Easy website builder

If you’re one of the many who want or need a website but wish there was a way to create one without delving into the cryptic world of coding then you might find the answer in the form of the latest Xara website builder. Xara is a WYSIWIG editor (What You See is What You Get) that takes the complicated coding out of web design, but still allows you to create professional-looking layouts with virtually unlimited design choices.

One of the big features that make the Xara Website Designer so unique is due to the design philosophy behind it. The majority of website builders on market today are really just interfaces to the code that make up a website. Xara treats the creation process differently and completely hides the code away from the designer. While it is possible to create a truly unique site from scratch the real power of Xara easy website builder comes from the ability to use templates.

For fast website turnaround a user can select one of the many templates found in the designs jquery image gallery, modify it in infinite ways, and then publish it to the web. The page you see on the design screen is exactly what you will see when it is viewed in any web browser.

Designers are given complete freedom with a unique drag and drop interface that allows them to place design elements anywhere on the page, and without having to tweak or write any code at all. Traditionally difficult tasks such as wrapping text around a picture, or graphics at angle are now a total breeze with the latest version of the Xara website creation software.

The drag and drop interface also extends to multimedia files. Simply drag your .mp3, flash, or .pdf file to where you want it and everything else is handled under the hood. HTML5 fallback is also included should the users browser not be compatible with these technologies.

Missing in previous versions but very welcome in the latest iteration is the ability to make any site mobile friendly. Given that the Internet is increasingly becoming mobile-centric this is a very important addition that is sure to increase the number of visitors a new site will receive.

The normally tedious task of creating different sites for these platforms of varying screen sizes is handled in a surprisingly intuitive way. Three different tabs are open; one for desktops, one for tablets, and one for mobiles. Any changes made in one will be immediately reflected in the other, creating an efficient and streamlined process that was once a complete nightmare to pull off successfully – especially for those with no experience in coding.

With all of this power you might be expecting a busy and confusing interface but Xara have packed all of this flexibility into an interface that is uncluttered and intuitive. In fact, the interface is surprisingly reminiscent of many of the popular publishing programs.

You want to give your site the best chance of being viewed so Xara website builder allows the site to be search engine optimized (SEO). Each site has an XML sitemap included, making it easy for the search engines to crawl the site and add it to their index so it is more easily found by searchers. Adding titles, descriptions, and keywords can be handled on a page to page basis – giving your site even more chances to be found. And if that wasn’t enough the Xara website builder also packs in complete compliance with the W3C standards.

For those wishing to try before they buy Xara offer a fully featured version to download and try. There are limitations of course as the free version only offers a select number of templates that are editable (with the user still being free to browse the entire catalog). The free version also limits some of the user’s access to the underlying code used for SEO purposes.

While Xara is a great program capable of producing stunning graphical web designs there are some things not to like, especially for someone like me who comes from a background in Dreamweaver and at home tinkering with code. While most won’t need, or even care about access to the code, for someone comfortable with such things it may prove to be a barrier. But that is a small niggle given the flexibility on offer. The ease of use, ability to create for multiple platforms at once, the simple but powerful drag and drop interface all add up to a fully featured web editor that removes the complexity for all but the most demanding web designers.