Webs (Fall 2011)

Why install software to build a website when you can do it on the web? That?s the idea behind Webs.com. You may lose some precise control you get with a tool like Adobe Dreamweaver, CoffeeCup Visual Site Designer ($49, 3.5 stars), or even the free beta Adobe Muse, but Webs.com is capable of building you a surprisingly customized content- and gadget-rich site. It even offers more customization than purely template-driven site builders like Apple iWeb ($49, 3.5 stars) or Google Sites (Free, 3 stars). The icing on the cake is that you get a mobile version of your site in the bargain.

Setup
Unlike another Web-based competitor, Homestead, you don?t have to enter credit card details to try out building a free site in Webs. Free sites include ads and very limited bandwidth (100MB) and server storage (40MB). For $3.75 a month, you can upgrade to a Starter account, which cleans out the ads and increases bandwidth to 5GB and storage to 400MB. For a $7.50-a-month Enhanced account, you get a custom domain name and five email accounts, in addition to lots more bandwidth (25GB) and storage (1GB).

Interface and Building Your Site
Webs?s interface is quite clearly organized. It takes you to the meat of site-building from the moment you create an account. You first indicate whether your site will be for personal, business, or group use. Then you get a choice of 63 professional-looking templates or themes to base your site on, some dark, some light, some serious, some fun. You can switch to another later using the Modify Template choice if you change your mind.?

Next you choose what types of pages you want to include. A Home page is a given, but the rest of the choices exceed what you can do with Muse or CoffeeCup without buying more software?these page types include photo gallery, members, news, contact, videos, forum, blog, and calendar. Homestead offers more types of pages, though it doesn't have Webs' forum capability. But Webs doesn't implement the concept of a "master page," which Muse and Homestead use to let you define colors and styles to base other site pages on and change them all at once.

Customizing Your Webs' Site
Once those choices were out of the way it was time for the fun part?making the site my own. This is done by adding ?content boxes? which can contain text, images, video, or a host of widgets from third parties. I could enter and edit text right in the content boxes? prefab text-entry boxes for titles and caption text. I could also link any selected text or images to either an external web page or one of my new site?s pages, or even to a specific paragraph on a page in my site.

Unlike in Homestead, I couldn't size or position these content boxes to my taste; they'd simply take up the page width left over by any sidebars. But Webs wraps text around inserted images, which is what you want: Homestead doesn't. Webs doesn't let you specify the exact pixel dimensions of your site pages. CoffeeCup and Muse make you specify the exact page dimensions right at the start, so those looking for more precise control will prefer those installed site-builder apps.

Unfortunately, I couldn?t crop images, and moving and resizing them didn?t allow as precise or easy control as with an installed web design app. Advanced users, however, can take advantage of Webs? custom CSS option, and novices can somewhat modify a template by changing the default header, footer, and background.

By default, Webs sites get a sidebar for things like member options, widgets, or recent blog post links.? This is great if you like stuff like Facebook Like buttons, badges, or PayPal donations. You can also create custom sidebar elements with formatted text and images. I couldn?t change the width of the main content box to fill the whole browser window until I turned off the sidebar, but doing this isn?t as clear as it could be. You only see the sidebar options if you hover the mouse over the lower right side of the page. An explicit sidebar menu option would be better.

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