No FTP
FTP is short for File Transfer Protocol. One of the best features of RVSitebuilder is its ease of publishing. It is literally a two click procedure. I've published sites with an FTP client in the past and I'd rather not have to do it if I don't have to. Sometimes just getting the FTP software and the web site to 'talk to each other' can be a major task. Although not impossible, often times finding the right settings can be a major task.
Easy Publishing
This ease of publishing is especially nice when updating pages. Correct a spelling error and two clicks later the correction is online.
Also, publishing is fast. FTP publishing is not always a fast method.
And, there is no need to first upload your image files to the image folder in your public HTML folder. Insert the image into your web page and click publish. It's as easy as that.
Since RVSitebuilder is installed inside of cPanel, you may directly publish your web site to your public_html folder. There are no settings, no guessing where to publish, no passwords, just two simple mouse clicks and your web site is live on the web.
This ease of publishing is especially nice when updating pages. Correct a spelling error and two clicks later the correction is online.
Also, publishing is fast. FTP publishing is not always a fast method.
And, there is no need to first upload your image files to the image folder in your public HTML folder. Insert the image into your web page and click publish. It's as easy as that.
Since RVSitebuilder is installed inside of cPanel, you may directly publish your web site to your public_html folder. There are no settings, no guessing where to publish, no passwords, just two simple mouse clicks and your web site is live on the web.
Editor's note: Publishing can only be done from one page in the Sitebuilder. It can be quite frustrating at first since there is no publish button on any page that your are creating or updating. You must go back to the 'Step' page, where Steps 1 through 3 are found and you're page list resides.
RVSitebuilder Pro V5 Review
Note: This review is for RVSitebuilder Pro V5. A new version, V6 has been released which is much different, but if you're still using V5, this is a good review and guide.
Honestly, this is one piece of sitebuilding software I have a love, hate relationship with. I love its ease of use in creating web sites but the wysiwyg editor is a little quirky at times. Did I say a little quirky? I meant to say downright wacky. Trying to control the text can sometimes be extremely frustrating such as setting the font size to 8 and when you start typing you get size 48. This happens to me on occasion but I've learned to live with it.
I will say it has gotten better over the years with more functionality. The templates are better, the page layout options are much better, allowing for a different layout on each page, this alone is hard to find in any sitebuilder, unless you're starting with a blank white page and designing the whole site from scratch. The ability to add a new content block really helps to organize pages and separate content.
Responsive Design
Best of all is the responsive design capabilities, now all of the templates are responsive. What is responsive design? It is the ability of a web page to adjust to the width of the device being used to view it without out it becoming all jumbled or 'breaking'. To me this is a must these days with all of the smart phone and tablet use and search engines such as Google put a lot of value on this when evaluating search placement.
Not Drag and Drop
RVSitebuilder is not a drag and drop site builder as I've seen some people advertise. The creators claim that this type of object placement would create problems and 'break' the layout in the responsive design process. Drag and drop is nice but that certainly is not a deal breaker as I still choose to use RVSitebuilder over all of the other site builders I've tried.
My Sitebuilder of Choice
Do I use RVSitebuilder? Of course I do, despite its shortcomings, it is by far the easiest web publication tool I have ever used. I'll deal with its quirks and adapt my design needs to the software rather than trying to find something that totally suits my needs, which I'll probably never find anyway.
I remember being totally against template driven sitebuilders. Maybe I'm getting old and lazy but now I actually prefer using a template as long as I have nice ones to choose from. RV's templates have gotten much better over the years and much more contemporary.
I think my days of starting from a blank white page and designing a site from the ground up are over. Although it's nice to say you can do it and it is quite an achievement, the time involved is tremendous. I did start this site in WYSIWYG 10, designed about a dozen pages and then switched to RVSitebuilder just for its ease of use.
I haven't used Plesk since 2014 but at that time RV was a better site builder even though Plesk has a shopping cart and RV doesn't. The WYSIWYG editor didn't function as well and content placement was a problem as things would move when published so the online page was different than the site preview. Also, there were connectivity problems on a regular basis, although this may have a been a hosting problem rather than a problem with the builder itself. Plesk Sitebuilder is only offered by a few select web hosts and is even harder to find than a host offering RVSitebuilder.
Both Plesk and RV are online sitebuilders and not a download. Since I've been using RV on a regular basis I haven't considered using Plesk and probably won't ever go back to it. Plesk is created and maintained by Parallels which also offers the Plesk Control Panel, a Windows based web control panel similar to cPanel.
RVSitebuilder vs. Wordpress
Wordpress was originally created as a blog builder but can be used to build static web pages as well. I've seen others compare these two builders but I'm not sure there is a comparison.
