Website Builder

dexterwolf

Does anyone know a good website building software where you can build the website and then move to another host but keep your website. Or any software that is fairly easy to use to build one so I can then Host a site elsewhere.



The one I am using doesn't let me have the website so I have to stick with them Hosting it. I want the flexibility to be able to move if I want to.

forgotmyname

The one your using doesnt let you have the website?

Please explain? Usually once a site is made with whatever tools your hosting company use its your site.

Everyone that visits the site gets the files to copy it. Except database stuff etc.

EdwardB

dexterwolf wrote: »

Does anyone know a good website building software where you can build the website and then move to another host but keep your website. Or any software that is fairly easy to use to build one so I can then Host a site elsewhere.

The one I am using doesn't let me have the website so I have to stick with them Hosting it. I want the flexibility to be able to move if I want to.

What you need is Wordpress, you could consider Joomla but Wordpress left it in shadows a long time ago.

You do not need to download it and upload to install, It is available as a one click install on most hosting platforms.

It is totally portable, I have done many migrations myself

It has 48,000+ plugins for everything you can imagine

https://wordpress.org/plugins/

It has templates which some people turn their nose up but I can recommend some mega ones.

https://wordpress.org/themes/

A friend of mine does this for a living, if you want I can PM his details he might set you up with a site to play with, he knows a sheetload more about it than me, has helped me a lot.

dexterwolf

Thanks for that, I will check Word press out and see how I get on.

forgotmyname

Why do so many wordpress accounts get defaced? Where is the security issue?

Is it wordpress or the hosting site, or user not setting permissions?

EdwardB

forgotmyname wrote: »

Why do so many wordpress accounts get defaced? Where is the security issue?

Is it wordpress or the hosting site, or user not setting permissions?

Wordpress is like windows, it needs to be kept up to date with security patches, I guess that like windows it is an easy target because there are so many out there.

Wordfence is a fee plugin that has a paid version too for extra features.

It logs and bans hacking attempts, can be set to send you an email, the paid version allows you to block countries, so Russia, China and a few choice Eastern European Countries will probably kill them off.

Not because all hackers originate there but because those counties have the most open proxies and there are lists published daily.

There are hacking tools for any site type and you can leave then on autopilot, they grab the proxies and a list of sites from RSS feeds and other sources, then away they go.

There are scripts on the web or dark web to break most platforms.

I actually think no site is 100% secure, LAMP is out there as an established platform that many web builders use.

Often the failure in security is more about the network of the hosting platform, not protecting the resources/

That is why people say TalkTalk ALLOWED itself to be hacked, a company with over 4 million customers did not do all that is necessary to protect customer data,

Too much is blamed on hackers, we have poor IT management, Action Fraud do nothing but log the incidences, it is a complete sham.

were

last time I looked wordpress was reported as had having 56% of the CMS market. Some templates support mobile devices off the bat.

To be honest I do not like the large tile look of these sites, or windows even, but for mobile use with fat fingers it does help.

EdwardB

The thing about Wordpress is that you can make it whatever you want, whatever look you get is down to the developer of the themes, nothing is forced.

If a site is responsive (mobile friendly) it is because it was designed that way.

It means you can knock up a basic site for very little money and let the customer add conrent to it without programming.

The market share of Wordpress is huge now and that makes it more compelling, makes the techs cheaper, makes the alternative products cheaper and better quality.

There are some sites that need coding from the ground up, but right now we are seeing some terrible web design out there, I think caused by giving developers these massive screens, when the sites run on the most common laptop screen (15") it is like viewing a site through a letter box, three or four stupid headers, content blocking crap left right and centre.

As always these so called "designers" have no clue about human behaviour.

They create so much white space that they fit sweet FA of what customers want to see, at the same time their fonts scale so badly that you have to zoom in and then scroll bars appear taking away even more of your visible space.

Then if you actually try to look at products you have to zoom out because the lightbox does not even scroll and the buttons are at the bottom



This leaves your screen zoomed out so the content looks like this



Then when zooming back in you have a screen like this with absolutely NOTHING to entice users "above the fold"



Those stupid Google Certified widgets and Help Widgets just content block, I would dump them.

This is another example of poor "above the fold" design



Absolutely nothing to tempt a user to engage with site, what is more important, these stupid statutory cookie messages or the users objectives?

As you scroll it gets worse, you have these pinned bloated headers leaving you a narrow "letterbox" to view the scrolling content which does not fit



These are from https://www.worldfirst.com/uk/ but they have missed out on the basic concepts of engagement; give the user something to do.

Now compare that to their competitor https://transferwise.com/



who also uses one of these HTML5 scrolling sites, but understands engagement "above the fold", as a user you will compare the rates, see that they are cheaper than their bank and develop trust, you do not have to scroll and you do not have to log in.

These days you have to give people a reason to register, that is a big fail for the Worldfirst site, I heard they do their coding inhouse, so if it were me I would roll back to pre 2014 and start with visitor objectives, then see if I could connect the two.

The old worldfirst site was actually way better, at least it had a currency conversion box. The one before that was even better, problem is that designers think it is all about the latest widgets when it is and has always been about giving the visitor what they are looking for and getting them to engage.

These issues relate to Wordpress because when you are looking at themes you have to consider these things.

With Wordpress the benefit of their themes is that you can modify them, add 3rd party plugins and make the site work for you, less coding and more configuration.

Let's face it the hardest part of building a site is CONTENT, but you often do not realise that your website builder is a pile of poo until you have built it, by then you have invested your time and learning curve so you are stuck with it.

However, if you do the same with Wordpress you are investing mostly in core Wordpress features and if a theme stops working for you then you add a new one and tweak away, all your content is still there.

EdwardB

The problem I have with those sites is they are a cul de sac, if you invest your time there is no upgrade path.

These sites NEVER rank with Google.

They are perveived as amateur by visitors with the credit on every page

They do not have the open source development of the product and tens of thousands of plugins and themes.

As I said ealier. it is not until you have invested your time that you figure out these are very basic and may not meet your needs.

EdwardB

I disagree, I think those platforms are not that simple, do not afford the user the control they get from other platforms and by the time they have invested their time (the biggest factor in building a site) it is too late.

I guess there are some people who can manage with such a basic platform and if that suits you then GREAT, but I could never recommend any of them.

Also you cannot trust that page you referred to as they are a paid affiliate of the products they recommend.

For example for wix this is their Aff ID

?utm_campaign=af_pXBprZ&experiment_id=wbg

EdwardB

robbyfine wrote: »

And looking at your posts it seems they are all aff links.