As mobile technology integrates more and more completely into our daily lives, people are finding that the temptation to make a newer and better version of their favorite apps is bigger and bigger. Some even manage to squeak out an original idea in a market that’s is already hugely oversaturated with apps claiming to be the most innovative thing this side of sliced bread. In the spirit of this need and with the hope that I can actually manage to help someone with something truly new and amazing to offer us in the world of apps, I’d like to help you lot out with getting your applications submitted to Apple and, with any luck, published on the App Store to be sold and make you millionaires! Well, more like hundredaires, but we’ll take it!
So let’s get started.
First and foremost, this is not a tutorial on how to CREATE an app. Just to submit one under a Developer’s account, which you must have. Getting a Developer’s account is as easy as following the instructions prompted on the screen when signing up. Another thing is that you MUST use a Mac computer for this process to work. Windows, as versatile as it can be, will not work.
Once you have your application ready to go, open up your favorite browser and jump over to developer.apple.com and get that screen loaded up. From there, click on Member Center and sign in with your new, or old, Developer’s Account.
Once signed in, find on the screen where it says Certificates, Identifiers, and Profiles and give it a click. Down on the left side you will see a short list, at the top of which is Certificates. Open that up to show your list of iOS Certificates. Here you are going to need to add a new certificate and in order to do so, you need to open your Keychain Access. Open up Search and enter Keychain Access then select the same phrase from the bar on the top, hover over Certificate Assistant, then click Request as Certificate.
Enter the prompted information then hit Save to Disk then Continue. You will use this later to upload to your Developer’s account to get your Distribution certificate.
Head back over to your Developer’s Page and click the Plus Sign to add a certificate. Scroll down and select App Store and Ad Hoc by click on the marker beside it. At the bottom, go ahead and select Continue. Hit continue again as the next page is simply outlining the certificate creation process.
On the next page, select Choose File and upload the same certificate you had made just shortly ago from wherever it was you saved it. After it is uploaded, this with create your full distribution certificate from Apple and you will be prompted to download it to your computer. Download it somewhere easy to find for your uses.
Go ahead and jump back over to Keychain Access so that you can enter your newly downloaded certificate there. To do that, it’s very simple. Find where you’d saved your certificate, which that folder should be open still at this point for simplicity’s sake, and simply drag it into the Login portion on your Keychain Access screen. From here, jump back over to the Developer’s page. Here you will need to create an App ID for your new app.
On the left hand side, under Identifiers, click App IDs. On the following screen, just like before, click the Plus sign. You will be prompted to enter an App ID Description. The best thing here to do is to use the actual name of your application without any fluff or filler.
Under Suffix, keep Explicit selected, but you will need to enter your Bundle ID. To get that, jump over to Xcode and open the project of the application you are submitting. Jump to the Info Tab and the Bundle ID is listed under the Value portion of Bundle identifier. Copy and Paste that code into the Bundle ID field on the Developer’s page, then hit continue at the bottom.
At the bottom, this is where you submit your App ID. Keeping it simple, just hit Submit at the bottom and wait for it to confirm. Once confirmed, you will see your new app’s ID listed under the App IDs list. All applications submitted will be listed here.
Now you need to create a Provisioning Profile to inset into your project that you’ve been working on in Xcode.
Click Distribution under Provisioning Profiles on the bottom left of the Developer’s screen. Here, click App Store and click Continue afterwards. Here there will be a drop down menu listing all the App IDs you’ve created with your Developer’s account. If there are several, it’s unlikely you needed this tutorial to being with! But if not, simply make sure your newly created App ID is selected then hit Continue again at the bottom.
The next screen will prompt you to select your name that you created earlier, and on the screen after that you will be prompted to name and generate a profile. Fill in the fields prompted with what you’ve selected then, hit Generate.
Then wait for this process to finish as it can, sometimes, take a few moments to do so.
Once the profile is generated, go ahead and download it from the button offered. When the download is finished, go ahead and click done.
Under Downloads, find the Provisioning Profile and double click on it. When prompted, select Add to Library. From here, go ahead and jump back to Xcode and open the application project again. In the Info tab, underneath Configurations, select the Plus button and the Duplicate Release Configuration, then rename this to Distribution.
Check back tomorrow for part two of this tutorial on how to submit an application to the Apple and iPhone App Store. And always keep in mind that Apple loves changing these steps around, but most, if not all, of these things stay the same from one update to another in most ways.
