iWeb for Websites

iWeb is great if you already have access to your market and just need a brand presence - it sucks for IM.

It has really horrible code and terrible for seo.

Avoid it if you're intending to get organic search traffic - you'll do much better using Wordpress.

Andy

I've used iWeb to create successful sites, but it's truly what you need the site to do. I prefer wordpress for its stronger overall capability and SEO usage. But an iWeb site doesn't have to look horrible. This one made me quite a bit, however it was used purely as a branding and web presence made quickly. Http://save-Canada.com

Horrible for Seo though, but it did the trick for establishing credibility quickly.

Hey Zoran,

I can understand that you probably want us to say that you should go ahead and use iWeb since you already have it and know how easy it is - and yes you can make a nice looking site quickly.

However - there really is no 'right' answer to your situation.

If you intend on becoming proficient and internet marketing then at some point you'll need to understand some of the elements of website marketing and search optimisation - that's a little bit of a generalisation and perhaps you're in an unusual situation where you may not care about such things, but it's highly likely that you will.

As I've said here many times - it IS more important to be clear about the purpose of your website to begin with that what technology you use to create it - but since it's likely that you'll either want or need to know more about this I am commenting from that perspective.

Let's look at a couple of quick examples to make this clear that we're on the same page.

1 - You're a local dog groomer and want somewhere you can point people to if they want details of your service and how to contact you. Almost all of your business is from people you meet and word of mouth recommendation.

Yes - go ahead and use iWeb to get a nice site up that shares your information.

2 - You're a florist and although you're not intending to sell flowers from your website - you do want people who don't know you to be able to find it and then contact you about providing for them, whether it's for local hotels, businesses or individuals.

You could use iWeb, but there's a good chance that at some point you may want to easily be able to add images, videos, payment systems and interact with your customers online.

As soon as you start needing to do more - 'most' of the information that is around on the subject of creating, customising, enhancing websites is from the perspective of someone who has some sort of html editing software (even if it has a WYSIWYG editor) and will probably also focus on the use of css for layout and design.

This is where you'll come unstuck and if you need help - you'll need an iweb expert because as soon as a normal web designer looks at the code they'll realise that what iweb spits out is nothing like normal html and css code. You can't just go to a web page and copy an image and when you do look at the code it'll make very little sense as far as what it relates to on the page is concerned.

In short - you need to learn 'iweb' design - which is not like almost every other way of creating sites.

So - if you just want a quick nice looking site that you're not planning on ever needing to maintain or customise - or try to search engine optimise - go for it.

If you will need flexibility and want to easily be able to update your site with cool new widgets, plugins etc to save you having to do anything funky - just bite the bullet now and start learning about Wordpress.

When I started out online I didn't have all these choices - there was Notepad, Dreamweaver and MS Frontpage - so you either learned coding or picked one of the other 2 that had a graphical editor.

These tools that make creating websites really easy for non-techies always come with extra overheads and less flexibility.

They do have their place so it's up to you what is right for you - but if you're planning to have control over your websites it's better to put the time in to learn to create things yourself.

I still often get other people to create things for my websites (especially graphics) but I know enough that I don't 'need' anyone else to make a good site. I suggest you give yourself the same option as it'll save your bacon at a time when you need something done and there's no time to find someone else to do it.

Just so you know - I use lots of different site building tools and methods - including iweb.

Here's one of my sites that uses iweb - http://extramileconsulting.com

I've also built them using Google Sites, Wordpress, sitepro, dreamweaver, frontpage, Composer and more...

There are times when using them make sense - but something like Wordpress will usually make sense for most people.

Andy

Recently I did a "quick job" for a client where I was basically just pasting some code into one of his iWeb created pages.

A few seconds work, I expected it to be. Unfortunatly iWeb is using it's "own standard" when it comes to HTML. Everything seems to be floated on layers, and so quick tweaks are next to impossible.

So basically if you use iWeb, you'll need to stick to it forever. If you go to a different solution, you'll need to create the site from scratch, as the code it produces doesn't look like it'll be compatible with anything, except iWeb.

cheers
Sam