Build Website Online – The Easy Way

The guys from Intellimon are planning another update of the software.

XSitePro 2 will be updated to version 2.5, and the team are working on the new web design tool right now.

Although, not a major upgrade, the update has been voiced as significant, and there will be no cost for current owners of XSitePro 2.

The entire template system will be scrapped, and replaced by web2.0 styles. There will also be a number of added widgets, as web editing with XSP takes a WordPress approach, and begins to utilize plugins, and modules.

The advantages of using manufacturer coded plugins, over open source, is that the plugins are tried and tested to work with incremental updates, and will not break the site.

If you wish to see the benefits of the software, then hop over to the XSitePro2 website, and for smart buyers, then check out the bonus packages on offer at XSitePro bonuses.

Call it a theme, a layout, a design, or a flavor, your websites overall look should not only be pretty, but also practical.

Try to keep your website layout within accepted guidelines. There are several sites around that project the very latest in design, and coding skill, but you need a PHD to use the stupid navigation.

These tweedy designers think they are so clever for thinking up these concepts, but to put them on a live site with no instruction, is just dumb.

Nowadays, in this trendy world, people get very uptight when they do not look entirely presentable. This also applies to web designing.

Every individual should definitely want their website to look good, at least, the best they can be. Here are a few things you could look out for when wanting to create a professional looking webpage.

Color Schemes and Themes.

When designing, always choose matching colors. An example of a matching color would be to have a dark background, with visible words and designs. With the dark theme, try not to mix too many bright colors into the design. What we should NEVER do, is to mix two very different colors, such as purple and yellow. Now, of course, it would depend on the purpose of the website, but those two colors are too striking for one who wants it to look more professional. Remeber, red and green, should not be seen.

Themes must always suit the company or rather, the organization / etc. If the website was made to cater for a food company, it would be wise to stick to that particular category, rather than to revert to a different theme, such as machinery.

Fonts should be used in regard to the formality of the website. A simple sans-serif font would suffice in most cases. Exceptional cases such as design and art groups might want to use fanciful designs and fonts. Of course, that’s only if you know what you’re doing. Salespages can also divert from this rule.

Finally, we must always try to think of our visitors, see the way they see. The resolutions and file sizes of the pictures must not be too large in terms of size. This is to allow maximum compatibility and cater our visitor’s needs. 

So, planning is something we should always do, before attempting something.

One of the primary functions of a well-organized, good website, is to keep your visitors on the website. A website is definitely created for a purpose, unless intended for personal use, which is uncommon. For example, a portfolio website would want to be visited and it’s content viewed. For companies and internet businesses, your website aims to provide product information, to make sales, or gather leads. However, most individuals undoubtly prefer visually captivating designs, so on and so forth. It is undeniable that this causes no harm, but one must put himself/herself in other people’s shoes, as to understand how a visitor to the website might think, do and react.

1 )  Navigation

As I said, a web designer has to learn how to think the way your visitors think. 

Situation A : Website with good navigation ( 2-3 hyperlinks to target page ), well planned  in terms of placement, and design.

Situation B : Website with poor navigation ( takes forever for the visitor to reach his/her target page ), hard-to-read navigation fonts and poor placement of the navigation buttons/bar.

In Situation A, a visitor will always want to be able to access his/her target page. For example, the individual comes across your website, and is interested in the product sold, but wants to find more information. He/she finds the navigation with no trouble, and enters the particular product information page.

As for Situation B, a visitor stumbles into the website, and would also like to find out more information about the product. Unfortunately, due to bad placement and fanciful font-types, the visitor takes forever, or even fails to find the navigation bar. Even when he/she does so, links to the product information are nowhere to be found, (example : home > about > products > product image > etc…[a few more clicks] > product information ).

Analysis : In both situations, wouldn’t a website with characteristics similar to the Situation A be more rewarding, ergo better?

Keep you navigation simple, and easy to find, your visitors will reward you with reduced bounce rates and higher page counts.
 

The web started out developed by the British engineer, and computer scientist Sir Tim Berners Lee.

Brought about from a task he needed to complete for the Central European Nuclear research group, a website was a simple string of text, with hyperlinks embedded into it.

Shift forward in time to the emergence of the first web design software tools, frontpage, firstpage, and navigator, the intelligent, yet untrained could enter the internet arena.

The next wave of technology saw the emergence of Dreamweaver, heralded as every webmasters dream, although it was a personal nightmare for me. WYSIWYG driven web design suites became easier, and easier to use, until XSitePro launched, and re-wrote the book of easy to use web design software.

As XSitePro gained popularity, CMS started emerging from the underground, and as Mambo became Joomla, WordPress entered the stage.

Although WordPress gained massive popularity quickly, it was certainly not for its ease of use, the SEO abilities became obvious, but my transition from software to CMS was not instant.

Modern, open source content management systems, like WordPress, have made entry to the web world even easier, but could entry become even easier than this?

Well, yes, and no. Concrete5 is another open source CMS that logically directs the user to edit any webpage by clicking on it, what could be easier. Every element can be individually moved, edited, added and deleted, on the fly, in true WYSIWYG style, more likened to desktop publishing than webdesign. It is, what I expected my first copy of Dreamweaver to be, when I bought it all those years ago, when I was massively dissapointed.

So, where does the no come from? C5 is a little difficult to set up, for the untrained, there are many templates around, yet these are difficult to edit, in the eyes of a newbie.

As I glance back in time, to the early CMS projects, each with their own quirky solutions, I see a very bright future for Concrete5, as the setup, and templating becomes easier to use for the general public, we could well be on the forefront of another wave of CMS transitions.

Most of the online sitebuilding tools work in the same way, to understand the process, I have included a video.

The video explains the procedures that you will need to become familiar with the app. This example is from webstarts.com.