This is a blog that I have been meaning to write about for a year now.
Ever since the announcement of Apple's iCloud service, Mobileme users were made aware that their current iWeb services would be discontinued. Each member was given a free years extension of the service as well as sufficient time to find a new web host to migrate their website to. Sounds simple huh? Well here was my problem.
My Site was designed from the ground up using iWeb. That is, no existing template was used. To update my site, I had to make whatever changes I wanted through iWeb and whatever was on my mac would then replace what was once on the site. There was no way to edit your pages outside of iWeb, so if you lose the template files you created on your mac then you lose those pages on your site.
Knowing this, the smartest thing to do would be to make a back up of the files in case something was to happen. That is exactly what I did, utilizing Apple's "Time Machine" back up system. Or so I thought.
Tragedy struck late last year when the hard drive on my Mac needed to be replaced. For the first time ever I could breath a sigh of relief knowing all my important files were safe. Well, everything BUT my iWeb files. I am not the first victim of this but apparently Time Machine does not know how to back up iWeb's files.
There was no way to know this would be the case, as the idea behind Time Machine recovery is to recover your Mac to the exact moment that was backed up. No other files or programs were lost during recovery. Sadly, this meant that if I wanted to update my site I would have to redesign each page and overwrite the existing ones. This proved to be too time consuming for a site that already was going to need to be changed since I no longer provide photography services.
I figured the best option would be to let the old site expire and build a new site, focusing my film services, on a new web host. That's why June 30th will be the last day of www.vicephotos.com. If you've never been there have a peek before it's too late.
Be sure to keep a eye out for the new site, which will officially go live on Thanksgiving night 2012...
Please note: while Time Machine may have failed horribly when it came to iWeb, I can, in no way, feel justified to give a angry rant about it due to how awesome a job it did with everything else. This is one of the best ways to protect important files on a Mac and should definitely be used to its fullest. You win this round Apple... HOWEVER! I will be discussing what can happen to your iPad and iPod files after aforementioned back up takes place in the near future.
See ya next blog!
