WordPress, Wix and Weebly are user-friendly website building platforms that provide free plans for creating visually appealing websites. However, there is a certain cost associated with purchasing advanced tool features, website hosting or personalized domain. However, these three platforms are an excellent starting point to create a basic website or create your online presence.
WordPress
WordPress offers thousands of free and paid contemporary-looking templates, and an extensive library of 55,000+ free plugins that can enrich your website functionality.
If you plan a blog, or would like to have a website that includes a blog, WordPress consists of comprehensive options, including multi-user and multi-blogging. WordPress blogs integrate easy use of all multimedia such as audio, video, images, animation, etc.
The WordPress official support page provides straightforward guidelines centered around four major components: how to start, create, customize and connect your future website with the global network.
If you prefer step-by-step video-based tutorials visiting the WP official YouTube channel is a good idea. Along with hundreds of professionally developed tutorials, the WP YouTube channel connects you with the WP community that readily provides valuable tips and answers to your questions.
Wix
If you are looking for a vivid, dynamic, and contemporary web design, Wix is also a good choice. It’s main dashboard and editors are intuitive and the overall ease of use is high. Setting up a Wix website is an easy process for beginners. Please refer to the Wix How to tutorial page, or you can watch a series of well-crafted video tutorials. Along with blogging platforms, Wix provides an array of options and tools for eCommerce.
Weebly
Similar to Wix and WordPress, Weebly offers a full scale of features for website development. The user interface is simple and the drag-and-drop mode differentiate this web-building platform from its competitors. In comparison with WP and Wix, Weebly users will find that the process of setting up a website is much faster due to less options for content customization. A number of Weebly beginner guides, step-by-step video-based/interactive tutorials, and printable tutorials are available on the official training website page. Also, through YouTube you can access additional video tutorials made by a third party or Weebly supporters.
Attention to Accessibility and Analytic
Web accessibility implies that your website is designed for all users, including people with a broad spectrum of disabilities. Your website should allow all users to perceive information (read or hear), navigate the site menus, and interact with the website elements. Regardless of your selection, all three of the platforms suggested above incorporate tools that will make your website accessible.
WordPress resources:
Wix resources:
Weebly resources:
Along with accessibility tools, WP, Wix and Weebley also offer analytics tools for tracking how many people visited your website, locating points of access, overall site traffic, etc. Explanations and introductions to analytics tools can be found at the following pages for Weebly, WordPress and Wix.
Task
This Thing is one of the more demanding ones. We promise that the tasks after this are smaller! However, once you have a basic website running, it’s easy to add new elements in, giving you something fun, professional and personal.
We’d like you to register and make a start on your website this week. If you already have a website or blog, and would rather continue using that, that’s also absolutely fine. Once you have got your website looking roughly how you’d like, please share it with your pod.
We'd also like to share your work through the forum. This will help to direct traffic to your site and to alert other 23Things participants to your research interests. Take some time to look at other people’s efforts and tell them what you think!