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How to copy your iWeb Sites to another Mac

This note describes how you can replicate your iWeb sites so that you can edit them on another Mac.
Last updated: 23 April 2007

iWeb is a tool for easily creating web sites on a Mac. It is a part of the iLife suite from Apple. Some of the advantages of iWeb are ease of use and stylish design templates. One of the disadvantages of iWeb is that there is no import/export feature. If you use iWeb on one Mac to design a web site there is no way within iWeb to move that design so that you can edit it on another Mac. You can "publish" your site to a folder, which creates HTML web pages, but it is not possible to edit those published pages with iWeb.

Fortunately, it is not difficult to copy the entire contents of your iWeb configuration to another machine. You just have to:

  1. Exit iWeb on the first machine (where you created the web site).
  2. Using the finder, go to your home folder, open your Library folder, then open the Appliation Support folder. Copy the iWeb folder to a thumb drive and take that to the other machine (or find some other way to copy the entire folder to the other machine). (If you don't see an iWeb folder then check to see that you are not looking in the system Library folder.)
  3. On the second machine, drag this folder to your own Library/Appliation Support folder, replacing any iWeb folder already there. (Be sure iWeb is not running there too.)
  4. Fire up iWeb, and you can now edit the web site on the second machine.
Needless to say, this destroys any iWeb configuration and web site you already had on the second machine. (You could make a copy of what's there before you overwrite it if you want to be safe and keep a backup copy, but there is no way to merge the two.)

iWeb allows you to edit and publish multiple sites from one iWeb window. There is no way to copy or export just one of these to the second machine. (I would bet that Apple adds that capability in a later release of the software.)

Once you "publish" your web pages to a folder they are HTML files and supporting files (graphics images, etc..). You cannot edit these with iWeb, but you can presumably edit them with any of many available HTML editors, such as Netscape Composer or Dreamweaver. (I have yet to actually try this, but I see no reason it wouldn't work.)

 

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