We are happy to announce a major update to WebDesign, the fully featured web authoring package and HTML editor for Mac OS X. This update adds a number of enhancements, most notably support for HTML 5.
If you are new to HTML 5, you’ll love the new features we added. You can now see what tags and attributes are new to HTML 5 and a description for each one in the attribute editor. Auto complete and syntax checking also support the new HTML 5 tags and attributes.
Publishing from the Site manager has also been improved. WebDesign will now mark documents that have been changed with a modified tag and only publish those files that have been modified locally. To restore the behavior from version 3.0 you can hold option as you publish. This will do a one way sync to your FTP server.
Lots of other bug fixes and improvements can be found in this update. It is free for registered 3.x users.
Reports of a new version of iLife have been circulating for a few months now. It was first speculated that iLife ’11 would be released in August, then September and now November with a book listing on Amazon.com according to 9to5mac.com.
Whether or not iLife ’11 gets released next month with a new version of iWeb is yet to be known. What we do know is that all of our software will be 100% compatible with the new version of iWeb. The only product that may need an update is iWeb SEO Tool, but it is very unlikely that the new version of iWeb will cause conflicts with it. All of our other software will be fully functional in their current versions when iWeb ’11 is eventually released.
Our speculation for what will come with iWeb ’11 is new templates, twitter integration, updated blogging features and possibly some creative HTML 5 only features. 64-bit versions of all applications is also very likely. An iOS version is also very possible.
Have you ever wanted to use your iWeb site to sell products or services? Maybe you want to start your own business and don’t know how to get started selling products online.
It’s actually very easy to set up an e-commerce store with iWeb and Paypal. The benefit of using Paypal is that you don’t need to worry about having a secure server, setting up a merchant account, fraud, chargebacks and everything else that comes along with accepting payments online.
Even if your customers don’t have paypal accounts, although many do, they can still use their credit cards to make a purchase online. You are notified instantly once the payment is added to your account.
We have posted a step by step video explaining how to add Paypal to your iWeb site so you can start selling online.
Building Trust Online
There are still many people who are nervous to purchase something online. Another benefit of using Paypal is people know they can trust them. But how can you let them know that they can trust you? Here are some tips for building trust online;
Have a real domain name and avoid using your web.mac.com name if you are using MobileMe. Domain names are cheap, they only cost a few dollars a year, and they show you are serious about your online business. You can get a business domain name here.
If you are using MobileMe to host your website, be aware that it is not meant for business websites, just personal sites. Consider a real web host for faster servers, the ability to handle an increasing number of visitors and more options with what you can do with your website (see for example our URL shortening video for iWeb sites.
Include a privacy policy so your customers know what information you collect from them and how you use their information.
Include your address and an easy way for customers to contact you.
If possible, provide some kind of money back guarantee. If your products are good, you shouldn’t expect many people to want a refund.
Remember that search engines are always the best way to at attract new and targeted customers to your website. Check out our step by step SEO for iWeb instructional course which provides a complete walkthrough on how to optimize your website.
We just published an update to iWeb SEO Tool. It fixes a problem with case sensitive volumes. If you were getting an error when launching prior versions of iWeb SEO Tool, please download this update. It also fixes some other minor bugs and improves MobileMe publishing.
When Apple created iWeb they intended it to be used for personal websites. The idea that you can create something on your Mac and make it look exactly the same online, on all different browsers and operating systems was not the goal. The goal was to be able to easily create a website to share with friends and family.
Of course, you are using iWeb beyond what it is intended for, and by doing that you need to be aware of a very important fact about the web.
Since you never know who will be visiting your website, you can’t predict what web browser they are using, what operating system they have or, most importantly what fonts your visitor has installed. This means you can never be sure how your website may look to any of your visitors.
That is why a set of standards was developed to help ensure websites looked relatively the same, no matter what the visitor’s system configuration is. One of these standards is which fonts to use on your site that will always be available and show correctly for all users. iWeb turns non-standard fonts into images which can hurt your search engine rankings since search engines cannot “read” images. And since text content is so important for your search engine rankings, this is definitely not a good thing.
This quick video tutorial explains how to avoid this common problem;
Remember, the web is not print! You want to make your website accessible to the most amount of people while still making it look appealing. Good luck!
Are you ready for better search engine rankings? We have a full, step by step training course for iWeb users and how to properly optimize an iWeb site for search engines>. (If you aren’t ready for better rankings, don’t click that link 🙂 )
If you use iWeb, you already know that when you type in your website’s URL, once you are taken to your page, the URL in the address bar will forward to your domain name, followed by the site name that you gave in iWeb while publishing, followed by your page’s file name. It will look something like this;
What we will show you in this tutorial is how to shorten the URL so it only looks like this;
http://www.mydomain.com/page-name.html
The steps to do this are actually quite simple and if you are already using iWeb SEO Tool there really isn’t much more to it. It does require that you have a real web host with an FTP server, but if you are serious at all about your website, you should have one already.
We have just posted a long awaited update to Macintosh Explorer bringing the application to version 5.0. This new update adds support for Quicklook, improves support for Snow Leopard, and fixes many minor bugs and issues with the previous version.
We have just released a new update to Sitemap Automator, the easiest way to get your website listed in all major search engines.
This update will now show you any broken links on your website and where they can be found on your site. Just double click a broken link and Sitemap Automator will take you to the page that contains that link.
Broken links can negatively effect both your search engine rankings and your website visitor’s experience. Ensuring all your links work correctly is the starting point of a professional website.
iWeb SEO Tool, the search engine optimization tool for iWeb based sites, has been updated to version 1.9 and adds the two most request features.
It will now work properly with iWeb blogs that use commenting and with iDisk Syncing enabled. Loading a website from your iDisk will also work much faster than before.
We have a few important updates currently being beta tested. First and foremost, Macintosh Explorer, our file browser for Mac OS X has some new features including a new tabbed interface, support for Quick Look on Leopard and a few more enhancements.
We also have an update to iWeb SEO Tool which improves on some long standing issues. You can now properly use iWeb SEO Tool when you have MobileMe syncing enabled. You can also now optimize blog pages for search engines.
Just create a free beta testers account at the above site and you will see both products listed. Try them out and please submit your feedback and any problems you encounter so we can fix them ASAP.
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