DIY services for creating simple websites

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OnTheLimit
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DIY services for creating simple websites

Post by OnTheLimit »

There are many good reasons to build a website yourself, including avoiding the substantial costs of hiring designers and developers.

Here are two services that make the process of creating a custom site relatively quick and easy; and if your needs are modest, they’re free.




It’s now axiomatic that every business, service, and organization needs a presence on the Web. It’s the place potential customers, clients, members, etc. expect to find you. Not so long ago, your options for creating a website were: pay someone, take the time to learn some HTML and/or a page-creation app such as Microsoft’s now-defunct FrontPage, or use one of the stock templates offered by a few Web-hosting services.


That last option often looked attractive — until you ran up against the limitations of the templates.

Today, even simple sites aren’t simple. Static webpages have given way to database-driven dynamic ones. Better sites now support both desktop and mobile layouts — and know when to use one or the other. Security is also more complex. Without the proper protections, your site might be hijacked and turned into a malware-delivery system. (That experience drove me away from my own handmade sites years ago.) And the cost of hiring designers and developers hasn’t gotten any cheaper.

So for small sites, the best solution is still to use one of the do-it-yourself website-creation and -hosting services. Fortunately, their templates and tools have improved significantly, giving you more control over the look and function of your site.

There are, of course, a few disadvantages to using these services. For example, you can’t easily move your site from one hosting service to another. And if you’re selling something online, the service might tack on fees or limit customers’ payment options.

Some services focus on one type of Internet activity. Blogger (site), for example, is limited to — obviously — blogging. That’s fine, if that’s all you want. WordPress (site) is another platform used extensively for blogging, but it’s capable of much more — if you have the expertise. WordPress hosts both my relatively simple Bayflicks.net blog and the fairly complex WindowsSecrets.com.

There are numerous DIY website-creation services available. After looking at several, I picked two that give you considerable control — via intuitive drag-and-drop tools — over your website layout. You can also add social-networking icons, contact forms, photos — and even blogs.

Both services let you create a free — though quite limited — site. The free option might be fine for a personal site, but for a business/organization site, you’ll want the flexibility and features of a paid account. Without shelling out some money, you won’t be able to use a specific domain name, sell products, or keep the service from advertising itself on your pages.

Before signing up with any DIY-website service (especially for business sites), read its user-license agreement carefully. In most cases, moving from one service to another will require rebuilding the site. Moreover, the domain name you’ve been using might not be transferable — moving to another service could mean losing your own URL. (If you bought a domain name elsewhere, let the service host it — you’ll always be able to move it.)

Weebly: Simple and mobile-friendly

Weebly (site) makes creating a site relatively easy for those of us lacking HTML-coding and Web-design skills. But it also offers a good selection of advanced webpage elements plus tools for displaying your site on small screens.

As with most DIY-website services, creating a new site starts with selecting a template. Weebly offers dozens of templates (See Figure 1) in its Theme Gallery. By default, all themes are displayed, which can be a lot to go through. Fortunately, you can filter the offerings by clicking a category such as Bold, Corporate, Fun, or Simple.

If you edit a theme and decide it’s not working for you, you can easily change it later.

Weebly templates

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Figure 1. Weebly's many website themes provide the starting point for a new site.

Once you’ve selected a template, you personalize it: change colors and fonts; add text by clicking the text boxes and editing the contents; and move, delete, or add webpage elements from template toolbars. The wide variety of elements and formatting options includes titles, text boxes, images, text boxes with images, photo galleries, slideshows, maps, and contact forms. You can also insert more advanced elements such as social-networking icons and polls, as shown in Figure 2.

Weebly toolbar

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Figure 2. New elements are inserted on a webpage by simply dragging them from the toolbars.

While building my new Weebly-based site, I found that not everything worked smoothly. The title area proved difficult to reformat — I couldn’t add a line of smaller-font text below my name. I had to place that text elsewhere on the page — not exactly the layout I wanted.

