20 Comments

Like you were unhappy before ;-) Aren’t you just happier?

Excellent! Since we last spoke, I’ve bitten the bullet and upgraded, so I’ll have to download this when I get home. I spent some time over the weekend rebuilding my site with one of the new themes (although I forgot to replace a couple of picture in my rush to get it done!), so I’ll try switching themes and see what happens (after I fix the pix)!

Thanks for all of your continued hard work!

-Ron
http://www.randomdoorways.com

Ron Perry

Hey Ron, I’m going to visit Greece next April! I’m looking forward to that trip.

Good luck with the theme swapping. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s pretty good. As long as you haven’t changed the hyperlink colors or other accent colors, the theme should swap nicely.

Suzanne -
I know this is probably a dumb question, but I have been keeping up with your updates and need some clarification…
Since you now have this thing well in hand, give me a direction and a suggestion.
1. Should I download the new templates and rebuild from scratch in 2.0, or
2. Can I Install 2.0 and use any part of the existing site, while patching in the new templates as I go ?

Your determination to get this up and running has amazed me since the new version - you go girl!!!

Kudos - and THANKS!

John

Hi John - no it’s a good question. Here’s why…

The XML code changed from 1.0 to 2.0. It didn’t change drastically, but it changed none the less. I would personall rebuild all my pages in a clean 2.0 theme to ensure your pages are using the 2.0 code. God knows what kinds of tiny issues could appear otherwise. I could be entirely supersticious there, or it might make sense.

You could import your site, yes. The word is you’re suposed to be able to do that and continue editing, publishing and building without issue, but I don’t know if that’s true. The Apple iWeb forums are the best place to inquire about that.

Either way, things *should* work, but I have my money on rebuilding the site, particularly if you were using a third-party theme for your site. Apple converted their themes, but I highly doubt they made concessions for the rest of us ;-)

Suzanne -
Just installed 2.0 and your new Sage templates. They are quite a bit different than the 1.0 versions.

I know you are working nite & day to get all your templates up and running, but do you have any plans to go back and *tweek* the design elements of new templates to match the old ones? - or add additional page layouts that have all the options of the old version?

Thanks,
John

Hi John, yeah I keep writing about this and I’m not sure how to better broadcast this without putting a blinking banner on the home page, but iWeb 2.0 does not allow for custom layouts anymore. Apple changed the code (purposely we don’t know ;-) in such a way that prevents us from doing it. My hands are tied. The best we can do is duplicate an Apple theme and use their layouts.

If anyone has ideas for how I can make this message obvious let me know cuz I know people can’t read days of commentary. But I don’t want to keep explaining this either LOL :)

Oh I know what I’m going to do - I’m going to put this in my iWeb 2.0 FAQ and start blinking that link all over the place. Then I’ll just expect everyone to keep tabs on that FAQ. I’ll enter all my knowledge there and that will be our central “truth be told” repository.

If you have a good question for that FAQ, please send it to me :)

Suzanne,
OK, now I get it!!!
Sorry, I am a bit slow. But, guess what I just tried…

Well, I had burned a copy of my 1.0 domain file to a CD and brought it home to experiment with in 2.0…
I dragged it to the desktop, and opened it with 2.0 - converted it and the whole mess… Well of course no navigation bar (and maybe a few other things, I’m still experimenting) - but I copied all the graphic items from your 1.0 version of my home page (www.ppoh.com) and pasted them to your NEW 2.0 Aerolite Sage Black Blank page.

VOILA, there is my Navigation Bar along with the all the graphic bits and pieces!! So far it looks like the perfect solution.

Am I heading down a bad road? Is code or something else gonna catch up to me in the end?

I really have no interest at this point of switching themes. I LOVE what I have - your 1.0 Aerolite Sage.

So, unless otherwise advised, looks like I might just paste everything onto a 2.0 Blank and rename to match existing pages…

Ideas? Comments? Advice?

Thanks
John

John, I checked out your site linked above. Is this the 2.0 published version? If so, it looks like you’ve gotten everything ported nicely. Like you, I had to make the decision on whether to build from the ground up or copy and paste. I opted for starting from scratch, using the new Aerolite Sage as my base, and then copied and pasted some objects from the old version. I did this by running both iWeb 2.0 AND 1.x at the same time. This allowed for easier copying and pasting.

If you’d like, you can see what I’ve done at http://www.myseason5.com.

Hey, I have a question for you, I like the form on your contact page. What did you use for that? An online form builder and then insert the code? Could you point me in the right direction? And what did it cost you?

Wow John, you discovered something I was not aware of. In fact I’m not even sure I read that right. How did you get the navigation menu to appear correctly simply by pasting the graphics from your old site? You must have some magic up your sleeve - I don’t understand how that worked :)

Well here’s my thoughts on that… I would run with it, but test things out on the pages. I really don’t know all the potential issues with imported pages so we’ll just have to experiment and figure things out.

