The first site appeared in 1991. For many years, web development was the diocese of only those dedicated to the mysteries of programming, typesetting and the language of hypertext markup. The advent of SAAS-designers, Joomla and WordPress engines in 2003-2005 simplified the process of creating sites. The reviews confirm that web-building is now available to users with any level of knowledge, even those who first see the mouse and monitor.
What are web constructors?
Designers or builders were designed to facilitate, reduce the cost of the site building process. Make it much faster without sacrificing functionality and features. Designers work on the SAAS model. This means that users get the software to use. There is no need to configure something on the server yourself, buy hosting, pay for a license. The daily content and full maintenance of the resource is the responsibility of the service provider.
Benefits of SAAS Constructors
Web design gurus often blame designer sites for wretchedness and lack of professionalism. In fact, such a conclusion is unfounded. The creation of the platform, templates, plugins, extensions and other tools is handled by a team of masters of layout, design, programming. The platform is tested by more than one person, the service is constantly improved and checked for errors.
Advantages of online platforms:
- availability;
- Suitable for users with zero knowledge of HTML and CSS;
- adaptability;
- SEO optimization and help in its settings;
- excellent web indexing.
For those who want, but do not know how to create a website from scratch, online services are suitable. Another advantage is the 24/7 support service. For beginners in web building, this is an important factor. It is better to contact technical staff than to search for answers on the Web for a long time or write questions on the forum.
Disadvantages of Online Services
Self-creation of a site using a constructor is outsourcing. The resource does not belong to you, but is leased. There are a number of disadvantages to this:
- Conditionally, designers are free, but you will have to pay for a truly presentable resource;
- the inability to choose a hosting, by default all sites on a subdomain of the third level;
- platform advertising, and if you want to remove it, buy an account.
A significant drawback is that most platforms are of foreign origin. They do not have integration with Yandex products, domestic social networks for likes and reposts. In cases with shops, payment difficulties arise, since PayPal is 90% defaulted, which practically no one uses in the CIS countries.
Which designer to choose?
There are several types of platforms for self-creating a site: for blogs, landing pages. shops. There are universal constructors. Deciding on a choice is best helped by reviews, recommendations and wishes of people who worked with web-builders.
Israeli cloud platform for creating sites. Reviews emphasize the variability and brilliance of the proposed templates. Ready-made layouts are divided into categories, the user can only select and enter their data. The service has a free version, without buying an account you can create your own resource. The site has a section for "dummies" and a separate motivational column with success stories.
German service for creating sites. Feedback on the functionality of the designer is positive. Jimdo for the free version gives 500 MB. The service has a simple and intuitive interface and settings system. Among the shortcomings are advertising banners of the platform itself and the inability to add its own plugins.
The initial idea of the 2011 project was to tell how to create your website for free and quickly, increasing overall web literacy. Judging by the reviews of HTML-layouts, the designer is imprisoned for specific sites and pages of government agencies. There is no western gloss Wix or Jimdo. Of the advantages - the price, Yandex.Metrica, integration with 1C and a cashless payment system with a card through Sberbank, Qiwi, Yandex-wallet.
Landing Page on the constructor
We offer you an example of creating a landing site. It consists of one page in order to draw attention to a specific product and reflects the concept of a business. Landings are colorful, with a minimum of text and unnecessary information. The easiest way to create them on the site builders, which offered a lot of Landing-layouts.
- Go to the official page of the platform, go through the registration process and attach mail and phone to your account.
- Select the section that offers to create a website for free, and in the list of suggested categories of templates, click on the "Landing" button.
- There will be several pages with templates on different topics: repair, weddings, travel. To rate each layout, click View. After reviewing, select the one you like.
- The system will automatically redirect to the designer editor. All page elements, including color, widgets, text, title, SEO-master, are customizable.
- After editing the data, click "Publish." After that, the site will appear on the Internet, by clicking on "Go", you will see it in all its glory.
The cost of web builders
Designing such a landing does not cost anything, the free tariff provides 150-500 MB on disk, plus a subdomain. And if you are ready to endure the advertising banners of the platform itself, the creation of sites is possible on a free account. Reviews say that without the cost of hosting and with your own efforts, such a resource can be promoted and earn money on it.
But for serious projects, you will need to connect a domain to increase bandwidth, download speed, increase indexing and other privileges of paid accounts. The cost of creating a website according to the template starts from 4 euros per month.
Prices of popular tariffs:
- Wix: 12 € for premium support, 10 GB, domain, favicon and pleasure no longer see ads on your site.
- Jimdo: only 5 € for 5 GB and for a firewall, or 10 GB bandwidth, domain, mobile optimization and lack of advertising. Unlimited costs 15 €. This is only 3 € more than Wix, but do not forget that the German platform does not have integration with Yandex, so there is no point in overpaying.
