touch with Apple and had an on-line conversation with the MobileMe support team and asked them if iWeb would still get hosting on iCloud. They pointed me in the direction of the iCloud web page on the Apple site and told me that they knew as much as that web page told me! (I had to chuckle when they asked me if they had solved my problem, great support).

So I’m not 100% sure that iWeb is going, that said I’m not 100% sure that it is staying. I hope it stays, but if it does it needs improvements to bring it up to date with the all singing all dancing browser that is Safari 5. If we are going to hear the death knoll for iWeb then oh dear, I’m going to have to find something else to blog about!

Do you think iWeb is going when MobileMe goes in June 2012? If it does what will you use for your web designing app of choice? Leave us a comment and let us know.

 

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19 Comments

  1. Please Steve,
    please let us have iWeb forever!

    1. You can have iWeb forever. It doesn’t require anything from apple to run. Just host it on a dedicated hosting provider.

  2. Hi Tim

    I have read the email and dont know if this will be the end of iWeb. I hope not. I have looked arround and think Sandvox or Rapidweaver will be good second choise for me afther iWeb is r.i.p.

    Steven

  3. I hope not. It would be cool if we could convince apple to hang on to iWeb by offering in app purchases as a revenue source. The ability to purchase new themes & add ons right in the app would be value added across all there apps.

    http://jeffnitschke.com

  4. My website isn’t hosted on MobileMe, so I hope I won’t be affected by any iCloud decisions. I really want to learn how to improve my site and haven’t had time to really work on it lately. These lessons are going to help me a lot. Let’s continue and not worry about it until we have to. It seems if anything is going to happen, it won’t be for at least a year.

  5. I want to know how to migrate the sites created with iWeb to some other web site builder–that is the REAL crunch question….what this means–>an iWeb site simply ceases to exist? I know techno-aristocrats will have no problem, but us little guys who made a small business Web site with iWeb will do…..what? arrrrgghhh…

  6. Hi Tim,

    Is the best advise to iWeb-users (like myself) te keep using iWeb, but to switch via the building FTP-settings to another place to *publish* the pages??

    I host my small iWebsite for a view months via my publicfolder of Dropbox. For free and its works fine.

    So, no end for iweb, but only the combination with Mobleme-hosting?

  7. I believe that it was a Steve Jobs real e-mail, if you look at the past e-mails that he sent they were all as long as these one… but people is getting worried about the wrong thing, what we have to worry know is were to host our websites, iWeb won’t vanish, or stop working, it will only no longer receive updates, but these wasn’t happening for a long time, so, worry about hosting.

    btw, sorry for my bad english, not my first language.

  8. As I’m frantically building out my site, I read the news this morning and it was a real bummer. I have Rapid Weaver 4, tried it and didn’t like it. Not sure what else I may migrate to, if not Rapid Weaver. I can only stick with iWeb so long because the internet continues to develop while iWeb wilts away. I have all my sites hosted outside of MobileMe so at least I’m good there.

  9. You can still use iWeb for a long time if Apple will not host your site on iCloud. Publish your site to a folder and upload it to a domain hosted at a provider of your choice. It’s more professional and Apple decisions won’t harm you.

    It’s a real shame if Apple will stop hosting iWeb sites just like that and spread the word with this kind of rumour mails of Steve Jobs. That’s not the way to do it. They should give some alternatives and good information. Maybe they could sell iWeb to a party to develop the program further. Or maybe an open source iWeb?

    In the meantime use iWeb but look around. If you building your sites with templates,
    Sandvox, Rapidweaver are both fine but they are not flexible. You could also try WordPress and Tumblr. If you want an iWeb alike program and design and build your site from scratch without coding try Freeway.

    I’ll stay with iWeb for the time being. I have not found a good alternative yet and let’s hope there will be an iWeb Pro!

  10. Tim,
    I’m also disappointed about iWeb. Who knows if Lion will not break it when it comes out in July?

    How I see it is two scenario:

    1. MobileMe is soon to be dead (end of June next year), when you update to Lion iWeb is not working anymore so it confirms the end of both (hosting and creating website with Apple tools).
    2. Lion comes out and iWeb still working but they update it to work only with ftp hosting (outside of Apple). In this case we may see a revamp of iWeb or just a minor update.

    For me and my two sites if Apple does not make iWeb better by July I will be going to Weebly, it has almost all the features I want and for $5.00 per month it offers you hosting.
    It does not depends on Mac or Windows platform and no software to buy.

    It is a shame because I worked hard on iWeb for the past 3 years but life moves on, so should we.

    Thierry

  11. Jimdo offers a good alternative for iWeb: http://www.jimdo.com/2011/06/14/no-room-in-apple-s-spaceship-for-iweb-take-off-with-jimdo/

    We created a special help section for all issues coming up with transfers from iWeb to Jimdo.

  12. I went to the Apple store today and asked one of their “geniuses” about IWeb and Lion and was assured that the program itself WILL work but the hosting will not. I personally never used Apple hosting but rather another hosting service so I don’t see what the big problem is…:) I hope that it is true that IWeb will function with the upgrade.

  13. ok i get that it will still work but maybe i’m being silly, i thought we had to use the mobile me to put our pictures on then they attach from inside iweb, how will we get our pictures uploaded to it otherwise?

    jo

  14. I hope Apple continues developing iweb as I haven’t found anything that comes close in terms of ease and capability. If Apple does drop it, they should release it as open source much like Safari browser to open source communities. That way we can keep iWeb alive.

    http://isnapbackcaps.com

  15. It’s broken here! Lion + iWeb = fail. All domain.sites files open with the SAME content, and if you save it, u loose all custom sites. Wha?!?

  16. Hey buddy, I had the saem fear of Iweb goin to heaven but I have heard its not the end of Iweb but the end of Mobileme and its ability to hld you web page? You probably heard the same by now?

    Cheers

  17. I like iWeb and use it for podcast organization – so easy to move a podcast from GarageBand. However, for those of you who are looking for something to replace it I would suggest Freeway. It has a lot more functionality, is easier to use than the high end products, and you don’t need to know how to code. It has its faults, but well worth the price and you can build slick wesites.

    1. Thanks for the tip Mark

      Tim

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