3rd August 2007 - by Patricia Jones
Website Design With XsitePro, A Review of the
Software
When I bought XSitePro at the beginning of May 2007 I had gone
through a very frustrating few weeks trying to design several
websites. Even more frustrating because I was designing sites
for customers and myself 5 years earlier but dropped out
because of other commitments.
I decided to start up another Internet business and couldn’t
wait to get my own site up and running again. That was when my
frustrations started. OK the sites that I designed before
weren’t exactly professional; they were sort of like the
Grandma Moses of the Internet. But, they were attractive, easy
to navigate, packed with content, well visited and
different!
Using my old html editor FrontPage I expected to have a site up
and running quickly but found that I had forgotten most of what
I’d known about using FrontPage for building sites. What I did
remember was that initially I struggled to build a site even
after learning html because I don’t understand ‘easy to
understand instructions’. This time round I was having the same
old problem.
I persevered and was getting somewhere but then I decided to
buy the latest Macromedia package and have a bash with
Dreamweaver. Doh! it might be wonderful but I didn’t have a
clue where to start even after reading the instructions. I
turned back to FrontPage with a mental note to myself to try
again when I had more time.
A friend told me about XSitePro and I was curious enough to
take a look at their site. It wasn’t long before I regretted
splashing out on the Macromedia package, but I couldn’t justify
another spend so I regretfully left the site armed with a free
affiliate link.
During the next week I kept going back and drooling over what
might have been. The $197 asking price grew smaller with every
visit until click …I finally reasoned that I had earned as much
as that in overtime in my day job the previous week and if I
could design sites more quickly and easily it would pay for
itself.
After downloading XSitePro I couldn’t wait to get started. I
worked my through the tutorial which has you building an
opticians site and was totally pleased and relieved to find
that I understood the tutorial and that my practice optician
site was as it should be.
Next I decided to design my own site and took a look at the
website and sales letter templates provided. I must admit to
thinking that they were a bit boring, but have found since that
there are several sites offering XSitePro templates for sale at
quite reasonable prices and I've found a membership site that
gives away free monthly templates.
I made up my own design for my first XSitePro effort and
managed to express my old cheerful style quite easily and much
quicker than I would have done with FrontPage or Dreamweaver.
As with both of those site builders XSitePro is a What You See
Is What You Get editor and as with both of them I find that you
do need basic html knowledge to build effective sites. Courses
are freely available on the Internet.
Time Saving Differences
I couldn’t believe how quickly I was able to add Google AdSense
ads to my pages. All I had to do was initially add my AdSense
id to the software and then after that right click wherever I
wanted the ads placing. I was given a choice of ad sizes and
colours to enable the ads to integrate with my site and there
they were. Much better than going to the AdSense site every
time I wanted to place ads.
Another timesaver is the Affiliate Wizard, you add your
affiliate links and thereafter a couple of clicks and your
links are on your web pages.
Optimisation for the search engines is excellent for an
impatient bod like me. Every time I add an image I’m reminded
to include an image alt keyword. When a page is finished I
click on the SEO page and I’m told what I still need to do to
improve optimisation. I might have missed an image alt keyword,
or I might not have included the main key word enough in the
text, or not enough words in the body. A few minutes and the
page is fully optimised and a chore that I didn’t completely
understand before is done.
I did not totally understand how powerful that feature was
until recently. I found a site that checks for SEO one day and
tested all of my sites with it. The XSitePro sites all scored
from 95-100% optimised and my directory which had been built
from a script scored 65% which I quickly improved upon! Being
nosy I checked out several random sites of other peoples and my
XSitePro sites did better than all of them and one was from a
supposedly professional designer.
If I want to change the look of my site it’s easily and quickly
done on every page at once and I don’t have to figure out style
sheets. I can create pop ups, pop unders and pop ins with a few
clicks, add redirect pages, add scripts and lots more useful
things.
The Verdict
I love working with XsitePro and am really glad that I gave
into temptation and bought it. I find it easier and quicker to
work with than any other html editor that I’ve used and I am
always pleased with the results. I am sure that it will have
it’s limitations but I have not really found any yet.
The only downside to XSitePro is the boring templates, but
everything else makes up for that in spades.
Update: XSitePro got upgraded and you
can read my opinion of the upgrade here.
Source: http://www.bb-articles.com
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