Free website creating tools on the net
There are a number of services on the net which provide free website creation and hosting facilities. Here is a summary on the best of them. Each of these services is good at its own place and is useful for different set of users having different requirements.
Wetpaint: More than a website, Wetpaint provides enables 
users to create a social network around a topic. Wetpaint combines the best aspects of wikis, blogs, forums and social networks so anyone can click and type on the web.Thus, if you are looking to create a site around a topic -say ‘Cricket’ – and want your friends (who are also interested in this topic) to contribute and together create a collaborative site – then Wetpaint is the place to go to. The MS-Word-like editing removes the substantial learning curve from contributing to a wiki.
Create your site with either your own domain name or a sub-domain provided by Wetpaint.
Weebly-.Weebly is aimed towards the casual internet users who want a easy to put up and no hassle Web Site with free hosting. Weebly provide AJAX-based dragging and dropping of elements on a page eg Maps,Pictures,Text in a WYSIWYG fashion. You can use these page elements or even upload your HTML code. It also provides a blogging option from the navigation bar. You can even download your site in a zip file and thus take the custody of your content.
Jimdo – It’s like a cross between Adobe’s Dreamweaver and a wiki tool
.You can use Jimdo to easily and quickly create a personal website including photos, text, a guestbook,RSS feeds, and YouTube videos.The most unique feature of Jimdo is that it enables users to ‘Copy’ templates from other sites. You can just copy the HTML of a site and create your own site with a similar template using some tools on the site .Though its not a very good idea to copy others’ design , this is a unique facility provided by Jimdo.
Office live : If you are looking to create a website with a number of templates ,color themes, forms, newsletter options etc , then Office Live Hosting from Mircrosoft is a good place to go. The site is easy to create and templates are quite suitable to give a business look. A free domain for one year (they charge $14.95 from the next year) is an attraction for people who dislike sub-domains and want to give a business touch to their sites. Integration with Office documents means that you can upload them to the website. However, for Geeks and those who want to customize their sites, it does not offer much.
Awardspace: Want just a dependable and Free hosting options
where you can upload your files and customize your site, then use Awardspace hosting . With a lnumber of webhosting features of paid hosting ,this is about the best bannerless free web hosting service. It allows users to use their own domain names (upto 2) and has a generous 5 GB monthly web site traffic allowance, and 200 Megabytes of storage space. However, the file upload size of 500kb at a time is a limiting for some users.
Sythasite : Synthasite is more of a site creation toolkit than the others, which allows you to get your content out. AJAX-based webpage editor with drag and drop functionality makes things easier for people light on programming skills. This site has also integrated with Picnik – thus enabling easy editing of images that you upload.
Freewebs: Freewebs is perhaps one of the most used free website
creation service .They do claim that over 20 million sites have been created on their servers.They provide over 300 templates ,an easy WYSIWYG editor and facility to add blogs and forums to your site. Widget boxes, chatrooms and other usual features are present. A domain can be added at $ 19.95/year. However, of late Freewebs users have been finding the service very slow and unresponsive at times .
Wix is a flash based website and widget creation tool. It allows users to decorate their sites with a variety of content through the flash based widgets. The best part is that these widgets can be shared across the web by the users and would be particularly useful for Orkut and Myspace users.
And if you are looking to create a Free forum on any topic, then Invision Forums may be the right place to go.
Here is a chart comparing the features of all the above free website creation services. The links to the site,their demos and sample sites are also given :
| Name | Link to
|
Sample Site
|
Templates | Forced Ads
|
Userads
(eg adsense) |
User Domain
allowed? |
Other features
|
Wetpaint |
Tour | Link |
Minor alterations
allowed |
No | No | No | Discussion threads,Build community,Site stats etc |
Weebly |
Demo |
Link |
Customizable HTML | No | Yes | Yes | 100mb storage,Drag & drop, Download site etc |
Jimdo |
Tour |
Link |
Customizable | Yes | No | No | 500mb storage,number of widgets,Copy templates etc |
Office Live |
Demo |
Link |
Fixed | No | No | Free
domain |
500mb storage,web forms,email newsletters etc |
Awardspace |
Details |
Link | Use own templates | No | Yes | Yes | 200mb,MySql,FTP,CGI,PHP,
SSI,Perl,Frontpage extensions |
Sythasite |
Demo |
Link |
Customizable | No | Yes | Yes | Image editing with Picnik, |
Freewebs |
Tour | Link |
CSS editing | Yes | Yes | Yes | 40mb,20pages,Photocropping thru Picnik,Widget box |
Wix |
FAQ | Link | Customizable | No | No | No | Great flash widgets,Content distribution on the web |
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