RV V5 has a few addon modules/components such as a blog, photo gallery, guestbook, newsletter, and FAQ. RV also has a choice of about 600 templates, this figure keeps changing but that number is fairly accurate. On the other hand, Wordpress has thousands of templates, mostly free and there are paid themes as well.
Wordpress has a huge user base and many users are contributors to the project as it is open source, meaning anyone can contribute to the functionality of the software. With that said, Wordpress has many thousand plugins to add to the capabilities of your site/blog. The possibilities of a Wordpress site are nearly endless and the possibilities of a RV site are rather limited.
As far as ease of use, RV is the hands down winner here. If you were building a simple one or two page site with RVSitebuilder, that site would done and published well before you could even set the parameters and permissions for a Wordpress site. Even though Wordpress is fairly easy to use and very intuitive, just the initial settings are very time consuming.
Both of these sitebuilders produce a nice looking site but I prefer a RV site over Wordpress but I'm sure others feel the opposite is true. To me, Wordpress sites are easy to identify as they all have the same look and feel.
Wordpress is available on nearly every web hosting plan. Many hosts now have what is known as a Wordpress installer, others offer it through Fantastico, Softaculous, Installatron or Zacky Installer.
Where to Get RVSitebuilder
I wish it were a download but it unfortunately is not. It is only available online from certain web hosts. The host I use is theprimehost.com. They are very reasonably priced and their support is top notch. You can host one domain for $1.99 per month and that is a monthly price. Most other hosts offer similar prices but require you to pay for three years at a time, which I don't like because if you start to have problems you're stuck for the remainder of the three years. Not with theprimehost as it's month to month.
theprimehost has excellent uptime and I have never known my site to be down. I don't use an uptime monitor but whenever I edit this site I always have access and I do edit quite often, usually every day.
Responsive Design
Best of all is the responsive design capabilities, now all of the templates are responsive. What is responsive design? It is the ability of a web page to adjust to the width of the device being used to view it without out it becoming all jumbled or 'breaking'. To me this is a must these days with all of the smart phone and tablet use and search engines such as Google put a lot of value on this when evaluating search placement.
Not Drag and Drop
RVSitebuilder is not a drag and drop site builder as I've seen some people advertise. The creators claim that this type of object placement would create problems and 'break' the layout in the responsive design process. Drag and drop is nice but that certainly is not a deal breaker as I still choose to use RVSitebuilder over all of the other site builders I've tried.
My Sitebuilder of Choice
Do I use RVSitebuilder? Of course I do, despite its shortcomings, it is by far the easiest web publication tool I have ever used. I'll deal with its quirks and adapt my design needs to the software rather than trying to find something that totally suits my needs, which I'll probably never find anyway.
I remember being totally against template driven sitebuilders. Maybe I'm getting old and lazy but now I actually prefer using a template as long as I have nice ones to choose from. RV's templates have gotten much better over the years and much more contemporary.
I think my days of starting from a blank white page and designing a site from the ground up are over. Although it's nice to say you can do it and it is quite an achievement, the time involved is tremendous. I did start this site in WYSIWYG 10, designed about a dozen pages and then switched to RVSitebuilder just for its ease of use.
I've used Soholaunch, Plesk Sitebuilder, Web Dwarf, SiteSpinner,
WYSIWYG, Wordpress, and Blogger but my hands down, number one choice is RVSitebuilder Pro.
I've read other reviews saying it is difficult to use. Maybe it's just me, but I find it to be the easiest to use of all the sitebuilders I have mentioned. I find it to have a short learning curve and rarely need to use Help files or tutorials.
RVSitebuilder vs Plesk SitebuilderWYSIWYG, Wordpress, and Blogger but my hands down, number one choice is RVSitebuilder Pro.
I've read other reviews saying it is difficult to use. Maybe it's just me, but I find it to be the easiest to use of all the sitebuilders I have mentioned. I find it to have a short learning curve and rarely need to use Help files or tutorials.
I haven't used Plesk since 2014 but at that time RV was a better site builder even though Plesk has a shopping cart and RV doesn't. The WYSIWYG editor didn't function as well and content placement was a problem as things would move when published so the online page was different than the site preview. Also, there were connectivity problems on a regular basis, although this may have a been a hosting problem rather than a problem with the builder itself. Plesk Sitebuilder is only offered by a few select web hosts and is even harder to find than a host offering RVSitebuilder.
Both Plesk and RV are online sitebuilders and not a download. Since I've been using RV on a regular basis I haven't considered using Plesk and probably won't ever go back to it. Plesk is created and maintained by Parallels which also offers the Plesk Control Panel, a Windows based web control panel similar to cPanel.
RVSitebuilder vs. Wordpress
Wordpress was originally created as a blog builder but can be used to build static web pages as well. I've seen others compare these two builders but I'm not sure there is a comparison.
