14 DAY TRIAL // In the last years, Web sites selling design templates became extremely popular, as online business exploded. In the same time, programs allowing customization of design templates grew in number, complexity and quality. Becoming a good Web designer is a task hard to accomplish, especially for people who don't have the time for the necessary study, but also the ones who don't need to become web designers in order to get one or two personal sites running.
The problem is as follows - you can buy an already made template, and then pay somebody to customize it for you. This may cost more than it is worth and the results could not live up to the expectations. The other way around is using a program that has a lot of built in templates and allows you to customize them, add all the extra content that you may have and then export your site to a folder on your hard drive or straight to the web.
The program I will review next is called Website X5 and allows you to create Web sites fast and easy without requiring any HTML or design skills. Wondering "Why X5?", maybe... don't worry, the reason is easy to understand: five is the number of steps required in order to finish building a Web site with this program! How? This is what we're going to explore next!
After starting Website X5, you will be required to create a new project or edit an existing one. This is step zero, so let's move on.
Our new project has been created and first thing to do is set the general settings. Pay attention to the description and keywords, because these will make the difference when your site will be indexed by the search engines. Next, you have to select your website layout. You can choose from only three templates in the trial version. For each template you have two color schemes available.
The second step is the site map creation - you have to specify levels and sub levels for pages on your site. This allows you to set up your menu structure and add more pages if necessary.
Third step enables you to add objects to your site's pages. These objects can be text files, images, tables, email forms and more. Once added, you will have to set properties for these objects, an operation extremely easy to perform.
The fourth program area takes care of the advanced settings. You can use it to edit settings for items like the main menu, scrollbar, links or enable an intro page and customize it to suit your taste.
The last step is publishing your work. This can be done straight on your FTP server or on your disk, but export is disabled in the trial version, so I suggest you hit the Test button in order to check your website inside your default Web browser software.
This was Website X5, a very nice piece of software that would have been much better as a trial version if the number of available templates was at least ten. Anyway, I can still call this a good program and I am sure that its full version deserves an "excellent" rating.
The Good
Website X5 is extremely easy to use, has a clean interface and requires no programming skills. The built in templates are well done and the Help file contains all the information you may ever need about this program.
The Bad
This trial version doesn't allow saving your websites at all, you can only preview them - no problem, I'd say, but this should be enough. Unfortunately, you can work with and view only the first three templates, and I am sure that showing at least a quarter of the content available in the full version would have been more reasonable.
The Truth
Website X5 is a program worth trying, but you will only benefit from its features after buying it. Working with this trial version is like entering a fast food restaurant and smelling the food; in order to eat it, you have to pay for it. Anyway, this program smells good, so I invite you to enter the Incomedia restaurant and check it for yourselves!
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
