One thing I appreciate about Apple is that their iLife apps are not loaded with burdensome features. They’re mostly easy to use, effective quality apps.
The one iLife app among the suite of apps that needs some help is iWeb. The web sites are easy to create. They’re drop dead gorgeous to look at. And they’re simple to publish online. But iWeb is missing some essential features. You need a buddy to add what’s missing.
iWeb Needs iWeb Buddy
iLife’s iWeb gives Mac users drag and drop simplicity to create attractive web sites that are perfect for families and decent for a small business. There’s not much to learn because Apple takes care of the behind the scenes details.
iWeb doesn’t make it easy for iWeb to handle multiple web sites.
Other features are missing or poorly implemented, including RSS feeds, social bookmarking of sites, and web page tracking via Google Analytics or Mint. That’s where iWeb Buddy can help.
If you’re serious about using iWeb instead of a more advanced web page management system, then iWeb Buddy’s extras will be worth the effort and expense.
Track Me, Baby, One More Time
My favorite iWeb Buddy feature is the ability to track web page usage with Google Analytics or the popular Mint app. The former is free and easy to set up. The latter? Not so much.
If you’re on a tight budget then Analytics is the best choice. Create an Analytics account, grab the Account identifier, enter it into iWeb Buddy and visitors to your site are automatically tracked by Google at no cost to you.
iWeb comes with many web site templates so there’s no reason you can’t create multiple web sites for family and friends (all of which can be tracked by a single Google Analytics account). iWeb Buddy makes it easy to upload those different web sites to a remote server, or your home network, or wherever you can find web space online.
It’s one click publishing of whatever changes you’ve made to your iWeb web sites.
Add a few photos or change some text—click to upload and publish.
iWeb Buddy inserts the proper RSS code for your personal feeds. It also inserts the proper Google Analytics code in each page before uploading so you can track hits to new pages instantly.
Apple hasn’t done much to update iWeb in recent years, though it’s an attractive an easy method to create and publish web pages. Likewise, iWeb Buddy hasn’t added many new features, either. The ability to auto insert Google’s Analytics code is worth the price of admission.
About Jeffrey Mincey
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