Very Early Look at Synthasite’s Ajax Website Builder

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1. Robert van den Belt
   

   September 5th, 2006 at 1:24 am

   I just don’t get why Squarespace (www.squarespace.com) is never mentioned in these topics.. I tried out products like sitekreator, but am using squarespace since a couple of months.. love it!

2. James Robertson
   

   September 5th, 2006 at 1:32 am

   Hi, maybe this is a silly question: but isn’t this just a “hosted content management system”, just like the dozens (hundreds?) that already exist in the marketplace, and have been running for years?

   Cheers,
   James

3. Sridhar
   

   September 5th, 2006 at 2:06 am

   Robert: May be because it is not free?

   http://www.squarespace.com/pricing

4. Moshe Katzmann
   

   September 5th, 2006 at 2:20 am

   What is the quality of the HTML/CSS output?

5. Zvi Cohen
   

   September 5th, 2006 at 2:25 am

   Valid question, some site/page generator systems have nasty and bloated output.

6. дичев
   

   September 5th, 2006 at 2:52 am

   I took a look at the example sites created with that tool and the quality of the generated markup is poor (way too many nested divs and tables all around) but the sites are looking decent (and complex), just IMO.
   I want to read more about its workflow too.

7. Brent Viljoen
   

   September 5th, 2006 at 3:56 am

   James: synthaSite offers comparison-shopping in addition to content management. Shopping feeds such as Amazon, eBay and Yahoo! Shopping are supported with plans to roll out more. It also offers word processing functionality similar to Writely and AJAXwrite. What is more is that you can host the finished website on your own server.

   дичев: I agree. synthaSite is targeted at users who do not want to bother with the technical side of website authoring. The unfortunate trade-off from this is that the markup may not be as streamlined as a hand-coded website.

   The synthaSite development environment uses a WYSIWYG approach with drag & drop support. There are templates and wizards to help simplify the process.

8. Peter C
   

   September 5th, 2006 at 4:23 am

   What’s the business model here for Synthasite? and do we really need another “free website templates” site cosidering most social network/blog site already offer much more integration and templates to choose from.

   PC
   http://www.webprofithub.com/

9. NeoTechie
   

   September 5th, 2006 at 4:46 am

   the future is here.

10. danny
    

    September 5th, 2006 at 6:34 am

    Why squarespace when u can either use Joomla or Drupal for FREE?

11. doug
    

    September 5th, 2006 at 7:01 am

    It looks really promising.

    I’d be interested in seeing more of the site that you were building out Mike. It is very different than the three examples on the Synthasite home page. From the examples I’m wondering if this isn’t a super-ajaxy affiliate site generator.

    In addition, the FAQ says:

    # Select from amongst 100 million products available on Commission Junction, LinkShare, eBay, Amazon and others.
    # Use the Query Analyzer Wizard to select the products you want to sell.

    Anyways, looks like an interesting service, either way.

12. Vinny Lingham
    

    September 5th, 2006 at 7:16 am

    The business model around Synthasite is to offer a free website authoring tool, but we have plans to evolve it into much more over time. From a template perspective, it will embody much of what everyone else has done, if only to be on par.

    The key value proposition, and point of revenue for us, will be charging for access to specific API’s & Webservices to use in a drag and drop fashion. This will allow bloggers, site authors, etc to start integrating whatever they want into their sites in a very simple way. For instance, we’re going to include Flickr in our public release, so that users can drop pictures into their websites from Synthasite.

13. Vinny Lingham
    

    September 5th, 2006 at 7:19 am

    Doug: It actually started of as an affiliate site builder tool, but in the past year, we’ve broadened the horizons for Synthasite.

    It is also catering to merchants who will want to manage their products in their web store fronts without having to edit code or affiliates who want to build targeted shopping comparison sites using 3rd party feeds, like Yahoo! Shopping or Shopping.com.

14. Bryan
    

    September 5th, 2006 at 7:31 am

    I really hate to see this (or anything) compared to Frontpage. Frontpage reminds me of the 90’s with terribly designed pages. The people who use this service and others like it are the ones who dont know much (or anything at all) about web design or its related subjects. We end up with TONS of poorly crafted pages. I think its more important to learn a little about web design before jumping into the field. Hopefully Synthasite can produce decent markup to combat the people who dont know what they are doing.

15. Shelley
    

    September 5th, 2006 at 8:30 am

    “Synthasite is going to be very popular.”

    No it isn’t.

16. Thomas Hillard
    

    September 5th, 2006 at 9:09 am

    re: Shelley
    September 5th, 2006 at 8:30 am

    “No it isn’t.”

    Why not? It looks like a great tool for less web savy aspirational internet users.

