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Status4 Tools to Create A Website Quickly & Easily
For those who want to setup a simple, no-frills website for them or for their small business, tools like drupal, wordpress, or joomla are often overkill. While they let you create product catalogues, user forms, shopping carts, forums etc., they require knowledge of programming and html, and they often require weeks in order to get a website running.
There are also times when you plan to build a big web application, and want to build a prototype that can be submitted to the team, with functional buttons, links, and pages.
If you just want to publish a page with your contact information, or if you want to sketch quickly a website, here are 4 Tools which will let you build a website in just a few hours:
RapidWeaver is a desktop application, avalaible for mac. Users choose from a series of different templates, depending on their needs, and then add pages. Pages with blog functionnality, contact forms, text, image galleries are available, all in a drag&drop interface. You can even edit the code if you know HTML & CSS. A solution which is at the same time simple & powerful.
iweb is an application made by Apple, included in their iLife desktop suite (not to be confused with iWeb!!) It has the same features as RapidWeaver, and is made for users who want to setup their personal websites, with photos, ready-to-use templates, and a drag & drop interface. The drawback is that it’s hard to export your work to your web hosting provider, and files produced by iweb are generally very big in size.
weebly is a web application, with which you can create a website directly within your browser, with a simple and hip interface. You drag elements such as pictures, titles, or videos on the page, choose a design, and voilà, it’s done. You can afterwards edit each element, and then export the website. Moreover, compared to RapidWeaver or iweb, weebly is totally free!
Synthasite is also a web application, where you design and create your website with the browser. Compared to weebly, you can embed a greater variety of elements in each page, and it has more default themes, however, weebly’s interface is easier and slicker to use.
Here’s a chart summing up the features for each tool, if you want a quick comparison:
| RapidWeaver | iweb | weebly | synthasite | |
| Simplicity of user interface | drag & drop | drag & drop, integration with mac os X | quick and friendly ajax interface, with step-by-step guide | ajax interface, with step-by-step guide |
| Advanced features | blogs, contact forms, image galleries, multimedia, custom html | image galleries, google maps, custom html | google maps, custom html etc. | blogs, online store with Paypal, widgets, |
| Price | $85 | $79 with iLife suite | free | free |
| Ability to export content | export folder, ftp | limited (default to a .me account) | yes | yes |
| Number of avalaible designs and themes | 40 | 18 | 47 | 64 |
| Customization/plugins | Large community for themes and additionnal plugins | updates from Apple | none | integration widgets |
| Best For | Personal website or Small businesses | Personal website | Personal website, prototyping with a team | Personal website |
Of course, there’s always the handy Site Builder if you have already a plan at iWeb.
6 comments tags: drupal, html, iWeb, joomla, rapidweaver, synthasite, webmaster, weebly, wordpress | 
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November 24th, 2008 9:21 pm
I recently came across another company that helps creatives build their own flash websites – Picaholic.com. They provide professional dynamic flash templates with a simple editing suite. As a photographer, I was looking for a system where I could update my flash website on the run. All i have to do is choose a flash template, change the appearance to suit my needs and add my content. They offer unlimited pages, galleries, images, videos plus more.
Not only do they give you a really cool flash website which is hosted on their servers for $180 a year, their flash templates are SEO friendly, so expect to see yourself high up in the ranks quite quickly.
November 24th, 2008 10:52 pm
Justine, the problem with software using flash is that it’s very hard afterwards to export and modify it with another tool. It’s also very hard to add features such as a blog, more pages etc.
November 27th, 2008 7:00 pm
I understand what you mean. With this company adding pages, images and galleries is unlimited, so you can keep adding as you go. I dont have a blog at current but I definitely think its important in the long run in communicating with people.
November 27th, 2008 9:30 pm
I guess it depends on what you need. if you are a photographer, and just want to display your portfolio, then a solution like picaholic is good enough.
but for most people, you want after a while to change the template, add a logo, then add a contact form, add a blog, add a google map with your location
so that’s why I advise people to get rapidweaver or weebly instead.
January 12th, 2009 4:01 am
This is a fantastic list. Wasn’t aware of many of these tools before now. Certainly will bookmark for later review. We recently developed our own tool for web stats, online visitors,latest visitors and thought your readers may be interested in trying it out. It is offered free on our website. We encourage feedback and suggestions, so let us know if there’s something you think could be improved. Here’s the website statistics tool location…
http://www.webseomasters.com
September 1st, 2009 6:49 am
cooool theme! Thanks!