FreeWebs has officially launched the WYSIWYG Site Builder tool we blogged about last month. In short, it lets anyone build a site without any knowledge of HTML, or having to refresh the page to see changes. The service soft-launched the tool early last week, and I took it for a spin this morning.
Site Builder emulates a desktop app, with a small floating tool bar, and context-sensitive menus that will serve up different actions depending on what tool you're using. For example, if you've inserted an image, the menu will give you options to align it with text, or link it to a full version off-site. With a moderate level of difficulty, I managed to put together an entire Web site in about half an hour.
To add or edit items on the page, you've got handy floating toolbox controls.
The joy of tools like these is that you start out with a relatively blank canvas that's yours to create. That being said, I found Site Builder to be a little sluggish, and crop up with a few error messages when trying to add widgets. The real showstopper though is the processing message, which pops up every time you swap back and forth between page elements on your site. It's the Web equivalent of the hourglass on Windows, or the spinning beach ball of death on Mac.
Despite the slowdowns, Site Builder is ages ahead of its predecessor. The previous version would split up the page viewing and editing into two separate tools, with the latter called WebsEdit, which is now simply integrated into the new builder. The widget directory tool is also really well done and lets you browse, search, and configure widgets to include in your site without taking you away from what you're doing. If you're a regular Webware reader, you'll recognize many of the widgets that are in there, like a Flickr slideshow viewer, Meebo chat rooms, and a YouTube player.
As far as blogging platforms go, I can't wholly recommend FreeWebs over other free services like WordPress.com and Blogger. You're missing out on some handy features like post management, comment control, guest authoring, and more support documentation. However, for free, Web-based page building utilities, it's a different story. Google's Page Creator, Jimdo, Ning, SiteKreator, along with a few paid options like Homestead and Squarespace fill up a crowded market of online tools for making sites.
So what sets FreeWebs apart? For one thing, there's built-in community. There's also a social networking aspect, where you can slurp in your profile from other social networks like Bebo, MySpace, and Facebook. To me, the social seems like the real draw, and your page--like your profile, is your place to experiment with social tools. I can't help feeling that FreeWebs is aimed at the younger crowd (there's a bona fide option to include glitter graphics and mouse trails), as older users will likely be more at home on one of the services mentioned above.
You can now edit your FreeWebs page WYSIWYG-style using the updated Site Creator.
(Credit: FreeWebs.com)
The midrange Web site design and hosting service SiteKreator (previous review) got an update recently. A new design theme called Aurora (available only to SiteKreator Power users for $39.95 a month), gives the Web manager a lot of design freedom while protecting him or her from egregious design errors.
Everything in the Aurora designs is integrated and color-matched, including art options: if you change your color scheme you get different choices for the image on your home page, as well as your typography selections. (Users of other plans, including the free version of SiteKreator, can still use SiteKreator templates, just not the new Aurora scheme.)
SiteKreator's interface is very capable, but its myriad tiny text buttons and pop-up entry fields may put off some people.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Other features include the au courant navigation elements that can slide down or fade in the forums and the blogs. There's also the capability to create tabbed or collapsible navigation in a subpage on the site.
SiteKreator is a solid Web design product, and these new features keep it current. But I find the editing scheme fiddly. It relies on tiny, floating, single letters to pull up editing menus, and creating or modifying many elements is done in text-based pop-up menus with minimal preview. For a visual site editor, it uses an awful lot of words. But if you can devote a bit of time to learning the site's single-letter menu anchors, you'll probably find you can build almost any type of business-focused site you could imagine. This is not a bad solution for small-business owners looking to set up an attractive, contemporary, and very functional Web site.
This group of presenters at Under the Radar is focused on tools that let regular people (read: not coders) create Web sites and tools to make things easy for site visitors and customers.
My Payment Network provides small-businesses and education payment systems aimed at cutting administrative costs and the hassle of paper checks. For schools, it's a chance to add an online payment system for things like sports enrollment fees, and equipment costs. For small businesses, it's another way to handle payment processing. My Payment Network is comparable to PayPal, but offers customizable controls for those in charge of collecting the money.
SiteKreator is a Wysiwygeditor that lets users build and design complex sites through a Web-based editor. CEO Ivaylo Lenkov just spent a few minutes putting a site together using their new plasticy-theme, Aurora, and showed off some of the other slick-looking designs (not to be confused with "templates.") SiteKreator has several subscription models, ranging from a free, ad-supported sites, all the way to paid-for business plans. Previous coverage here.
Terapad is a hosted, Wysiwyg, blog service. What separates it from something like WordPressis the option to add and manage various components, such as an online store, a job board, or photo galleries. It has the standard content management tools like page templates and a blogging tool, along with aggregation tools for popular Web services like Flickr, Digg and MySpace. We took a hands-on look with Terapad in January.
Wufoo is a form-building tool that can be integrated into your Web site. There's a Wysiwyg, drag-and-drop interface to build and design forms. We use Wufoo at Webware to take care of our "Contact Us" form and it works great. Wufoo is working to build integration with PayPal to add payment tools to your site. Previous coverage here.
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