Pumping out HTML may be simple for tech heads, but it’s not simple enough for everyone else. These days it’s not a matter of just designing and coding a page once, but of redesigning it on a whim. MySpace and it’s capricious community of design junkies are case in point, often changing their layouts almost as much as their favorite band of the moment.
Several services have popped up to fill this need by offering simple site creation tools. They’re like Geocities v 2.0. Jimdo is another easy to use AJAX site editor out of Hamburg Germany that launched earlier this year. You can use Jimdo to easily and quickly create a personal website including photos, text, a guestbook, rss feeds, and YouTube videos. They are close competitors with Weebly (one of my favorite), another AJAX editor we have covered before.
One issue I have with these sites is that design can still be fairly constrained. Today Jimdo has tackled that problem by letting you easily grab a design from any site in a couple steps.
- copy and paste the HTML source from the target site into Jimdo.
- click on “xhtml” - the system will automatically cut out the relevant code (content, sidebar, navigation, footer) - and validate it.
- copy your CSS into Jimdo.
- upload the pictures that you need for your layout under the label “Files”.
Jimdo basically places their widgets into key parts of the template using special tags their site understands. The result is that the template displays your Jimdo navigation bar and content. You can see an example of the TechCrunch site here. I still had to fool around with the HTML code to make it work, though, placing the special tags manually where the content needed to go.
A team of three friends originally started selling simple site creation tools for the enterprise as CMS solutions, but decided to add a consumer version this year. They currently have over 25,000 users and sites in three different languages (German, English, and Chinese). Their basic accounts start with 500 MB of storage, with pro accounts going for $6 a month with the ability to host them on your own domain name.
There are some other site design tools out there as well, aimed at different crowds. RealEditor makes an editor specifically for MySpace. Synthasite is a good AJAX based editor with detailed control of the page layout. Sampa, while having a weaker layout editor, is aimed at families looking to create a group website. Webjam is a community of sites created with their editor.
Update (Arrington): Just to be clear, we are not granting permission to copy our site template. 
What an interesting concept. This has the potential to really be helpful.
The only problem would be for those Webmasters how to copy CSS code into Jimdo - but for most all Designers, it will certainly be intriguing to try it
Thats what I alwasy dreamed about! Good JOB!
Just a small point - SynthaSite is completely AJAX based; we don’t use any Flash in the editor (although you will be able to consume Flash based widgets soon).
We do this so that you get a completely WYSIWYG design time experience; because you are editing exactly what the browser rendering. If the editor was built in Flash, this wouldn’t be possible.
Am I missing something, or does this not massively facilitate design theft?
Random acts of grammar:
“case _in_ point”
The second paragraph has a bad link to weebly - http://www.crunchbase.com/company/weebly .
What a good idea! I’m gonna try it.
OMG. Jimdo is selling a JimdoPRO, that costs money each friggin month. Jimdo, WARNING!!!! I’m really surprised this got past Arlington’s filter. But just beware. Arlington gave us some great advice yesterday, if you try and sell software in a market with competition, you will go to the deadpool. And you’ll only have a company called 37signals to thank.
Weird, now I’m also starting to notice all these ads on this site. Monster templates, and this edgeio classifieds. These all sell stuff too for my hard earned money! WTF? Website templates!? A product market can’t get more crowded then friggin website templates. Monster, you are going to be in the deadpool, in 3-2-1….
Thanks Arlington.
Arlington = Arrington
Sorry, name wasn’t important. I just use this site as my bible for running a business.
…and the world gets lazier.
i liked the title: templateapidemo-nicks jimdo page! - Home.
Nice tool. I liked it . It is good to make your personal page without editing html source.
Another miss: the free version puts two textlink ads on the bottom of your site. Unless you upgrade to the $5/mo Pro version you have no control of that.
So that how they are going to monetize - clicks + SEO links. Hmmm.
While it may not the most appropriate thing, at least the it’s a monetization strategy..which most of their competitors don’t have.
But it doesn’t allow you to easily create MySpace profile layout code. For a WYSIWYG MySpace profile editor, you still need to use something like RealEditor or ProfileMine.
@ #9 Nate
You use TechCrunch as a bible for running your business? I hear Child Welfare knocking at your door.
It sound like uncreative 2.0 to Me.
Great. An automated phishing program. Let’s see, who shall we spoof today? Bank of America? PayPal? Just press a button and activate all those spam bots.
right, phsishing amd easy. But otherwise, for layouts, ideas, etc: why not?
I’ve taken all of the mentioned blogging sites for a test run, but the one that I like the most was not mentioned: terapad.com. It’s got great resource management and posting can be done in an unlimited heirarchy of directories, all under wysiwyg control.
TechDumpster: You missed the sarcasm of my original post?
It looks like a good tool to use. I will have to try it out one of these days.
I wonder how long it will be before you can simply copy/paste a host of php urls and the system will recreate the php programming behind them? If this can be done with html, no reason why it cannot be expanded into other more complicated programming architectures simply by following the actions of any given script.
Jon
Oops…I guess I better delete that site then? j/k. Nice concept, though I am sure we will see lots of rip offs of original content. Looking forward to future revisions. For example - we just pulled our code from someone else’s site but now we have to handle CSS? The people who aren’t writing their own HTML probably aren’t writing CSS either.
Hey nice site i cant find how to join so if u could email me or sumet it would be great thanks
This is really cool stuff
этот сайт об обычном пацане из Перми тоесть обо мне и о моих друзьях.