SiteSpinner

I worked extremely hard on building a professional website using another software, finished it and uploaded to my Host. (It was a well known brand). The software was user friendly, but when there was an issue there was no live support offered and basically you were on your own to search the web, find forums, etc., etc.After finding out (weeks later) that the Search Engines were viewing all my website Content (- - - you know - - all the good stuff you think up to write to be more appealing to higher rankings for the Engines), as an "Image File", I knew I was in trouble. Literally the Search Engines were looking at Picture Files instead of the Page Content I had written! - - - That's where SiteSpinner came in. I needed something that would publish in an industry standard format that could be read by Search Engines. I know a bit about computers, but still, a friendly user format helps a great deal. Most important, when you reach that big blocking point where you have to get an answer, "Support" becomes critical. I rarely write reviews. That I am writing this says a lot.It just so happens that I was working on all this on New Year's Eve late afternoon and I reached that point. I submitted a question to SiteSpinner's Support Staff and put away the program expecting to start again on January 2nd, two days later due to the Holiday. I just could not believe my eyes when I saw a response in my e-mail a half hour later!! (Keep in mind that it wasn't only after hours, but on New Years Eve)! I wrote back in amazement and even received an answer! BTW - The answer solved my issue (another wonderment).My site is fairly large (having a detail page for each product), and also being connected to a Blog. Since I was replacing a website that was already in place, and also setting this whole site up to maximize Search Engine Optimization, it was a challenge. For a novice this could be absolutely daunting. The "Support", again, is critical when you reach a stumbling block. SiteSpinner has a Forum, a FAQ, and a fantastic Support Staff willing to help without attitude. 5 out of 5 stars!!The program is robust and offers much more than you will see on the initial pass. Most functions are intuitive, a few may not work as you are initially use to but these are small trade offs for a program that offers you all the functionality that you would need to build a great looking and functioning website with fantastic support. You can publish to your own computer and then FTP later, or FTP direct from the program (worked without a hitch). It is truly "What You See Is What You Get". The layout and working with images is easy and I loved the ability to automatically repeat things on "All Pages" and even "Lock" items in place so that they don't get nudged around. For those that need it, you can add music, video, timed events, you name it. This and you can even add your own coding and html. I use to use Front Page, and this is like that but only better. I don't have to go over price, because to get all this for the amount that is asked, well - - you be the judge! The whole package is 5 out of 5 stars to me! Happy building.

I guess I am new at this game in creating web sites. I did create the data for the web site, yet it is very hard to put it into one of their templates. Their templates are good except there are no instructions as to how to do it. This software is not for beginners at all and such is why I am disappointed. There should be some type of syllabus to help those that are novices to learn how to use it. You cannot send what you have made because it has an extension that no one can open up unless they have Site Spinner. I wonder if all of these web site makers are the same. I would not recommend this product to a novice like myself. I had my son in law make a web site for me, who is a professional. I wanted to show him that I could do some of it which I could not do.

This is well made with lots of gadgets but compared to other things on the market, it isn't star quality. I can see the programmer has put a lot of effort and hard work to make a living and provide something great to the community, but compared to Weebly and Photoshop it has a long way to go to compete with the bigger names in business. I would recommend this to someone who is familiar with Paint and Word as it strikes a resemblance between the two and has the patience to read the manual.

I am most disappointed in SiteSpinner. I purchased it because of the excellent recommendations on the Amazon reviews. I don't excell in web design, but originally I used GeoCities, free site hosting, and Front Page 2000 and Front Page 2003, but the drawback there was I had difficulty finding a host that could upload it. In the end I used Site Builder by Yahoo, which is simple to use and I was able to create a main project and tie in four separate books as sub-projects. At that time, I was not interested in tags, etc. This is why I tried SiteSpinner because it sounded so easy. I purchased the software, read the tutorials and spent four days attempting to paste my text in by either Word or Wordperfect, but the text didn't format properly. I finally saw on the forum that one had to use "paste copy clone," which I did, but even when I used that, the paragraphs wouldn't always indent, and when trying to fix it, the tab didn't indent and I had to go through sentence by sentence and manually do this, but the indents wouldn't hold that way either. On top of that, the workpage is numbered in inches with no side bar on the workpages and the main sheet is not measured in inches so I could not find out how much text it would take and had to keep splitting my pages and redoing and saving them to get the entire writinge on. I never got as far as tags, etc. because I spent so much time trying to get the pages to look right.After four days of struggling with it, I finally gave up and went back to Site Builder, which probably can't do all that SS can, but it provides for tags, etc. and I can load it onto Yahoo hosting and it works out great. I am most disappointed and if it wasn't for the help of the Forum, I couldn't have gotten that far. It seems to me most unusual that the only help one can get is from a Forum group.