WordPress is not the be all and end all of website creation, as some other excellent services will prove to you.
The
sturdy WordPress platform continues to be one of the top choices for
creating a website, and deservingly so. But, in certain scenarios,
WordPress as a website solution can be overkill.
Say, you’re a
writer or a photographer. All you want to do through your website is
showcase some of your work, introduce yourself to people, give them a
way contact you, and maybe throw in a landing page for your next
product. In such cases, you’re better off choosing from alternative
platforms like the ones outlined below.
Some of them need a working knowledge of HTML/CSS, which is easy to acquire if you put in the time and effort to go through
our XHTML guide. We recommend it, since HTML/CSS skills will stand you in good stead in the Internet era.
For The One-Page Lovers
Ideal if: You
want a simple solution, preferably a point-and-click one, to create a
visually engaging single-page website. The concept of single-page
websites goes well with our increasing use of hand-held devices. If
you’re undecided whether you should opt for such a website for your next
idea, Matt’s post on the
benefits of a one-page website will help you make a decision.
Pricing: Freemium
Flavors.me
started the trend of unifying your Web presence and presenting it as a
rich tapestry of color and content. Since its inception, it has
introduced various features for customization, but its basic format of
content aggregation from various services and social networks has
remained the same. There’s no coding involved, but just a WYSIWYG
interface and enough options to craft a unique landing page for
yourself.
In late 2012,
Moo,
a successful business card printer, acquired Flavors.me. It hasn’t made
any attempt to change the original flavor (no pun intended) of
Flavors.me. Only
free business cards courtesy Moo.com have been added to the mix. Users have to pay the shipping charges only.
Pricing: Freemium
With
About.me you can have a Web page for yourself or your business up and
running within minutes. Like its biggest competitor, Flavors.me,
About.me is all about pulling content from multiple Web services and
turning them into a beautiful, centralized Web presence. There’s no
technical know-how required whatsoever.
Getting
a new business card? Add your About.me url to it, so that when people
decide to look you up online, they’ll be greeted by your interesting
new home on the Web.
Pricing: Freemium
Strikingly
provides an easy-to-setup one-page website that looks gorgeous on any
device. It doesn’t get much simpler or better than that. Sign up, pick a
template, use the WYSIWYG editor to add content and tweak the visuals
to your satisfaction, and hit
Publish. Your site is now live!
In addition to a contact form, analytics, privacy settings, and a
Twitter summary card, there are various settings to bring your website
to perfection. Of course, some of the options are available only for
premium users. Here’s an interesting feature of Strikingly. You can turn
your LinkedIn profile into a neat online résumé in just one click.
Pricing: Free (code is licensed under the MIT and GPL licenses)
A
stunning backdrop, a logo, and a brief overview of your work and life.
If that’s your vision for your website, The Personal Page is just what
you need. It’s a lightweight, mobile-friendly one-page HTML template
that you can upload to your server. To modify the page, you’ll need a
little bit of HTML/CSS knowledge — just enough to replace the default
text and images with your own. Upload an interesting high-res image to
make the page inviting, but ensure that it doesn’t detract from or
overpower the textual content.
For The Tinkerers
Ideal if: You
want more control over how your website looks and behaves, or if your
website requires multiple pages and additions like a blog or a store
front.
Pricing: Paid, with a 14-day free trial
Everything
about Squarespace is sleek and beautiful, right from its shiny,
responsive templates, to its point-and-click editor. The service gives
you the versatility of WordPress plugins, without asking you to learn
coding if you’re not inclined to do so. Options like analytics, social
media integration, and SEO optimization are built into Squarespace’s
dashboard by default.
Whether
you want to create a portfolio website, a personal page, an e-store, or
any other kind of website, Squarespace makes it possible. It’s perfect
if you want something feature rich
minus the coding aspect that
lies at the heart of website creation. That perfection comes with a
monthly fee based on your requirements. But with web hosting, a domain
name, and a steady, reliable service included in the fee, the pricing is
well worth it.
