Recently I found out a website called  weebly where you can make your own website for free and in a very simple way. I wonder if anyone has used it so you can share your experience.  If not, do you know similar services that you can  recommend.

Thanks!

@fernandocortes, yeah Weebly is good web 2.0 property. If you want to build a site where you will blog and sell products/services or offer advice, I would go with Wordpress. Wordpress is the best CMS(Content Maganagment System) out there, hands down! You could use weebly for SEO to point back to your main Wordpress site.

You really don’t necessarily  need a website these days with all the social media platforms, but to have more control and design, yes you should have a Wordpress website hosted on your own account.

@debbielynnava I see they offer free website hosting. Have your clients had good reliability?

@debbielynnava Thanks. I’m looking at this for a non–profit I am involved with, and every few hundred dollars we can save will go to help our work in Terrier Rouge, Haiti

I never tried weebly and it’s interesting to read some goos reviews here.
I just don’t agree with @danhoward when he says that “Wordpress is the best CMS(Content Maganagment System) out there” and above all “You really don’t necessarily  need a website these days with all the social media platforms…“

If you want to do what you want, feeling “at home”, you really DO need a good ol’ website. And for that, Wordpress is ok… not the best IMHO.
I had several good experiences with “Joomla!” and I am starting studying “Drupal” and its possibilities… both are free, both are powerful and both are very expandable. Both are also more difficult to use than WP (but if you want to get the best of it, even WP isn’t a child game imho), unfortunately, but Joomla isn’t painful at all. With the right tools, one could create a site/portal/blog/forum/store/social network/etc without advanced coding ability.
And there are many other (free) platforms out there, wich would deserve at least to be named, such as “Dolphin” for social networks, or “phpbb” for forums…
For sites wich are not specifically blogs, forums, or stores, my choice is joomla… but it surely depends most on personal opinions.
These are just my opinions of course -and they may also change-, but that’s what I think.

@danhoward I think it depends on what people are used to.
Personally, I have used Joomla so (relatively) much that I find WP backend kinda messy… when I look at it, even if I know where I have to go, click, and all, I always have to think about what I’m doing.

As I said before, it is surely a matter of personal preference.
And above all we shouldn’t forget that WP is a spacialized CMR for blogging, while Joomla and co. aren’t. So, if your main activity is blogging/news delivery, wordpress is the choice. It has some plugins for that, you won’t find elsewhere. And Blogger is the decent, fast and search-engine-friendly alternative.

I just wanted to point out that, for someone who plans to build a site, there are alternatives that here -not talking about you specifically, also in some other posts- seem to be forgotten.

@demorden @danhoward I have used a drupal CMS, and it’s not too bad after a learning curve. I had a business site built in drupal. But I found that despite the open source, it was not inexpensive to get a developer to put it all together–especially once you add more sophisticated features.

For my own site I am now buliding, I am using the Network Solutions site builder tool. This is not a complex site and they have all the widgets and plug ins I need for now.  Weebly looks similar (said without actual use) and I’ll consider it for the non-profit if we can use our own domain name, which we have.

The Network Solutions tool is also free if you buy a hosting package. I bought my domain name there, and got an extra break on the hosting.

@debbielynnava Thank you. I see you understand.

I had the life changing experience of going there last January. In fact, it gave me the personal courage to dig deep and realize we could live on less–and to go out on my own. If the women I met in Haiti could learn new crafts, learn to create a coop when they have no electricity, no running water, mostly dirt floors, and cook food outside over a scarce charcoal fire….

Sorry, a bit off topic, but we are looking at Weebly.

@laurachristianson good to know, thanks!

I have been designing and building websites for several year and now running my own design studio for me Wordpress is one of the best Open Source platform out there and we always highly recommend that to our clients. Its very user friendly, easy to modify and you can find plugin for nearly anything.

@demorden
I think Joomla times passed.We were recovering few Joomla websites recently because they have been hack so if someone is considering build website using Joomla please make sure you take safety measures in to consideration, as there is nothing more frustrating then lose moths worth of posts or even worse whole website

I also agree that Dupal is great open source system but i think it not for everyone as you need to have fairly good technical skills to play with it or even install it on server .

Cutting long story short I highly recommend WP it is easy, expandeble and what is one of the most important thing there is so much online groups, forums and blogs where you can find help if you stack with something.

I just built a (non blogging) site using Joomla and really found it to be an intuitive process offering more flexibility by way of the module and plug in options than WordPress.  I did not realize Joomla sites were deemed more vulnerable to hacking than other solutions? Appreciate hearing more on this.

Can weebly be self-hosted so you don’t have weebly in the link name? @fernandocortes

I am just getting started with Weebly, I’m building a ‘backup’ site to my main site (which I pay for) one of my concerns for the weebly site is ‘How do I get it noticed?’ you can have a great service and a great website but if your potential customers don’t see it…………… However, I suppose thats the same for any site, weebly built or not. I’d appreciate any comments on how, ‘without spamming’ people achieve this.

Do some research on search engine optimization.  Lots of good info on the web.

@lacducoeur  I have found an seo software program that has been very helpful.  Send me an email if you would like the info

@fsdegrees Talking about Joomla, it sures may present some security issues. But, in my experience, not more than any other CMS. There are a couple of problems, but they’re kinda easy to solve.

1) until version 1.5 the update procedure was not as automated as it is now with version 2.5: and of course, an out of date platform can not be 100% safe…
2) of course there is no platform which is 100% hackproof, but there are a couple of tricks that may keep away the casual 15-years-old lamer: don’use the standard “_jos” prefix for database tables, don’t use the Super-Administrator user with ID 62, password-protect the “administrator” folder, don’t use unnecessary compononts/modules/plugins and keep them up to date, use non-trivial username and password both for ftp and database.