In iWeb, its all too easy to load your media as QuickTime. The problem with this format, apart from the big file sizes, is that a large percentage of computer users don’t have QuickTime Player.

If you are going to use QuickTime, make sure you provide an easy way for viewers to download it in the same way as explained above for Safari.

If you have a business website and it is going to be viewed in the corporate environment, you’ll have to forget about QT and focus on using flash. The average PC user in an office is not allowed or able to install any application.

You can produce your media in QuickTime formats but you should covert them to flash.

Movies - http://roddymckay.com/VisualMedia/FlashVideo.html

Slideshows - http://roddymckay.com/VisualMedia/FlashAlbumExporter.html

Music - http://www.iwebformusicians.com/MusicPlayers/Flash.html

One of the biggest problems that iWeb users have is to get their website to look good or even download in the World’s Worst Browser - Internet Explorer.

Many of these people , unjustly, blame Apple when in fact IE is the culprit.

It is an out of date and inefficient piece of junk.

Looking through these humungous topics in the iWeb Forum where people encourage us to look at their masterpieces, its kind of sad to see that a majority of the proud creators of these sites are blissfully unaware of the fact that their sites look pretty darned awful when viewed on a PC using Internet Explorer. I’m talking about the ones that actually download in less than a lifetime or don’t lock up this pathetic browser.

I guess they don’t know or don’t care that about 70% of the web surfing population can’t, or don’t want to look at their website.

What can you do?

I’m constantly amazed at the fact that the large majority of web surfers use the worst possible browser. They are totally unaware of the fact that they can supercharge their browsing experience for free by downloading Safari for PC.

You can help to change the world, one surfer at a time, by educating the ignorant masses through pointing out the superiority of Safari and providing a download link on your landing page.

The standard method is to say, “This website is best viewed in Safari”.

I would say, “All websites are best viewed in Safari”. There some antiquated websites that are incompatible with Safari but they are few and far between.

Control click the Safari icon on this page to download it and drag it onto your webpage. Click it to get the URL and select it on your webpage to make it a hyperlink set to open in a new window in the Link inspector.

We’ve already had a look at Web Safe Fonts and Colors and building your own navigation.

I can’t emphasize enough the importance of using web safe fonts and colors. You only have check out your website in IE to see how horrendous it can look if you don’t.

Because the default iWeb, self generating, navigation is in Javascript, it won’t show up on PCs with java turned off.

Another important point is that search engines find a javascript navigation menu hard to index so, if you insist on using the default one, you should at least include a custom built one at the bottom of each page. This has the advantage of saving viewers from scrolling back up to the top of long pages to get to the next one. A “Next Page” button is also worth considering for user convenience although a “Back Button” is less important because the viewer can utilize their browser one.

If you must use fancy fonts, do it sparingly and convert the text to an image or, better still, add it as a JPEG image using a screenshot.

Too many large resolution images can really kill a web page. Adding drop shadows, frames etc will only make matters worse.

Optimizing your images for the web is discussed here: http://roddymckay.com/PhotoSatellite/OptimizeImageFile.html

One method of adding drop shadows, reflections etc without increasing file sizes is covered on this page:

http://www.iwebformusicians.com/Tricks/PhotoMagic.html

The iWeb Photos and Albums templates create huge files that take ages to download. If you really must use them, keep the number of photos per album down to about 24 and the number of albums per page to about 6.

http://roddymckay.com/PhotoSatellite/iWebPhotoTemplates.html

Don’t be tempted to use the albums page for movies. A better way is to have an “index” page with representative images and a text description and use the caption and/or the image as a link to the movie page(s).

http://roddymckay.com/VisualMedia/FlashVideo.html

Its an unfortunate fact of life that we are able to design stunning web pages with impressive graphics and movies but most of the rest of the world can’t get to see or appreciate them.

Plastering your pages with fancy graphics and flashing images to show off your design skills is just downright stupid.

The best and most successful web sites are simple, elegant and to the point.

Before you start designing your site, look for examples of similar ones on the web that load quickly and get the message across without any stupid gizmos and gadgets.

Web design is a unique field in that it is totally different from print and TV.

The worst websites from the download speed point of view seem to be produced by graphic designers, artists and photographers.

The really bad ones from a visual point of view seem to be created by technicians and software developers.

Using iWeb, more or less anybody can put a website together but it takes a lot of time, study and experience to build a good one.