Pricing: Paid, with a 10-day free trial
If
you want a robust website builder, Virb is a great choice. With its
sole pricing plan, you get unlimited access to all of Virb’s features,
which include cloud hosting, custom domain support, password protection,
file support, integration with Dropbox, Google Tools, and social media.
Choose from a selection of beautiful responsive themes, take advantage
of the built-in blog, or set up a storefront.
You don’t have to fiddle with any piece of code unless you
are interested
in the workings behind the scenes. If you have something basic in mind
for your website, Virb might be an expensive pick, and one of the
single-page options listed above would be a better choice.
Pricing: Free
Jekyll is a powerful platform to create a static website
and to
retain minute control over it. But using it is not for the
faint-hearted, especially if coding is not your thing. With its 5-minute
install, even WordPress might be easier to set up. The good news is
that if you’re willing to get your hands dirty and learn as you go,
there’s plenty of detailed documentation to help you set up your website
using Jekyll. Begin with the
Jekyll by Example tutorials or
Jekyll’s Getting Started guide.
With this popular website generator, you can abandon your hosting provider and instead use
GitHub Pages to host your website, on your domain,
for free.
What’s more, with Jekyll driving your website, you can blog with
Markdown, which is a smart way to write for the Web, as Bakari shows you
in
our Markdown guide.
Pricing: Freemium
As
far as difficulty levels go, Type & Grids is a step above WYSIWYG
options like Flavors.me and several steps below i.e. easier than
code-heavy solutions like Jekyll. It is not a standalone service, but a
set of two almost ready-to-use, mobile-friendly HTML templates that you
can upload to your Web host. The changes you need to make involve
replacing the placeholder information and images with your own.
If
you crave neat, responsive interfaces with beautiful typography and
icons, you’ll love Type & Grids. There are no sign-ups and monthly
fees to bother with. The free plan comes with six color schemes and six
typography themes that you can mix and match to your liking. Type &
Grids is best suited for portfolio pages. You can download the free
two-template set by sharing your email.
Want
more out of Type & Grids? Opt for one of the Pro packages, which
provide more color and type themes as well as smooth integration with
the popular flat-file CMS
Statamic, allowing you to add a blog to your portfolio, with ease.
Pricing: Freemium
Cargo
is ideal for people whose work has a visual element at its core, such
as designers, illustrators, photographers, and architects. The platform
presents simple tools to showcase your work in the best possible light.
You
will need some knowledge of HTML/CSS to mold the website as you see
fit, but even without it you should do okay, thanks to the
comprehensive knowledge base on the website. If you’re interested in the
development side of things, you
can delve into your site’s
full code. The option to follow people and bookmark their work imitates
the social aspect that we have become comfortable with, and look forward
to, on the Web.
Signing
up for Cargo involves the extra step of applying for an account by
sharing a bit of info about you and your work. But don’t let that scare
you off. It’s not as stringent a barrier as you think.
Pricing: Freemium
If
you like and appreciate the simplicity and the ease of use of Dropbox,
how about using your favorite cloud-hosting service to set up your
website? Brace.io makes that possible by creating a special folder in
your Dropbox to hold your website files.
You don’t really need to
code a website from scratch. Choose from one of the free or paid
templates available online, upload the template files to the Brace.io
folder in Dropbox, and make HTML/CSS changes based on how you want the
website to look. Brace.io automatically updates your website based on
these changes. But this website version stays as a draft until you
ship/publish it. The live website is hosted on Amazon’s cloud.
There
are a couple of suitable website templates right here in this post. The
Personal Page is one, and Type & Grids is the other. Instead of
uploading the corresponding templates to your web host, put them in your
Dropbox and ship them using Brace.io.
An Attractive Web Presence Made Simple
Based
on your website requirements, not all of these services will turn out
to be perfect solutions for you. Although some of them can handle
complex websites, their overall approach to website creation lends
itself best to compact and static websites. If that is the kind of
website that you’re after, you might just be ready to skip WordPress and
give one of these services a shot.
Which service do
you use for your website(s)? Let us know in the comments.
Source:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/10-ways-create-small-simple-website-without-overkill/
