Looking for opinions on website builder systems

[-pete-]

Hello everyone,

I'm currently do a bit of research into basic website builder sites and content systems, such as the £1 website, domain and hosting from GoDaddy or the CloudSite system from names.

I know there are "proper" systems out there but I really want to be able to develop a simple site quickly without any hassle.

Has anyone had any experience with these systems? How have you found them? Would you recommend them to others?

Any thoughts or opinions are really appreciated!

 

[960design]

Pick a host that has onclick WordPress installs. Click the install, pick a theme, add some posts. Your off and running in no time. It'll take you longer to decide on the theme than to actually get the site up and running.

PS. I loathe GoDaddy. Others love it.

PPS. Google best web hosting 2015. Click on a couple of the top links; pick one that matches your need.

 

[-pete-]

Thanks for this, helpful but I think I should be a little clearer with my requirements.

We currently build bespoke WordPress themes and sites for SME, we are looking at setting up a basic brand to sell cheaper, simple, 5 page or less sites that don't require so much customisation of the themes.

Most of the WordPress themes we have bought in the past have been horrible bloated nightmares that cause nothing but trouble.

 

[2457244]

Don't go for online website builders and stuff web posters provide for you that is so called made by themselves for you.. Often they don't have any conditional scripts tags in place so if you choose to have a slideshow on your website you'll load all related slideshow scripting on every page of your website while it's only needed on the page where the slideshow has to been shown.

I've seen a few people get in evolved with Wix.com website builders and it's drama from start till the end. When those people where done creating and designing their website they had 64 images, 48 Javascript files, 23 stylesheets and page loads of 12 seconds on a single page.


If you really want to design something yourself, like iWeb in the early days use this on your Mac. When ready, upload it via FTP to your host.
http://blocsapp.com

 

[2457244]

Thanks for this, helpful but I think I should be a little clearer with my requirements.

We currently build bespoke WordPress themes and sites for SME, we are looking at setting up a basic brand to sell cheaper, simple, 5 page or less sites that don't require so much customisation of the themes.

Most of the WordPress themes we have bought in the past have been horrible bloated nightmares that cause nothing but trouble.

True, if you don't know what you'll buy because it's not your business or field of expert chances are you buy a sloppy WordPress Theme..

It's because those developers on ThemeForrest and whatnot -are trying to create a theme design that fits everybody or at least as much people as possible. You pay 50,- for a theme, they sell it 2.500 times to different people but their main job is not to create a solid theme. Their job is to create a theme that needs no support after payment, so they will create lots of options for you to change and alter the layout from the backend. This is wrong and goes against everything WordPress stands for..

Quoted from WordPress Philosophy page.

Decisions, not Options

When making decisions these are the users we consider first. A great example of this consideration is software options. Every time you give a user an option, you are asking them to make a decision. When a user doesn’t care or understand the option this ultimately leads to frustration. As developers we sometimes feel that providing options for everything is a good thing, you can never have too many choices, right? Ultimately these choices end up being technical ones, choices that the average end user has no interest in. It’s our duty as developers to make smart design decisions and avoid putting the weight of technical choices on our end users.

Read everything WordPress stand for here.

If you choose WordPress for your site you really have to know what theme you can buy or get for free that isn't bloated with options and functions but is created with the WordPress Philosophy page in mind. When you find a theme like that you have no troubles at all when updating.

 

[rizvi]

Thanks for this, helpful but I think I should be a little clearer with my requirements.

We currently build bespoke WordPress themes and sites for SME, we are looking at setting up a basic brand to sell cheaper, simple, 5 page or less sites that don't require so much customisation of the themes.

Most of the WordPress themes we have bought in the past have been horrible bloated nightmares that cause nothing but trouble.

If your requirements are not so hard then why don't you take some time going through wordpress, it is open source and easy to learn. Most important is that you will be able to handle more complex sites in future once you learn wordpress.

 

[haydn!]

If you're able or willing to do some design/coding work yourself, and are looking for a simple yet powerful CMS, I couldn't recommend Perch CMS enough!

 

[ImBuz]

Don't go for online website builders and stuff web posters provide for you that is so called made by themselves for you.. Often they don't have any conditional scripts tags in place so if you choose to have a slideshow on your website you'll load all related slideshow scripting on every page of your website while it's only needed on the page where the slideshow has to been shown.

I've seen a few people get in evolved with Wix.com website builders and it's drama from start till the end. When those people where done creating and designing their website they had 64 images, 48 Javascript files, 23 stylesheets and page loads of 12 seconds on a single page.


If you really want to design something yourself, like iWeb in the early days use this on your Mac. When ready, upload it via FTP to your host.
http://blocsapp.com

I really happen to like WIX--and find it very nice and user friendly

Regards Buz

 

[2457244]

Someone has to like it of course.. there are also thousands of people that still install MacKeeper on their Macs so..

 

[RusherRacing]

Webbly is super simple. Are you looking to do Ecommerce? If so Bigcommerce or Shopify.

Wordpress is ok - tons of plugins etc (overwhelming unless you know what you are looking for) but for quick and easy I say webbly has the upper hand.

 

[jonnysods]

Hello everyone,

I'm currently do a bit of research into basic website builder sites and content systems, such as the £1 website, domain and hosting from GoDaddy or the CloudSite system from names.

I know there are "proper" systems out there but I really want to be able to develop a simple site quickly without any hassle.

Has anyone had any experience with these systems? How have you found them? Would you recommend them to others?

Any thoughts or opinions are really appreciated!

Wordpress all the way. So many options, very user friendly. I find a lot of other options very limited and they make your site look like junk.

 

[-pete-]

Thanks everyone for your responses, they are helpful.

Just to clarify again though, we already develop in WordPress! You don't have to sell it to me, I use it, develop in it and enjoy it (almost) everyday

What I'm looking for is opinions on simple website builder services such as wix, weebly, squarespace or lightcms which people have used to make simple sites, these would be for our clients who are looking for a simple system to manage their small 3 to 5 page "brochure style" websites.

 

[960design]

Thanks everyone for your responses, they are helpful.

Just to clarify again though, we already develop in WordPress! You don't have to sell it to me, I use it, develop in it and enjoy it (almost) everyday

What I'm looking for is opinions on simple website builder services such as wix, weebly, squarespace or lightcms which people have used to make simple sites, these would be for our clients who are looking for a simple system to manage their small 3 to 5 page "brochure style" websites.

For that, I use a heavily modified PIP Framework with contentEditable for the headers, page content and click to change image upload. The user logs in, and literally just edits on the page, ajax saves updates immediately. No [Save] button, very simple for simple sites.

 

[BillyBobBongo]

Take a look at Pagekit (https://pagekit.com) it's from the guys at YooTheme, they make Joomla and WordPress templates. It's really simple to use and setup and is great for making sites of just a few pages. It's still in the beta phase, but it's something well worth considering.