I made a Website Builder

[GrigoriySidelnikov]

This is going to be quick. I am working on a prototype website builder, that I want to behave like "Photoshop of website creation". (Easy controls, pretty flexible, diversity of designs, etc... all the obvious things) I am not ready for a public release (mostly because there are bugs I want to fix first) but here is the first ever site I created using my own site builder, in an attempt to see what was possible:

Welcome to My Website

Every single page (and the header) were created by simply clicking a content area on a page and typing the text in as you would edit rich text documents in a a word processor. Of course you can switch to HTML-code edit too, for the code-savvy ones. Images are also instantly uploaded/inserted into the page with a click. They get auto-hosted at imageshack.

This is really cool....

Domain name is registered automatically with an API. Hosting is shared on a GoDaddy server... BUT links up automatically too once you register/submit a PayPal payment.

I will give more updates as I have something w/o the obvious bugs.

And finally a screenshot of what it looks like so far:



In this screenshot, if it was bigger, you would see me modifying the background of the site specified in the link above.

As I move the mouse across the color, the background is instantly changed in the preview below, so I can see what it will look like with that particular color in the bg before I actually commit to that color.

.....in this same view where I am changing colors, I can physically rescale/resize any element of the size the width of the content/sidebar, or the height of the header... and then at the same time type text right into them, without having to go anywhere else. This is accomplished by dragging custom-programmed sliders that scale proportionately in comparison to the widths of other elements... hard to explain, but it's intuitive and a layman can figure this out.

Then you click "Save" and... the site is saved in exactly the same way you are seeing it, and appears instantly at the domain name.

Everything is done on the same page in browser, there is absolutely no page refresh unless you choose to switch to another page to edit.

Anyway, I had to let it out there, I've been working on this for few months.

[CoolBee]

Looks nice
Are you going to get anyone else to test it out before you go live?

[Curtis2011]

Pro-tip: Don't use GoDaddy!


Otherwise this looks very cool, but it sure does produce some messy html!

[richest]

No need to learn html or css? Looks cool.

Waiting for its launching

[GrigoriySidelnikov]

Originally Posted by CoolBee

Looks nice
Are you going to get anyone else to test it out before you go live?

It's possible

Pro-tip: Don't use GoDaddy!

I agree GoDaddy is not the best host, but there are worse. In my experience GoDaddy worked better for me than a host (no put intended) of other companies who constantly interrupt service, and so on. But at the same time it doesn't really matter. It could be any host. People who want to create sites for their businesses do not care where it's hosted as long as it works.

Otherwise this looks very cool, but it sure does produce some messy html!

It's the same problem with all WYSIWYG editors. They produce messy code. I have to be really elegant in implementation - imagine a WYSIWYG editor producing CLEAN code... now imagine how messy the code you have to write to make THAT work will be. I like to be simple and practical, yes its not perfect. I think that's fine. At least for now... I use NicEdit, which is an editor that takes advantage of the in-browser richtext formatting options. It is largely responsible for the messy HTML. It's unfortunate, but unavoidable right now.

Let's take a look at this situation with some realism in mind though:

It produces really crappy HTML. -- something that the average user doesn't care about.
It allows you to edit the site directly without knowledge of HTML or CSS at all. -- something lots of people will care about!

Also the site allows you to directly edit the HTML. So it makes sense, for those who know what HTML is, they should be able to figure out how to make it clean on their own...

No need to learn html or css? Looks cool.

Nope.

Waiting for its launching

Pre-release following. I like it.