Good News! Forget all these steps- here is an easy way to get iWeb sites onto your own server!

Get “Easy iWeb publisher” for free from Plyxim, here is the link: http://www.plyxim.com/

I haven’t had a chance to test it- but, I’m sure it’s got to be easier than all these step by step proceedings!

If there is one thing I haven’t been happy with in Word Press is its ability to manage a page of photos- so, for Mac users, I put together this little step-by-step instructions on how to use iPhoto and iWeb from iLife 06 to build a gallery page.

If you are looking for one reason to buy a Mac instead of a PC- the way iPhoto handles importing, managing, working with pictures from a digital camera is it. with the addition of iWeb it also gives you a great tool to build a photo page.

Here is how to do it- starting with the basics:

1. Connect camera- or card reader.
2. iPhoto 06 should open automatically.
3. Before you hit import photos- name the roll- adding a roll description.
4. Crop and name photos- the title will appear under each photo.
5. To organize them for the site- you can use the “Batch change” for both titles and contents.
6. Click iWeb option- choose “Photo page”
7. Close the .mac page (it’s Apple’s hosting service- and you own your own domain)
8. Choose a template that you wish to use just for the photo page. As far as I can tell- once you select this template- the only way to switch templates is to delete the page and recreate it from iPhoto.
9. You can change and edit items on the template in iWeb. I suggest removing the “include page in navigation menu” from the page menu.
10. Make title link back to your post: select the title text (starts out as the name of the album from iPhoto)- select the text- pick the link icon in the inspector (the link icon is the last icon on the right- a little blue circle with the swooshed arrow in it).
11. Select “enable as a hyperlink”
12. Make this a link back to the url for the post (you find this by clicking on the headline- and copying the url for the post).
13. Choose publish- here is where it gets a little hinky- iWeb wants to publish to a .Mac account. Apple hasn’t provided a way to publish to your own hosting solution (BOOOO!)
14. Instead – save it to your sites folder on your hard drive. Note: Subscribe buttons work only if you specify the site’s URL (address) in the dialog that appears when you choose File > Publish to a Folder.
15. Continue when you are prompted about Content rights (it is your content- right?)
16. Then open Transmit– or use the handy dandy free extenison for Firefox, FireFTP, and this is a little goofy- your first folder has a page called index.html and a folder (the site name)- open the site name folder- and you will have another index.html page and another .html file (the short title of the original iPhoto album) plus 3 folders- “images” “SlideShow_assets” and “Name of alum_files”-copy all 3 folders and one of the two .html pages (I prefer the one NOT named index.html) into a folder with a short name- like gallery – on your stuff (the server) and then the address to your page will be www.yoursite.com/folder_name/name.html (Where folder_name is the name you gave the folder – mine is gallery and name.html is the name of the iPhoto album- mine is faves.html)
17. Now – make a link to this page in the post- that you have the link back to on your title from step 10.

I know it seems like a lot of steps- but once you are done- you will have a sweet gallery page to look at- like this:http://blogosopher.com/gallery/faves.html

Note- we’ve tried a couple of WordPress plug in’s like Gallery– with limited success. I would really like iWeb better if it took the iPhoto comment info and put it under each photo- and would allow for alt tagging the photos as well.

If anyone has any better suggestions on how to do this- please share. Thanks.

(See beginning!- new software makes this easy)

As P.T. Barnum was reputed to say “there’s a sucker born every minute” – there are people who will have you believe that you can make thousands of dollars by gaming Google adsense with a WordPress site and their “Package” of tools.

Most of what they include is available for free online- themes, plug-ins and even the advice.

The sad fact is, there are a lot of people that would rather pay money for a get rich quick scheme instead of taking a course that will teach you how to build legitimate business with a WordPress site.

And of course, Google has smart people working at eliminating click fraud and splog (SPam bLOG) sites from their search results.

But, if you can’t resist, here’s a link to that easy money:

WordPress Elite – Powerful Blog Management

” You Can Now Easily Create a Niche Blog Empire Using WordPress That Spits Out Five Figure Adsense Checks Like a Winning Slot Machine on Steroids! “

Just remember, slot machines are still programmed to keep most of the money for the house.

About the Book

We’re not the only ones helping people discover web2.0 and the power of using a blog backend to get your message out- Debbie Weil is pushing her book “The Corporate Blogging Book” as a way to help CEO’s reach their markets.

The first chapter is available for download- and has the top 20 reasons why you should be a corporate blogger.

While we haven’t had a chance to read the book- we looked at the first chapter- and it pretty much says a lot of what we’ve been saying- except- we believe that RSS and Content Management Systems are the future of all websites- and that WordPress is the bomb (note- Debbie uses WordPress for her site).

She doesn’t seem to mention the power WordPress has for Google placement- which is another reason to use a blog to manage your site, but if you’d sign up for one of our seminars- you’d see that in action.

If you must insist on buying her book- here’s a link.