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Reduce the size of exported iWeb sites Apps
I was noticing my iWeb blog was a whacking 18MB for about six entries! I do not use .Mac, so I can't say if this works for those who do, but I publish my iWeb to a folder, and then upload it via FTP.

Anyway, when looking in the folders that contained my blog (they are in a folder with the the same name as your blog), iWeb had exported the originals of the photos I added, along with the reduced size version used on the page. These full-size images can just be deleted and the site works perfectly. Also, as this is an exported version of the site, the copy that opens in iWeb for editing is unaffected.

The ones to delete are easily identifiable, as they're all called myphoto_1.jpg, where the one iWeb uses are just called myphoto.jpg. Looking in each blog page (search through all the folders), I reduced the blog pages from its original 18MB down to 2MB! (All my originals were from a 7MP camera, so are each about 3MB).

Interestingly enough, iWeb does not store the original versions of photos you put on any other type of page: photos, homepage, etc. Gotta love the consistency of this program. Bring on iWeb 2.0!

[robg adds: I confirmed that this is the case with an exported site's blog page: each image's full-size original is included.]
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Reduce the size of exported iWeb sites | 6 comments | Create New Account
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Reduce the size of exported iWeb sites
Authored by: bjmorgan on Nov 27, '06 08:40:42AM

Indeed, I came across this a while back when the exported iWeb site quickly gobbled up my ISP's standard 7 MB of personal webspace.

After paintakingly removing a dozen photos for each time I updated our family's iWeb site (which was weekly), I finally broke down and decided to reduce the size of the original photo (obviously duplicating it and scaling it down) that iWeb embeds.



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The full-size images are used by the RSS feed
Authored by: llahsram on Nov 27, '06 09:58:43AM

The reason the full-size images are there is because the RSS feed that iWeb creates for blogs is an iPhoto-compatible "photocast". When you view the RSS feed for your blog, you'll see links to the full-size images (along with the file size of the image), and if you enter the RSS feed URL into iPhoto's "subscribe to photocast" option, you'll get the full-size images downloaded to iPhoto.

Whether this apparently undocumented feature is useful is debatable, but that's why those images are there. You can delete them, and the site will work fine, but your RSS feed will have broken links.



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The full-size images are used by the RSS feed
Authored by: jonathan.dann on Nov 28, '06 05:04:19AM

Yes, you're correct, apologies to all those photocasters out there.

I have found though, if you still want to reduce the size, and don't use photocasting, then you delete the large sizes. You can then duplicate the small ones and rename the duplicates what the large ones were called. This at least gives the RSS something to link to, whilst keeping the site size small.



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Reduce the size of exported iWeb sites
Authored by: DaveA on Nov 28, '06 07:06:01AM

When you dig a little deeper you'll find (if you haven't already) that the whole schmeer is stored in one file at ~/Library/Application Support/iWeb/Domain.sites. Even if you remove the files from the exported web site, and remove them also with iWeb, they sometimes will appear again when you export your web site. AFAIK, there's no way to "get into" that file and remove things you don't want. It's a bug in iWeb.

I've also found that for linked files ending with a numeric, iWeb may increment the last numeral each time the file is updated or the web site is exported. So don't name your file "Dad's birthday 2006-12-01" but rather "2006-12-01 Dad's birthday" or similar.



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Reduce the size of exported iWeb sites
Authored by: llahsram on Nov 28, '06 07:34:01AM

Domain.sites is actually a package, like applications, Keynote presentations, etc. You can Ctrl-click it and choose "Show Package Contents" to get at the files inside, including the JPEG images.

Note, though, that iWeb probably keeps the files in a package for a reason: it no doubt expects things to remain the way it left them, and it might get confused if that's not the case. You'd probably want to make a copy of the Domain.sites package before doing anything to it.



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Reduce the size of exported iWeb sites
Authored by: DaveA on Nov 29, '06 05:20:34AM
Ah, so. Thanks, didn't know that. Combining your hint with http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20061120124544797 (View hidden files in Firefox and Camino) makes it easier to investigate.

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