Daniel suggests a great approach if you kept your 1.0 version of iWeb. You just copy and paste things from your old site into the new one with both versions of iWeb open.

I still think the best thing to do is rebuild the site with the 2.0 pages, but that’s just because I’m a purist in a way, particularly when it comes to code. This is also the reason I rebuild my PC operating systems every three months (!!!) I’ve since dropped that neurotic habit after switching to Mac ;-)

Suzanne, I know this is a lil off topic, so please excuse me (and delete if necessary). I was wondering if you knew how to add forms to iWeb, similar to the one I mentioned above. I have a real need for this.

One other thing. Something I just noticed… I tried visiting my published site from a different computer and its asking me for an iDisk password. Very odd. My site is NOT pw protected. I double checked to make sure AND I republished the site. Arrrggg.

Would you take a look to see if it gives you the same message? Im working alone today, or else I would have a co-worker check it out.

The best resource I’ve found for adding forms to iWeb is Allyson’s guide to iWeb forms. She’s Varkgirl from the Apple iWeb forums.

Your site is giving me the We’re Sorry .mac page at the moment. Can’t find it.

Hi Daniel,

No, what you are seeing on my web site is still 1.0. I am not going to mess with uploading 2.0 until I have the kinks worked out as much as possible. So, I am trying to build the same thing in 2.0 while maintaining the 1.0 on a daily basis. Since it is a business, I can’t afford for it to be down.

The contact page was made possible by WUFOO at: http://wufoo.com/

They have a customizable form that is very easy to build and the one I am using is FREE - can’t beat that! They do have other forms that are more involved and do other things that they charge a nominal fee for, but this one works great and is very easy and quick to set up. It responds by sending the completed form to any email address you choose. Yes, it builds the code for you and you just insert and upload. Your site is working fine for me, but you may have gotten it figured out by now.

And I see you are just *right down the road in Douglasville*. My wife & I used to live in Austell ourselves.

Suzanne, I was completely amazed when I copied and pasted because the nav bar was not included in the *copy* part of the 1.0 page. It seems as if when I imported my 1.0 site into 2.0 and then added a 2.0 Blank, the 2.0 Blank page was just waiting to *receive* the copy & paste and then picked up the navigation bar verbatim from the 1.0 pages. So somewhere along the line the navigation bar of the imported pages was hidden until allowed to come out in the 2.0 code. Does this make any sense? ;~)

I did not have 1.0 open along with 2.0. What I did is open the 1.0 in 2.0 and I think it asked me if I wanted to *convert* - I said yes and it seems that everything in 1.0 did sucessfully convert to 2.0 EXCEPT, no Navigation Bar. I then went to File>New Page and loaded up one of the Aerolite Black Blanks, went back to the converted 1.0 Welcome page, selected everything that I could grab and copied then pasted on the 2.0 Blank.

To quote Emeril, BAM it worked!

I have only had a chance to work on one of the other pages and there are some graphic issues to deal with - such as the page background image fill that need resizing because I can’t grab the background box - but it seems to be something I can overcome with a little more familiarity. Plus alot of my pages are just dupes of the same templates.

Whew, I am out of breath!

Thanks,
John

Okay, I think my head is spinning LOL. I’m so tired tonight I’m not even going to try to figure that out, but I’m glad that worked. :) yes you approach works too - as long as you rebuild the pages with a new page from the 2.0 theme, you should be set for success.

I see so many people at the iWeb forums just out there whining and not doing anything. My lord… one guy said, “I’ve wasted four hours over this!” I wanted to tell him to stop wasting our time with his whining and go rebuild his site with 2.0 pages (which would have taken about 10 minutes since he had a whopping five pages on his site - all made with the blank page). He’s going to complain anyway so he might as well complain about having to rebuild his pages and get a working site rather than just complaining and not get a working site. Some peoples’ logic defies the laws of the Universe.

Okay I am tired - I’m whining about whiners. See you all bright and early :)

Suzanne,

OK, here is the *new* version of http://www.ppoh.com using your new templates and iWeb 2.0.

Still a couple of bugs to work out but I just finished the 1st draft this pm and uploaded. Took forever to finish on the upload.

Thanks again for your diligence.

John

You’ve always done a nice job with that site John - how’d the conversion go? I see you’ve managed to maintain some of the old layouts there :)

Thanks.
The conversion went pretty well once I got used to the process. Plus learning how some of the new 2.0 pages actually worked.
I figured I would worry about the 2.0 learning curve after I saw if what I was trying to do would actually work!! ;~)

I actually created a *blank* of the template & layout that I used the most and just plugged the pictures and copy in.

As I have said so many times, I just fell in love with the old Sage templates and layouts and didn’t want to give them up.

Seems like there would be some chance to switch themes with your custom designed templates rather than have to take the lead from Apple…???

John