iWeb and Mobile Me provide a quick and easy way to make beautiful web pages and host them easily, but the resulting URL can be a little unpleasant.  In this age of web savvy people where everyone and their grandmother (literally) has a personal domain its great to know that you can map your own domain name to your Mobile Me web page.

The first step is to acquire your domain name.  There are about a million places to do this like Network Solutions (Setting up a Personal Domain in iWeb using Network Solutions) and Dotster.com , but our favorite is www.GoDaddy.com the mail is terrible (POP only) but the domains are super cheap.

Once you’ve got the perfect domain name acquired, let’s say “monkeyluv.com,” head over to iWeb.  Click on File in the Menu Bar and select Set Up Personal Domain.  This is going to launch a Safari window and take you to the Account section of your Mobile Me membership.  In the sidebar on the left, you’ll see Personal Domain, down near the bottom of the list, click on it.

The resulting screen is the Add Personal Domain screen, just type in your domain name in both sections here and click continue.  When finished, you’re going to be asked to go back to the site where you bought your domain and update the CNAME. The CNAME for your domain is “web.me.com”.   FYI, in my experience, this process is much clearer and easier using www.GoDaddy.com

Once you’ve got that part done, go back to iWeb and click the Done button on that  screen.  You’ll get a message that says it could take up to 48 hours for changes to occur, but mostly I’ve seen it happen in minutes rather than hours.

Now, when people visit your domain, they will be forwarded to your Mobile Me webpage and there’s no need to remember the web.me.com/somelongname address for your Moblie Me site!

For detailed instructions on setting up Network Solutions for your mobile me web site check out Setting up a Personal Domain in iWeb using Network Solutions.

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