Building a great web site takes work, whether you love to code or don't know the first thing about it. Several tools attempt to help you solve that problem, but no one option fits the needs of everybody. Here, we're going to look at the best popular approaches so you can find the one that suits you best.
I've built many web sites in my day, and recently I put together several more. In doing so, I found that each project worked best from a certain approach. Some sites made sense to code from scratch, whereas others benefitted significantly from using a content management system like WordPress. Needs vary from site to site, so sticking with the same tools every time isn't necessarily the best way to go. You have to figure out your needs and goals in order to choose the most efficient and powerful tool for the job. In this post, we'll take a look at a handful of popular options, their pros and cons, and why you would pick them to build your web site.
Squarespace: Great for Coders and Non-Coders Alike Who Want a Rock-Solid Platform
When it comes to ease of use, Squarespace comes in first. Sites are incredibly simple to build, and they start you off with some very nice templates. The templates are customizable, even if you don't know how to code, and they're minimalistic enough that a few minor changes make them look unique to you. Seasoned coders, on the other hand, get an even larger amount of flexibility. Either way, the service offers a great platform for building sites quickly and a cloud-based approach that keeps your site online regardless of any traffic spikes.
The Good
While Squarespace came with significant limitations when it started out, the service recently grew into an ideal tool for creating a blog or web site. Anyone can use it, and it'll teach you how it works the first time you sign in. Squarespace offers so many beautiful templates to start from that you'll have a difficult time making a choice. This is a very different experience from something like WordPress, where the hard part is choosing a template you actually like from a pool of thousands. After choosing a basic design, Squarespace offers visual editing tools that offer instant, live feedback so anyone can customize it to their liking. People comfortable with code can jump in and make edits to the CSS as well.
On top of great design and editing features, the platform makes it incredibly easy to not only add page content. Whether you're posting in your blog, making a static page, or adding a photo gallery, you can do it with little effort and expect beautiful results. If you want to accept comments to a blog post, you just turn them on. Users log in using their existing Twitter or Facebook accounts, or you can integrate the popular internet-wide commenting system Integrating social media just takes a few clicks, statistics are thorough and beautiful, and you can even manage your site with a mobile app. In past years I found Squarespace too limited, but the latest version (6) is thoroughly impressive.
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