Put everything you want into a webpage and then edit it ruthlessly to leave only what you actually need!

The iWeb default themes and templates may look good but should be avoided like the plague. There’s nothing worse than a website that looks as though its been made in iWeb.

I always start from a Black or White blank page and increase the page width to 980 px.

The default iWeb page width is too skinny and looks amateurish as well as being technically inferior.

There’s a good reason why Apple make their own site 980 px wide. The page will fit most monitors without horizontal scrolling that almost everybody detests and this width also translates well to the iPhone which is becoming more popular than Elvis ever was!

Unless you want to end up with a nightmare on your hands and end up in a padded cell, do not be tempted to use the iWeb Blog or Podcast. At first sight, they appear to be an easy and useful way of going about this task but you will soon end up regretting taking the easy way out.

Don’t take my word for it - look through the user forums to see the mess people get themselves into and try downloading the average blog or podcast in IE on a PC!

If I had the time to blog, I would create it with an application like Blogo and publish it to Google’s Blogger. I would then link it to my main site using a custom navigation menu with the blog hyperlink set as an external one to open in a new page.

For painless podcasting, I would recommend that you shell out a few extra bucks on Podcast Maker.

A lot of hosting services like the one I use, Host Excellence, have WordPress built in which makes it a lot easier to create and publish your blog.

The iWeb development team have proved over and over again that they are seemingly incapable of getting the software to actually work as planned with each new version causing users a lot of pain and inconvenience. They are also too arrogant to consider or incapable of implementing all the user requested features that their the major competition have.

Apart from this, they don’t seem to be able to produce efficient code and this is one a the main reasons why most iWeb built sites struggle to download in Safari never mind in our greatest enemy - Internet Explorer.

Fortunately there are a couple of developers out there who can help us until such times as Apple fires their programmers and gets in some that can do the job or outsources it to a developer who will actually make it work and improve it.

Optimizing applications cut out all the unnecessary stuff that these idiots put in and will help your pages to download from 30 to 50% faster. This can be the deciding factor in whether your website will download in IE sometime this year or lock it up.

There are really only two developers worth considering here.

Ton Brand’s products are the best in terms of speed, efficiency and price while Rage’s WebCrusher will suit those with more money than technical ability due to its minimal setup and drag and drop simplicity.

Both Web Site Maestro and WebCrusher will optimize and upload your files.

Unless your website is aimed at those who like to wash their car or make dinner while your pages download, optimizing is a MUST! 

iWeb and MobileMe were designed to work together to make publishing a one click no brainer deal and, to some degree, has succeeded - when it actually works!

The downside is that the Apple server is slow, inefficient, unreliable, has limited band width and almost zero tech support.

Its definitely not worth considering for anything other than a small personal website and the terms of use prohibit its use for business or commercial purposes.

Commercial hosting companies are in business because they do the job properly and provide you with all the features you need like  the ability to run scripts for feedback forms etc, e-commerce and that essential 24/7 tech support.

As with most things in this life, you get what you pay for and the cost of website hosting should be a secondary consideration to reliability and performance.

I have hosted my sites with and registered my domain names through Host Excellence for several years and they have never let me down. They are a USA based company with a modern, top class facility and the tech support people are able to communicate in understandable English. I find it convenient to have all these resources with one company as they auto renew my domain names and hosting contracts all in one account.

When looking around for a suitable host, do not believe these websites that list the Top Ten hosting companies or the extravagant claims of the companies themselves. Go for personal recommendation.

All this is a lot of stuff to take in and I am barely scratching at the surface of this subject. I’m sure I’ll think of more to add soon!

Statistics show that if your webpage takes longer than about 5 seconds to download you will lose at least a third of your potential visitors.

You can test your page download speed for free at a number of sites eg: http://www.iwebtool.com/speed_test

I did a comparison test of two versions of the same web page. One unoptimized and uploaded to MobileMe and the other optimized using Web Site Maestro and uploaded to Host Excellence.

The MobileMe version took almost twice as long to download.

Navigate This Section:

Why iWeb

Layout

Navigation

Fonts and Colors

Design

Site Layout

PDFs

URLs and Favicons

iWeb Tips

Internet Explorer

Website structure, navigation and layout are discussed in the Step by Step Guide to Practical Search Engine Optimization

Find out more HERE.

Get a FREE SAMPLE COPY.