Creating a website is so much fun... at least for me who's been in web design business for 8 years. I must admit though that it did take me a while back in 2000 to figure out how all that HTML editing and graphics software worked.
Internet and website design have evolved much since then and flash-free sites are now considered to be “old-school” or even out-of-date, so to keep myself in a good shape I spent a few months on acquiring Adobe Flash.
A month ago my 14-year old daughter shocked me by presenting her personal flash driven site made with Wix.com. I was even unable to tell that it's been created with an online site builder as she used a premium account making the whole project brandless.
Anyways, I've spent an hour or so to do a research on this new service and that's what I've come up with:
Accessibility: 9/10 - to try this online tool you are to register, but the whole process is the most user-friendly I've ever dealt with... your e-mail address, nickname and password and you are all set up.
Usability: 10/10 - to create a free flash website you need to know how to drag-and-drop.
Tools, add-ons, widgets: 10/10 a great variety of features making the whole site building process game-alike.
Project publishing and hosting: 9/10 free 0.5GB bandwidth and 200MB storage. My daughter though upgraded her account and assigned the existing domain to her Wix project.
Ideal user: any person whose wiliness to have a flash site or a unique MySpace layout is a bit bigger than an excuse making skill.
Conclusion: Thanks to Wix.com web design, hosting and maintaining a flash site is not a rocket science anymore. I strongly believe this project will evolve from a powerful on-line site-building platform into a popular social network of web designers. Its idea provoking approach to the on-line self-expression is sure to have a positive impact on web design trends.
And good news is that WiX is planning to launch a designers marketplace so I’ll be able to sell some of my works just like other professional web designers. I am sure to keep an eye on this project as well as on its forum.