RV V5 has a few addon modules/components such as a blog, photo gallery, guestbook, newsletter, and FAQ. RV also has a choice of about 600 templates, this figure keeps changing but that number is fairly accurate. On the other hand, Wordpress has thousands of templates, mostly free and there are paid themes as well.
Wordpress has a huge user base and many users are contributors to the project as it is open source, meaning anyone can contribute to the functionality of the software. With that said, Wordpress has many thousand plugins to add to the capabilities of your site/blog. The possibilities of a Wordpress site are nearly endless and the possibilities of a RV site are rather limited.
As far as ease of use, RV is the hands down winner here. If you were building a simple one or two page site with RVSitebuilder, that site would done and published well before you could even set the parameters and permissions for a Wordpress site. Even though Wordpress is fairly easy to use and very intuitive, just the initial settings are very time consuming.
Both of these sitebuilders produce a nice looking site but I prefer a RV site over Wordpress but I'm sure others feel the opposite is true. To me, Wordpress sites are easy to identify as they all have the same look and feel.
Wordpress is available on nearly every web hosting plan. Many hosts now have what is known as a Wordpress installer, others offer it through Fantastico, Softaculous, Installatron or Zacky Installer.
Where to Get RVSitebuilder
I wish it were a download but it unfortunately is not. It is only available online from certain web hosts. The host I use is theprimehost.com. They are very reasonably priced and their support is top notch. You can host one domain for $1.99 per month and that is a monthly price. Most other hosts offer similar prices but require you to pay for three years at a time, which I don't like because if you start to have problems you're stuck for the remainder of the three years. Not with theprimehost as it's month to month.
theprimehost has excellent uptime and I have never known my site to be down. I don't use an uptime monitor but whenever I edit this site I always have access and I do edit quite often, usually every day.
Note: If you do use theprimehost.com and intend to use RVSitebuilder I recommend asking to be put on a server that has RV as I'm not sure all servers at theprimehost have RV.
Originally published 1-17-16
Updated 11-27-18
Originally published 1-17-16
Updated 11-27-18
See also: RVSitebuilder User Guide/Glitch Report
Home | Sitebuilders | Domains | Logos | Images | Hosting
About | Contact | RVSitebuilder | SiteSpinner | WYSIWYG
Free Sites | Fonts | Free Images | SEO | Why | Downloads
Privacy Policy | Cookies
About | Contact | RVSitebuilder | SiteSpinner | WYSIWYG
Free Sites | Fonts | Free Images | SEO | Why | Downloads
Privacy Policy | Cookies
Copyright © 2016-2018 9wired.com All rights reserved
Images
RVSitebuilder has a fairly extensive image library, which makes it easy to add images without having to search the web for free images.
Adding images of your own is a simple job as well. Upload your images to the Local Folder and insert them from there. Place your cursor in the spot you'd like the image, click the 'Image' button, select the image and you're done.
Adding images of your own is a simple job as well. Upload your images to the Local Folder and insert them from there. Place your cursor in the spot you'd like the image, click the 'Image' button, select the image and you're done.
Automatic Resizing
A nice feature here is the automatic resizing. If your image is too large to fit into the column you've selected, the image will automatically resize when inserted. This is a very nice feature that saves a lot of time. No necessary resizing with an image editor but if you do need to change the size just click on the image and grab a corner handle.
Easy Editing
Click on the image and this reveals some editing options as well as the ability to add alt/text. Alternative text is the text that appears when you mouse over an image. This is necessary for those using web page readers and helps a lot with SEO.
RV vs. Other Site Builders
I don't know it there is an actual comparison as I'm not sure RV even compares to other builders such as Joomla, Drupal, etc. These builders have so many templates and plugins/extensions the options are nearly endless. RV makes a good alternative simply because of its ease of use but I think that is about as far as it goes. Wordpress is widely used and probably the standard when it comes to starting a website, but if you've ever used it you know that just the initial setup is quite time consuming.
A nice feature here is the automatic resizing. If your image is too large to fit into the column you've selected, the image will automatically resize when inserted. This is a very nice feature that saves a lot of time. No necessary resizing with an image editor but if you do need to change the size just click on the image and grab a corner handle.
Easy Editing
Click on the image and this reveals some editing options as well as the ability to add alt/text. Alternative text is the text that appears when you mouse over an image. This is necessary for those using web page readers and helps a lot with SEO.
RV vs. Other Site Builders
I don't know it there is an actual comparison as I'm not sure RV even compares to other builders such as Joomla, Drupal, etc. These builders have so many templates and plugins/extensions the options are nearly endless. RV makes a good alternative simply because of its ease of use but I think that is about as far as it goes. Wordpress is widely used and probably the standard when it comes to starting a website, but if you've ever used it you know that just the initial setup is quite time consuming.