Sitebuilders


Sitebuilders, all I can say is I've tried many, at least a dozen. Mostly free but I did pay for three of them. Let's see if I can remember the free ones: Trellian, Net Objects Fusion, Seahorse, Open Element, WebDwarf, WebPlus Starter Edition. I know there were more that I've forgotten about. I was never able to create a site with any of them and I gave them all a good try.
Paid Web Site Builders
As far as the paid for sitebuilders, there was SiteSpinner Pro, $97.00 one time fee, WYSIWYG $49.95, Web Easy Professional $25 and RVSitebuilder Pro. All of them are downloads except Web Easy and RVSitebuilder. Web Easy was a software disk and RVSitebuilder is available online only from a certain few select web hosts such as theprimehost.com
SiteSpinner

Sitespinner Pro is now $97.00 and is a one time fee. Unlike WYSIWYG which requires a fee for each major update.
I designed and published a 30+ page  website with SiteSpinner. I built and designed many pages with WYSIWYG but for whatever reason they never got published. WYSIWYG has by far the most features, has a good size learning curve but has very good online guides. SiteSpinner  Pro has a good size learning curve and requires more knowledge of site building as it does less things automatically but has a very helpful online community.
KompoZer
One sitebuilding tool worth mentioning is KompoZer. It's free, relatively easy to use, has good documentation, creates nice looking web pages but hasn't been updated in quite some time. Now, not being updated in a while doesn't mean it doesn't work well but it does mean that it is not compliant with current HTML standards. Web pages created with KompoZer still render well in most browsers as they are backwards compatible with most web designs. KompoZer supports layers very well, making layered text and images fairly easy to do. I wish someone would take over and continue on with this project as it is a very nice sitebuilder which is currently taking donations to help keep it alive. KompoZer was the first site building tool I ever used.
RVSitebuilder Pro V5
I've done the most with RVSitebuilder even though it is less feature rich and is template driven. This means it uses templates and all of the pages on your site will have the same header and overall similar look. Although less attractive it is by far the quickest and easiest sitebuilder I've found. It does have a less steep learning curve than the others and has one click publishing which is what I really like. The others require FTP publishing and if you don't have the settings right they won't publish. Even though it's not impossible to get the settings in order, sometimes it can be very frustrating. While using SiteSpinner, I never did get the FTP settings right, nor could their online forum help me either, so I ended up using an FTP Client called Filezilla, which works quite well. RV also has a built in photo selection as well, which is nice. Also, there are modules that can be installed as easy as adding a page such as a blog, forms, calendar, newsletter, photo gallery, FAQ and a guestbook.
Relevant Content
The bottom line for me is that I like to write and designing a site takes away from my writing time. Of course, a site needs to be well designed, well functioning and aesthetically appealing but for me personally, if I spend too much time designing I lose interest and the content never gets written. Realistically, Google does not care about how pretty your site is, but it does care about how important and relevant your content is. Content is the single most important factor in SEO (Search Engine Optimization). A relatively plain looking site with tons of great content is going to put your site much higher in the search results than the most beautiful site with little, poorly written content.
Ease of Use
RVSitebuilder Pro takes most of the design process out of site building, allowing me to concentrate on what's most important, which is content.

Originally published on 2-21-16