Cluttered and candy-coated are two ways to describe Wix, a new Flash-based website and widget creation tool that we’ve been anticipating for months. It’s also feature-rich, very well-designed, and - sorry - still in private beta.
Wix joins a multitude of browser-based website creators such as Weebly, Synthasite, and Google Pages. But it reminds me the most of Sprout, a widget-creation tool that can also be used to make websites, since both provide fluid Flash interfaces that appeal to your inner designer.
Both of these companies are blurring the line between content that’s meant to stand alone as distinct websites, and content that’s meant for syndication over blogs, social networks, and other destinations. It’s because of this obfuscation that they’ve opted to use the unspecific, yet self-referential, names “sprout” and “wix” when referring to their creations.
Whereas Sprout is mainly marketed as a tool for spreading media content, Wix most certainly appeals to a younger population that’s obsessed with expressing themselves online (call them MySpacers, if you will). Wix does have a collection of tasteful business themes, but the vast majority of its templates are for fun and fall into categories like “street art”, “emo”, “playground”, and “sexy”.
Once you pick a theme for your new website (or widget, just depending on your dimensions), you are taken to a popup Wix Editor that provides you with an overwhelming number of ways to spice up your creation. You can add shapes, clipart, photos, videos, songs and animations; you can tweak colors and set visual effects for user behavior; and you can add text paragraphs and headlines. Photos can be uploaded manually or pulled in from either Flickr or a royalty-free stock collection; videos can be embedded from YouTube; and there’s also a collection of free song clips that can be used in a range of skinnable music players.
Each wix supports multiple pages with links between them. When you want to edit a particular object on a page, you click on it and options for rotating, resizing, and positioning are revealed. A Mac OS-looking doc at the bottom of the screen also provides icons for setting effects, behaviors, animations, and more. You really need to play around with Wix to fully appreciate how much flair and how many customization options it affords.
As you work on your wix, you can hit a preview button to see what it will look like. And once you’re done with it, you can publish it either as a website hosted on the wix.com domain or as a widget to be embedded or sent to friends via email.
One of the major complaints many have about Flash is that it doesn’t allow for indexing by search engines. Wix gets around this by producing content that’s a hybrid of HTML and Flash, despite the fact that it’s editor is entirely Flash-based. This will be a huge benefit to anyone who uses Wix to set up a serious website, but it probably won’t make any difference to widget creators.
Update: Wix is giving out a couple hundred private beta invites to readers who email info@wix.com with requests.
I have been testing the site on and off briefly, and all I can say is that this is perhaps the best (if not in the top five) DIY website creators that I have seen (as far as user friendly ones go anyways).
The only way it could be better is if they offered a premium feature allowing users to host their projects on Wix using their own domain, and perhaps Wix experimenting with MS Silverlight (as I found that to be one of the few MS items that really impressed me).
~Darnell
I will be using this for my Apollos web service. Thinking Christians can also appreciate eye candy.
It’s so very pretty - it’s like a diamond covered in cotton candy.
Mark,
Thanks for the review! you caught us by surprise - we would be happy to give some of the techcrunch readers beta access. Email us at: info@wix.com and we’ll give access to first couple of hundred users.
Darnell,
You can host your wix document on your own domain - info on how to do this appears on our FAQ, or email our support. And re Silverlight - it’s on our roadmap.
Allon Bloch
co-ceo, wix.com
Ihis looks great. I think that I will try for one of the beta spots. I can see how powerful this sort of tool can be. When I get in, I’ll leave a review of it on my Blog http://www.thecybermage.com
your late- i got access to this in January
Great, “wix” sounds like to jerk off in German…
This definitely looks interesting. Wish it was in public Beta.
@6 I agree. Read about this on killerstartups or mashable ages ago and joined the beta
Under the logo, they state “The way the web was meant to be”.
Does anyone acctully agree with that? Flash is a good way to do some things, because some stuff simply cant be done nicely online without it, but generally if I see sites in flash, i.e. from StumbleUpon, I generally just skip it.
Plus the SEO complications, you have got to really have some serious linkage for Google or any decent search engine to take your site seriously and place it in a nice spot on search results. Even then you are really relying on your meta data.
Looks like a nice tool, and maybe I’m thinking about it for the wrong market, but the only use I see for it is to create a small site with your [insert social activity here] videos and images, to then pass the URL to friends.
@fLUx
flash shouldn’t be used for full sites in my opinion but this tool is great for widgets, I’ve played with it a long time ago and really liked it for that.
the SEO stuff with flash is a problem, another one of those problems that silerlight supposedly solves
I’ve toyed around with it for a few days and it really is great. A friend was telling me how much their non-profit spent on a website design - and all I could think of was how easily they could have done something very tasteful in an afternoon with this product/service - without hiring the expensive outside help.
beautiful site! Don’t know if I would use it, but it’s fo sho trend setting - no doubt
Thanks for the review. I just emailed to wix requesting for beta access. Looks very promising.
it looks pretty cool!
Love it!!
usmcwives.com
you would’nt be glad to hear what the name of the company means in german. you really would’nt…
I used Wix to create a website for a friend of mine that is a Vegas performer - it’s almost complete (still have one or two pages to complete) but you can see how it is useful for her to explain what she does and how to hire her for corporate & social events.
great work!
really impressed with the design.
can not wait for the invitation.
Hello again,
Regarding the search issues in flash -we have a full solution for searching for documents published in wix. I’m not going to get into an explanation of how we do it, but rest assured websites done in wix are not negativley impacted when it comes to search ratings (www.wix.com is in done in wix too - so we know this from experience).
allon bloch
wix.com
oh wow. I am thinking of switching from 3d animation to flash.. although it requires Actionscripting it seems less demanding but a lot more applicable.. since i am leaning towards web development
s
They should consider a name change. Sure it’s as short as you can get your URL, but they’ll have trouble showing up in search results as Windows Installer XML is very widely used and also called Wix:
http://www.google.com/search?q=wix&hl=en
This is pretty crusty news. Saw it back in October on vccafe.
I love it
Thank you so much for finding this website for me, I was just starting to work on a new website project. With Wix it took me 4 hours, and if those guys add an undo it will be much faster.
really cool website,
Mario
i would like some links to some of these user created wix sites. @ransh i agree a whole site unless done really good in flash i would only have partial use of flash on my page.
Seriously? Flash shouldn’t be used for full sites… I hope this site dies a fast death. I thought flash based sites died off in 2001…
You compare Wix to Sprout. While I haven’t had a chance to try Wix yet, I have tried Sprout. I’ve found that building a beautiful gui in Sprout is easy, but you’re offered no way to create actions without using mashups. It’s not really interresting if you build a very nice widget, but that doesn’t do anything (except link to webpages or other pages on the widget)…
I’m an amateur when it comes to things like this (but I do like to dabble), so I was really excited to hear about Wix. The layout is clear, and being able to drop items and easily manipulate them makes this perfect for someone who has limited experience. I also like that I have the option of either adding content from Wix, from my own collection, or from outside sources.
Nice interface….but Why?
Listen. Do not have an opinion while you listen because frankly, your opinion doesn?t hold much water outside of Your Universe. Just listen. Listen until their brain has been twisted like a dripping towel and what they have to say is all over the floor.