Adobe SiteMill 1.0:
Site Management Made Easy
by Marshal Rosenthal
Being a Webmaster is about as far from glamorous as it gets. Sure, there's the creativity and the content and the online excitement--but mostly the tedium of making sure the Web site is up and running. And what's the bane of Webmasters? Hunting down problems that plague a site every time a link gets broken, graphics are changed, or a URL is renamed.
To the rescue comes Adobe's SiteMill. Those already familiar with Adobe's PageMill will find this HTML graphic-oriented page-creation program built in. It's an added bonus, since the real purpose of SiteMill is to enable quick, efficient, and practical control over a Web site.
Installation and Documentation
SiteMill 1.0 is Macintosh-based, with a Windows version due out in early Spring. Running on a Mac/PowerPC under System 7.0 (7.5 is needed to work with drag-and-drop applications), the program only requires 3.5 MB of RAM and less than 4 MB of hard-drive space. It ran fine on my 8500 PowerPC, and my 40 Megs of RAM let me keep it up while running Photoshop and other programs concurrently. Speed isn't really an issue here; I doubt that anyone running anything faster than a 68030 at 25 MHz will complain about the speed of the program.
Loading the software is simple using the standard installer and disks, specifying a "fat" (combination) file or 68K/PowerPC-specific. Once finished, the installer leaves a folder with the program and other files, then returns to the desktop (rebooting is not necessary). Turning off virus protection is recommended, as this can mess up the installation program, and is noted in the manual, as are other suggestions and troubleshooting (it's here where you'll find important info such as how to make images look their best, what red text means, why a hot spot might not be active, etc.). A Web site tutorial is included, and using it in conjunction with the manual is the best way to understand exactly how SiteMill works. The manual is both concise and easy to digest--Adobe has done an excellent job here.
Site Management
To use SiteMill, you must first import a site. To do this, select the folder containing the entire site: all of the files, subfolders, and graphics must reside in one root folder if the program is to work correctly. After selecting Load Site and choosing the tutorial, a short wait finds SiteMill analyzing everything from links to graphics to anchors to internal and external URLs. Then the initial Site window pops up, one of three that can be opened.
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