- A5 considers the tariff for 450 rubles per month to be the best choice, which in translation is 6.62 €. At the same time, you get Yandex.Metrica, a domain name, as many as 10 thousand MB and your personal manager for use.
Constructor VS CMS
For the first timid steps in the world of web development, working with CMS seems complicated and incomprehensible. Designers are simpler and more attractive, but much less functional. Having mastered the principle of operation of platforms, familiarized with the world of site building, it is time to move on to the "engines". If you are considering the question of how to create your site for free and quickly, so that the resource turns out to be powerful and functional, the solution will be CMS.
Of course, working with CMS has its own difficulties. For example, the lack of support services. But this is offset by the huge number of forums and communities where you can quickly get comprehensive answers. Also for the engines there are many free plugins and extensions that are regularly updated.
What programs to create a site on CMS will be useful to you:
- the engine itself;
- HTML visual editor
- testing programs: Open Server, Denwer or EasyPHP;
- "Photoshop" for the initial creation of the layout, working with photos and developing your logo.
Resource Creation Steps
As an example, we suggest creating a store on WordPress. To do this, we will use a simple, powerful, and most importantly, free WooCommerce. The plugin loads quickly, updates with bug fixes are constantly being released, it is perfectly SEO-optimized with a simple interface. On this engine, you can create a store with an assortment of up to 10,000 units.
- Install WooCommerce from the free WordPress.org plugin repository, which can be accessed directly from the WordPress toolbar.
- Launch the plugin and start configuring it. The program will ask if you would like WooCommerce to automatically create key pages: store, shopping cart, statement and default account. You definitely need all of these points, so click Continue.
- The next step is to configure the location, currency format, and units. Choose domestic money, kilograms and click "Continue."
- Next, fill out the delivery and tax section.
- The last step is the payment settings, wallets, cards, this is where the quick setup ends. Keep in mind that few people use PayPal in the CIS, so it’s better not to choose it.
Additional settings
After creating the store, the system will offer to fill in the data for future products. But it’s better not to rush and return to the “General Settings”. Change the default client location information and turn off geolocation. Third-party location detection will slow down site loading. Also enable the free shipping option and set up an email address.
These are important parameters that will affect the future work of the store. After filling, start adding products. Go to “Products”, then “Categories”, give the category a name, a string for the URL. Add a category description, image, and tags to make it easier to group products.
Now add products with their description and photos. You can select the External / Affiliate Product option if you want to add products from affiliate program stores as a referral link. Indicate the weight, color, size, the ability to add reviews. Now the store is ready for the first online customer.
Microsoft Web Development Services
Almighty Microsoft could not stand by and watch the widespread popularization of SaaS constructors. Therefore, I created my own cloud service Azure, but under the auspices of the PaaS-model - “platform as a service”.
Azure has an open architecture and provides all the tools for web development. Moreover, in the cloud, you can both create a site from scratch and deploy an existing application. Key components of the Azure Services platform include:
- Windows Azure - for hosting, service management, low-level scalable storage, computing and networking.
- Microsoft SQL is a database service in the cloud.
- Microsoft .NET Services provides workflow and access control.
- Live Services - sequential access of users to the storage, use, synchronization of documents, photos, files, any information on their PCs, phones, PC applications and websites.
- Microsoft SharePoint Services and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Services - Business Content and Teamwork.
How to create a website: instructions for cloud technology
To create the first application using the cloud service, you need to register first. After creating an account with Microsoft products, you can use the whole 12 months without paying anything. During this period, you will understand whether the platform is suitable for you, if it makes sense to pay for it and if you need a website at all.
After registration is completed, in the management portal, select the "Web sites" section. The system will offer three options:
- quick creation;
- with a database;
- from the gallery.
Choose the first option, enter the location, name for the URL in the opened windows, and click Create a web-site. This completes the creation procedure. Now give the resource a name and download the publication profile. You will need it at the very end to get all administrative rights.
Publish Windows Azure Web Sites
In the Settings Wizard, open Visual Studio and create a new ASP.Net MVC 4.0 application. Verify that the .NET Framework version is exactly 4.0 in the Configuration tab. Version 4.5 is not suitable for web pages. After making sure, select the Internet Application project template.
After that, you need to publish the ASP.NET MVC web application to the Windows Azure website. To do this, right-click on the project and select Publish. Download the downloaded profile. Check the settings: password, URL, username, click on the Publish button, and the finished site will open in a new browser window.
Keep in mind that to create Windows Azure sites you need basic skills of working with Visual Studio, Microsoft .NET Framework, C languages, PHP or Python. Like the designers, the service offers a gallery with ready-made templates and presets. But working with the platform is much more complicated than with CMS and web builders.