2011年7月17日星期日

Five services to build your own website

Your business online presence starts and ends with your site. Hire a designer to dress up, it can be expensive but which are not even including the cost of a domain and hosting for the site. Fortunately you do-it-yourself options.

If you need a basic Web site that houses and promote your business, these five services you design, publish and host your website free of charge or at a small monthly fee, all from the comfort of your browser.

These services all feature "what you see is what you get" (WYSIWYG) Web site editors. You don't know a single line of code to build your own, professional business website.

Moonfruit is a free website host and editor with a wealth of fresh models and detailed editing options.

Service is from its early focus on building Flash-based websites, that cannot be displayed on iOS devices and are often difficult for search engines to find. Now, a site that you create in Moonfruit to render in Flash, HTML or mobile HTML5, depending on how the user tries to use it. And will soon become a tool for building Facebook pages.

Getting started

Getting started on the Moonfruit is quick and easy, but mastering its site editor takes quite a bit of practice.

First, simply choose a theme that you can change later if you wish. The modern professional, business-oriented themes, it services, accounting, Spa, bakery and law. All are fully customizable, but if you don't see something that appeals to you, you can choose a dark or light skin colour blank theme and build your website from the ground up.

Create and edit your site

You can then dive into page editor. Flash-based editor is complete but can be a bit daunting. Moonfruit has fortunately, a 40-page Beginner's Guide.

You can edit the main page, which has the elements that appear on each page on your site (for example, navigation links, and your logo), or you can edit the pages individually. Web page editor's toolbar provides options for saving, editing, Design, and Admin. Clicking on these either opens a menu of additional options or grants you to other pages where you can set up different services.

While you are logged in Editor opens, click any element on your Web site, the element's "Editor" Palette under the window with tabs for options for editing text, styles, and much more, it's easy to transfer files from your computer. Just click the button files on the toolbar to upload several pictures, videos and audio clips at once. If you would rather use the clip art and stock photos, Moonfruit, a library of images and multimedia elements.

When you are finished editing your site, click Save and your site will be published.

Pricing

Moonfruits basic services are free of charge for a website with up to 15 pages, 20 MB of online storage and 1 GB of monthly bandwidth. To Moonfruits free features, you must also update the site once every six months.

For those who need more, Moonfruit packages from $ 6 to $ 50 per month ($ 54 to $ 450 per year if you pay annually). Its Business package is $ 25/month or $ 225/year, offers 15 websites with unlimited number of pages, 2500MB of storage and unlimited bandwidth. The package also includes a $ 80 Google AdWords coupon, email support, two domain names (with email addresses), multiple Web site administrator accounts and PayPal integration.

Moonfruit pros: Highly customizable design, lots of attractive themes, small and unspectacular ad on free pages, several packages, publish in Flash, HTML and mobile-optimized HTML5.

Moonfruit Cons: WYSIWYG editor has a steep learning curve.

Weebly's online website designer is a little easier to use than Moonfruit 's. Unfortunately, you give up certain design elements. Many of the Weeblys themes are the same as those offered by WordPress. As Moonfruit, Weebly will optimize your site but for mobile devices.

Getting started

It is easy to get started with Weebly. Go to its home page and fill in the form. Then say Weebly, if you want to use a free Weebly.com domain (e.g. http://yourname.weebly.com), register a new top level domain, or use a domain you already own. You will then be taken to the Weebly Web page editor.

Create and edit your site

Unlike Moonfruit, Weebly builds your site, and then you can select a theme, if you want one. The basic template looks like a blog, with a picture, menu bar, and a blank space where you can drag elements. If you want to start with more direction, you can click the Design tab at the top of the page and select one of the hundreds of pre-made design templates. You will not find the new, modern layouts provided by Moonfruit.

Weeblys drag-and-drop Web page editor contains tabs with toolbars. To add an element on the page, just click the tab elements and find the object you want, such as a paragraph with a title, a Video or contact form. Click and drag it to your website. It's easy to edit elements, such as a picture. Just mouse over it and click the "click to edit the button. A toolbar is displayed with large, easy-to-use buttons.

Unlike Moonfruit lets you upload not Weebly several files at once. It has a searchable database of free Creative Commons images and $ 5 professional images, you can use. Weebly adds an attribution link in the footer of the website of each free picture that you are using.

After you have created your Web site, click the publish button to send to the Web.

Pricing

The basic option of Weebly is free, while Weebly Pro costs less than $ 5 per month. The free version is decent, offers two Web sites with a unlimited number of pages, bandwidth and storage, even if you are limited to a maximum of 5 MB upload.

Weebly Pro costs $ 4.58 per month for six months, $ 3.99 per month for 12 months or $ 2.99 per month for 24 months. You can create up to 10 websites per account.

It provides additional Web site elements, including video, audio, embedded documents and password-protected pages. With Weebly Pro your file upload limit increases to 100 MB per file, and you can remove or customize footer. Weebly Pro expands customer support and provides extended visitors statistics that allows you to see the top-level pages, keywords, and referring Web sites.

Weebly pros: Simple WYSIWYG editor, in the browser, image editing, searching Creative Commons-licensed photos, unlimited bandwidth and storage with free version, affordable paid version.

Weebly Cons: Themes are limited and all look similar, page layouts, has little flexibility and you can upload multiple files at once.


View the original article here

没有评论:

发表评论