Online website builders

Lately, our class has been focusing on a project in which groups of four people make websites to serve the Western Washington University community. Instead of using Dreamweaver, like we are for our individual websites, we used online website builders such as Wix and Weebly.

My group made a site called WWU 21+ aimed at Western students who are at least 21 years old and want to get better at navigating Bellingham's nightlife. We used Weebly, which I found incredibly easy to navigate. I was sick on the day my group first set up the website, but it was bare when I came in -- just tabs on a sparse home page -- so I don't feel like I missed a whole lot. I logged in and started editing my page (Safety) without anyone showing me how. I made sections and columns with headers, body text, bullets, links, etc., just by playing around with it. Weebly is that easy.

To be fair, it helped that I had all my information already. I put it all into a Microsoft Word document and could organize it there in a way that made sense before I had to come up with a layout in Weebly.

I tried out another online website builder, webs.com -- admittedly because it had the simplest name. (Try sounding professional telling someone to go to "[yourwebsite].weebly.com." What in the world is "weebly"? Is it an adjective that describes that '80s toy? "My website wobbles, but it won't fall down!")

I found webs.com disappointing. I tried to start building a website to post my JOUR 340: History of U.S. Journalism project on, thinking it would be a great alternative to WordPress and Blogger. While the theme (one of hundreds!) was neat, it allowed for little to no customization. It's basically a fill-in-the-blank-space site. I'm sure if I played with it a little more, it would make more sense, but Weebly was more intuitive for me as far as customization, adding elements and changing layout.

The other annoyance with webs.com is the ads. Free Weebly sites do not have ads; free Webs sites do. Webs suggests insists at every turn that users upgrade to a "pro" account -- which costs a few dollars a month for a little upgrade from the basics (including your own domain), and $5-10/month if you don't want ads on your site. I'm sure this is related to my first frustration -- pro accounts are likely much more customizable. I'm not going to pay to find out.

Online website builders are ideal for people who lack the Dreamweaver skills -- or the money -- to build a website from scratch and host it on a custom domain. They look great, and they're easy to set up and edit. Professionals might want to spring for the domain, if only to remove the ".weebly" from the URL and the "Build a Free Wesbite!" button from the pages. But I would suggest shopping around for the best one. As I learned, not all online website builders are created equal.

Here are a few videos that might expand your knowledge about online website builders and how to use them.

This video compares Weebly with Jimdo, the other super-simple online website builder. Jimdo looks interesting, so maybe I'll try that out, too.

Just as Google is trying to take over all other aspects of people's Web use (does anyone else use Google+?) This video discusses Google Sites, which was not mentioned in this blog prompt but looks pretty cool. It has a lot of space for content and is apparently just as easy to use as Weebly is. The downside is that for some reason, Google Sites don't talk to Blogger (even though Blogger is a Google product), so those sites can't host Blogger-based blogs. The video is a little long, but worth a watch if you're thinking about using Google Sites or are considering whether it's better than another online website builder.