Online website builders = awesome. I find these things to be particularly useful because it allows you to put your idea for a website out there for free, and these cites make it super easy to do so. The only one I have in depth experience with is www.weebly.com. I find it to be the easiest, because it is self explanatory and they offer a variety of different options when it comes to designing your website. I haven't had direct experience with these other websites, but I have seen some pages made with them and they turned out spectacular as well.
- www.wix.com
- www.webstarts.com
- www.moonfruit.com
This is a quick video that shows you how to use the basics of weebly, but be warned that weebly has been updated since this video was made, therefor making it look a little different in the video than the website actually looks today.
The nice thing about all these websites is that you can pretty much see what you are going to get from looking at the homepage. A lot of them offer video tutorials on their homepage to try and persuade you to use their templates and publish with them. This is an example of one of those videos, this is how weebly does it:
As of now I have built 3 websites (2 with groups, and one "fan site") on weebly, and found them to turn out very nicely and easy to use by viewers. These are the websites that I have worked on with groups
- www.thenuntilnow.weebly.com This one I worked on in my Media Literacy Class and it was used to inform audiences of the role models young girls are faced with everyday. This was the first weebly I made and what I liked about it was the easiness in putting it together. What I mean by that is that I was able to work with two other group members on this website and we never had a problem working on it at the exact same time with different computers. Also, it was entirely easy to add pictures and align them with text. Another nice thing about weebly that we were able to find out through building this website is that we were able to add picture slideshows and picture collages to make it more interesting for the viewer to look at.
The second group website that I have worked on with a group is: www.wwu21plus.weebly.com. This is a website that I worked on for this class and it's directed mainly at students of Western Washington University who are 21 and older looking for something fun to do downtown. With this website we have more variety than what's in the last website I listed. For this website we broke it down into different subjects like happy hour, bars in b-ham, safety and a calendar of monthly events. Some elements were more difficult than others, but overall we were able to put something together that was eye catching and informative for students all at the same time. It also introduces them to different places they may not have heard of before.
Overall, I think that these website builders are great for building a website because they are easy to use and provide you with most if not all of the tools you need to get your ideas out there. They make it so you can easily add pictures, slideshows, and videos through drag and drop. You can also add custom html's and put text and pictures next to each other without hassle. It is also important to know that these websites can also be used to host a website if you like, you can drop the .weebly or .wix or .whatever and make it your very own website, but know that once you do this they are no longer free.
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