I have to give credit to Weebly, which is turning into one of the best simple site creation tools on the Internet. When we first heard about them a couple of months ago all I saw was another buggy Ajax website creator. What we really wanted to see was something better than the existing tools – Google Page Creator, Sitekreator and Synthasite.
We’ve taken another look over the last few days, and Weebly has come a long way in those two months.
Weebly allows users to create simple multipage websites using a drag and drop Ajax interface, with just a few clicks. Users can then save those websites to a Weebly server or download them for use elsewhere (if you download the site, the Weebly header bar is removed). A RSS element can be included. In addition to standard text and image tools and RSS support, Weebly supports Javascript-based elements like Google Maps, the Flickr Badge, etc.
Some recent commenters in blog posts (see comments here for example) have complained that the site is slow, although in our testing it responded extremely well. This may be an issue with traffic load to the Weebly site. We’ll see how it performs in the coming days with periodic testing.
Weebly is also making good use of video to show people what it’s all about. This is something we continue to suggest to new companies, and recently profiled Amberjack helps startups do this. We’ve included a demo video for Weebly below (if anyone knows what porn movie they stole the music from, please let me know). There are also a number of videos available to help users with certain aspects of the service.
Note: Weebly is open for registrations but they are limiting the total number of new users. If you can’t sign up, be patient and try again in a few days.