The drive in one of my Macs crashed. These things happen. I thought I had backed things up, but you always find something you missed. One of the first things I have discovered is that I did not understand how iWeb stores the web content a user creates. I know where the pages are in my .Mac account and where they are on my personal server. I did not consider where the pages might be on my desktop machine.
It turns out the files are stored in what seems a really obscure place – the “Application Support” folder within the Library. This is my first experience with the Application Support folder. The logic of this approach escapes me – other products one creates seem destined for an appropriately named folder (documents, music, movies, sites) and the content is not hidden within a subfolder of the Library.
Anyway, here is why it matters. iWeb uses something called a “domain” file to organize the pieces of your web site (the pages, objects, etc.). You have access to all of the pieces with the exception of the domain file on the server. The problem is that without this domain file, iWeb cannot open individual web pages. The organizational file is not unique to iWeb. GoLive (my favorite web authoring tool – my reaction to Adobe giving up on GoLive instead of Dreamweaver is another issue) uses a .site file. What GoLive does that iWeb does not is to allow web site “pieces” to be imported into a newly defined site. One can build a new site from parts of an old site. This appears to not be possible with iWeb. In my situation, I will probably have to create a new site and then cut and paste pieces (images, segments of text) in an attempt to recreate the old version of the site.
Unless you happen to be an iWeb/iLife user this will not make much sense. However, if you work with iWeb my misfortunate may be useful to you. Add the iWeb folder within Application Support to the list of folders you back up on a regular basis.
The “issue” I encountered with iWeb made me realize some related limitations. iWeb is not a tool for collaboration. iWeb becomes cumbersome if one is accustomed to working from multiple machines. While the design of iWeb may explain such limitations, some method for importing web resources would be very useful.