Some formatting elements are available only with a paid account — an on-page search box, for example. Other pay-only features include slideshows with headers, the ability to remove Weebly’s logo, and converting video to Weebly’s HTML5 format. (Using HTML5 can eliminate the need for Adobe Flash when the video is played in a browser.)

On a desktop screen, your Weebly-based site will look just as you designed it. You can see my final design at the Weebly site. On a smartphone, it’ll have a simpler layout, better suited to small screens — as you’ll see if you visit the site on your phone. You can, however, further tweak the mobile layout to your own satisfaction (see Figure 3).

Mobility options

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Figure 3. Weebly automatically adjusts your site for small screens — or you can use the mobility options for more refinements.

By default, you get a subdomain of weebly.com. For example, my site is http://windowssecretstest.weebly.com/. You can also create a real domain name — as I’m reminded every time I change and republish my site — or transfer a domain name you already own. (This also works with the free service, though of course, you’ll have to continue paying for the domain separately.)

Weebly’s professional version costs U.S. $59 for six months, $99 per year, or $159 for two years. A more limited Starter plan costs about half as much, but it lacks search and other features.

Wix: Good-looking designs, right from the start

As with Weebly, you start your new Wix website by selecting a template. Wix’s templates are, however, better organized than Weebly’s, making it easier to find the right one for your needs.

Wix (site) also has a much larger selection of templates. Narrowing my selection down to Computing & Apps, a subdivision of Business & Services, I was offered 32 templates, most of them professionally designed. With Wix, you pretty much start out with a great-looking website.

Wix templates

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Figure 4. Wix offers an impressive selection of well-organized templates.

Each Wix template includes a price — disheartening until you realize that the price for nearly all templates is Free. The others are priced as “eCommerce” (see Figure 5), which is rather confusing at first. It means you can’t use the template’s e-commerce functionality without a paid account.

Wix templates

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Figure 5. Wix's pricing terminology can be mystifying initially.

Wix’s well-designed templates come at an additional cost. Once you’ve picked one, you’re stuck with it, for the most part. There’s a complicated process for changing templates, but it’s available only with a paid account.

When you’re ready to personalize your site, Wix’s editing screen works well — despite the beta logo in the upper-left corner of the editing screen. According to a Wix representative, the “HTML5 editor is still officially in beta…. We launched it March 2012, and it’s still being refined and developed….”)

The editing tools and widgets are plentiful, generally intuitive, and easy to find. You can insert buttons, menus, images, image galleries, social networking icons, lists, and so on. To edit text, you click a text box and then click Edit Text in the popup menu. Big buttons let you move between preview and edit modes.

There are a few imperfections with the tools. Resizing or cropping an image was a confusing pain. Making changes by grabbing image corners and sides had unpredictable results. Let’s hope that’s on the list of beta fixes.

Wix tools

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Figure 6. Wix's clean design makes it easy to find and apply new webpage elements.

Wix’s mobile makeover doesn’t match Weebly’s. On a phone, my site looks just like the desktop version — except it’s tiny and hard to read. A mobile navigation option makes it easy to move from one illegible page to another.

Wix mobile version

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Figure 7. Wix does a poor job of automatically reformatting sites for small screens.

Wix offers numerous subscriptions, depending on what you need and are willing to pay. Fifty dollars a year will get you Google Analytics, support, and the use of a real domain name. To remove the Wix logo, you have to pay more. A full e-commerce site will set you back nearly $200 a year (or more if you want to pay monthly).

With free subscriptions, you can’t use your own domain name — even if you already own it.

Wix can help you create a great-looking site, but its limitations can be frustrating. You’ll find my test site at http://lincolnspector.wix.com/windowssecretstest.

Best of breed: Of the nine DIY website services I tested, Weebly and Wix were the best. The two services are about equally easy to use, but with its extensive library of templates, Wix will likely give you the better-looking desktop website. Weebly, on the other hand, is a better bet if you want a site that looks good on both the big screen and a phone.

The drawbacks of Weebly and Wix are typical of all DIY website services. Others have different sets of tools and options as well as different user experiences. I suggest you try their free versions first to determine your comfort level. Remember: Once you’ve built your site at one service, moving it to another could be painful.
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