You can do so much with so much style and class with the iLife applications. It’s about time that there was a stylish, classy way to make a web home where your stuff can reside. Sure, if you had a .Mac account you could use the HomePage templates to create an on-line presence, but, although attractive, they didn’t allow for much customization, and were really geared around photos.

Prepare to be set free by Apple’s new addition to the iLife family: iWeb. iWeb contains twelve different themes for your website – among them basic white and black, watercolor, travel, babies, kids, nightlife, sports, road trip, and formal. Within each theme there are templates for page content – Welcome, About Me, Photos, Movie, Blog, and Podcast. Each page template comes complete with a place for images, text fields, and a background. As you create each new page, the menu with links to all the pages on your site is automatically updated. Delete a page, and the link to it is gone.

As with other iLife applications, you can populate your pages with photos, movies, or music through the Media Browser window. You can tweak images once they’re on the page with the same Adjust Image floating palette found in iPhoto. iWeb produces really gorgeous interactive slideshows as well.

Blogging is a snap, as blog pages have a built-in blog manager to handle the dates and format. All you do is express your thoughts. Dude! Plus, iWeb also generates the RSS code necessary to allow readers to subscribe so they can read what you think about everything, and even get notified if you change your mind (or you’ve posted something new).

Once you have the site looking the way you want, it’s time to publish. If you have a .Mac account, you can literally push one button, and iWeb will log on to .Mac and upload your site. When it’s done uploading, iWeb will address an email announcing your site to all your friends, and take you there for your first visit.

But what if you don’t have a .Mac account, but have other web space? You can publish your site to a folder on your Mac, then upload it to the server of your choice.

Don’t mistake iWeb for Dreamweaver Lite. You can’t stray too far outside the themes or templates, but you may not need to.

© 2006 Peter F. Zimowski