17. Jamie Chesunt
    

    September 5th, 2006 at 10:12 am

    “It actually started of as an affiliate site builder tool”

    or

    ‘we thought we’d create affiiate template sites then realised that wasn’t the big idea, we spent a lot on it so it’s got to do something - I know, lets make out its Dreamweaver for web 2.0′

18. Thomas
    

    September 5th, 2006 at 11:12 am

    I’ve been waiting for something like this. Dreamweaver is way to expensive and I’m glad an online app is starting to surface. Hopefully it’ll meet expectations.

19. keithpr.com
    

    September 5th, 2006 at 11:27 am

    I still use an older version of Dreamweaver, but have also developed many sites on Squarespace. Yes, it’s not free, but I like the domain mapping, no-install and the fact that I can get a site + blog up and running in a few hours. The drag-n-drop sections and modules also make site creation super easy.

    I never heard of Joomla, but will check that out.

20. Vinny Lingham
    

    September 5th, 2006 at 12:21 pm

    The reality is that Synthasite is an AJAX IDE which can be used inter alia:

    1. Write Word documents
    2. Build websites from scratch using a component architecture
    3. Use templates to build websites for beginners, etc.
    4. Integrate multiple API’s for mashups (we built http://www.meetpersonals.com using Synthasite as well, mashing up Yahoo Maps & Personals).
    5. Affiliate Website
    6. Merchant Store builder
    7. Anything else you can think of…

    The important thing in building Synthasite, was building a scalable web application platform, and then building applications on top of it as we saw the market evolve. If we wanted to just build a site builder, we woudn’t have bothered with the underlying AJAX architecture, but now that that’s built, we feel that we’ve only begun to scratch the surface of opportunities for our technology - but we believe that Synthasite is probably the lowest hanging fruit at this stage, given it’s ability to integrate into 3rd party webservices and make those complicated API’s available to web developers in a drag and drop environment - that what’s we believe our core value proposition is at this stage.

    Once we launch Synthasite into Open Beta, and in fact, even from feedback from the Closed Beta, we will being to align it more with market needs, but until then, we’re making sure that the platform is stable and scalable and that all our Beta testers are happy. I look forward to welcoming many of you into the program within the next few weeks! Thanks for all your comments thus far!

21. hash
    

    September 5th, 2006 at 4:10 pm

    Vinny, your application looks like it has great potential. What’s nice to see is that it’s backed by a company that already has plenty of business as a web marketing firm, so that gives you the time to develop it properly.

    As I look at the examples of websites that you have built using Synthasite, do you foresee users primarily using it as an affiliate website generator?

22. Ivaylo Lenkov
    

    September 5th, 2006 at 4:37 pm

    The reason for tools such Synthasite and SiteKreator to exist is because there are too many people who don’t know (and don’t want to learn) HTML, JS and AJAX in order to build a web site, or PhotoShop to design it, or FTP to upload it, or PHP to use Drupal/Joomla.

    Each one of these tools specializes in different elements. Synthasite.com seems specialized in comparison-shopping, SiteKreator combines design, template branding, popular site elements, and customization, Squarespace is focuses on blogging, etc. Each tool has its target audience who will value its features as it relates to their market.

    Tools like FrontPage, Dreamweaver, Drupal, etc are much better in the hands of the developers who can build sites for businesses or individuals. But what if a small business wants to design, build and manage his own web site?

    Yes - the CMS have been around for years, but they tend to be expensive and the open source alternatives require a lot of customization, integration from a developer. Also not all of them scale well.

    I expect to see in the future more alternatives for self-serve web design, and as such, a variety of options and competition is good for the users (maybe not so good for Michael, as he has to profile them all).

    And yes — the quality of HTML generated by most online site design/building tools is not great, but this will improve over time (I remember the first optimizing C compiler generated really crappy code compared to what I could write directly in Assembler). But I think that’s a small problem for now, compared with the advantages you are getting from being able to fully manage your design and content without learning HTML/JS and without hiring a web designer.

    Lenkov
    SiteKreator

23. Vinny Lingham
    

    September 6th, 2006 at 5:32 am

    Lenkov - nice comment - you’re exactly right!

    Hash: It’s absolutely possible to construct affiliate websites with it, and we’re busy integrating Synthasite into various affiliate networks as part of the offering, to make it easier to add affiliates links to your site, and product feeds etc.

24. Roger
    

    September 11th, 2006 at 6:13 pm

    Another product in a similar space is Webation Active (www.webation.com). I use it and think it is very good.

    Doesn’t cost all that much, easy to use and customizable.

25. Auto reviews
    

    October 2nd, 2006 at 1:40 am

    Auto reviews: Auto reviews

26. Paul
    

    October 2nd, 2006 at 3:20 am

    SiteKreator.com is very different from the rest of the tools out there.. It’s very lightweight.. That’s to say that you can use it even if you are running Windows 98! All you need is a web browser.

    The best part of it is that it’s really easy to use… if you can click a mouse, you can use this tool to build a website with it.