DIY services
for creating simple websites
By Lincoln Spector
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Source: https://windowssecrets.com/newsletter/diy-services-for-creating-simple-websites/
