Which website-building software should I use?

QSome years ago, I produced a couple of websites for local groups using Serif Webplus. Not being Html-literate, I found Serif’s ‘WYSIWYG’ method easy to use. I’ve now been asked to make a site for a small business, but Webplus has been discontinued. Can you recommend an alternative, preferably free?

AWYSIWYG (‘what you see is what you get’) makes site-building easy by letting you drag and drop elements – such as page headings, menus and photos – on to a template and move them around. Handiwork of this magnitude used to require big programs like Webplus, but now the best web-building tools are online, and many are free.

Weebly ( www.weebly.com) has a free online website creator that’ll feel familiar after Webplus, and there’s an excellent support centre and community for help and inspiration. A free account includes 500MB secure storage and a weebly.com domain name. For £5 a month you get your own domain name, unlimited storage and visitor stats.

Have a look at Wix, too ( www.wix.com). Like Weebly it’s free to get started and works online. It offers a better range of templates than Weebly, including some that are animated. However, it doesn’t give you any access to your site’s source code, so advanced editing options are limited.

There are programs for creating sites offline, but good ones tend not to be free. Artisteer ( www.artisteer.com) is easy to use, but the cheapest version is $49.95 (£41). Google’s Web Designer Beta ( www.snipca.com/22090) is free but tricky to use, and mainly aimed at people creating animated adverts.