The Bottom Line
Serif WebPlus X2 continues to be a great choice for newcomers to Web design. But with the addition of ecommerce wizards and database connectivity, it has become a great tool for small business owners who want to build and maintain their site on their own. With WebPlus, you won't have to hire someone to get a professional looking design and you can spend your time generating blogs, photo galleries, and online stores to entice customers and make a profit.
Pros
- Very easy to get a site with lots of pages up quickly.
- Add elements like Flash, video, podcasts, and more right within WebPlus.
- Hundreds of pre-built templates ready to be customized with your content.
- Ecommerce including database support and wizards for several different carts.
Cons
- Connection to graphics software is only to Serif software.
- Can edit HTML directly, but it's very hard and the program modifies it.
- Image editing has some drawbacks and difficulties.
- Doesn't import existing sites well.
Description
- Build a quality Web site from scratch with no HTML or Web design knowledge.
- Include ecommerce, RSS and other cutting-edge features on your site.
- Build Web-ready forms without any programming.
- Hundreds of templates, fonts, and icons available for your site.
- Image editing to change colors and adjust images to fit your site look and feel.
Guide Review - Serif WebPlus X2
Great for Small Business Onwers
Serif WebPlus X2 is a great tool for small business owners who want to spend their time and money on their products and not on the designer of their website. WebPlus makes it easy to get a professional site up and live in just a few hours. In my tests, I had a functional (if small, only 5 pages) site up with ecommerce and a small photo gallery in about 2 hours.
WebPlus is a WYSIWYG editor with text editor functionality. This makes it easy to grab site elements, drag them to where you want them, and drop them in place. There are lots of image editing functions right inside the editor - so you don't need a separate image editor for many functions. I love the ecommerce wizards.
When I was testing the software I found a number of discrepancies between the software and the manual. For example, trying to figure out how to edit the HTML. The manual had some instructions that didn't seem to have any relation to the software itself. Instead, I clicked on an icon in the button bar (by accident as it happens) and was thrown into HTML editing mode. I also found changing images and content in a pre-built template to be very difficult. In one template I worked with, the image was placed into the template with a mask, but I couldn't find anywhere to edit that mask. I finally had to exit WebPlus, edit my image in a separate program, and then re-import it into the template.
One problem I saw in WebPlus 10 was how it imports existing sites. Unfortunately, this has not been fixed in X2. When I imported a site built with CSS, the colors were imported correctly, but the layout and design was completely destroyed. To modify it in WebPlus X2, I had to practically start over. So if you're using WebPlus to modify an existing site you might want to do a redesign while you're at it. It might be easier.
Score: 263
Percent: 40%
