The Ideal Free Site Builder

Free site builders have become extremely popular (and unbeatably cheap) ways to create your own website without spending a penny. But some site builders are better than others; even though they're free tools, you'd still want nothing but the best for your website. Here are three simple criteria to help make the choice of a site builder just a wee bit easier.

Range of Presets

A DIY website builder that makes you construct every aspect of your website from the ground up is a difficult proposition. After all, you're using a building tool exactly because you don't want to deal with all those technical details. That's why you'll want to look for a site building tool that offers you as many preset and ready to run options as possible.

Of the many criteria you could consider when choosing a site building tool, this is one of the easiest to figure out and measure. Most building tools advertise just how many templates and prefabricated pages they have. For those that don't, you could simply take a test run through the interface and see if you can find the templates and formats that will fit the needs and use of your site.

All the Options

But just because you'll be relying heavily on site templates shouldn't mean that creative control is out of your hands entirely. The best web builders are the ones that offer extensive customization options right alongside all their presets and templates. After all, you don't want your pages looking like every other site that came from the same site building application.

Again, a simulation or a mock website with a particular site builder should help you measure this one up. Check out which parts of the website you can customize and fix up according to your preferences. The text, images and standard HTML tags are typical of just about every site building tool. Custom options like formatting, layout and compatibility with special code like CSS give a few the upper hand.

Ease of Use

This is easily one of the most important criteria you could look at in any site building tool. How easy is the interface to use and manipulate? Does it make use of big icons and simple directions, or do you have to spend a day's worth of trial and error to figure it all out? It's a very big factor, especially if you plan to use the same DIY website builder application to maintain your website in the long run.

The sample project is once again the most useful method for this measurement. The trick is to dive straight into the creation process without reading more than a few lines of text. If there are helpful text clues along the way or if the interface is easy enough to use without reading the full manual, then you may just have a keeper in your hands. That'd mean it's a practically idiot-proof application.

If you decide to use a free site builder for designing your pages, this is a major decision that you have to make. You may want to start the search with the site building tools at DiscountDomainsUK.com, if only to give you an image of the ideal site building tool. With tens of thousands of possible preset combinations and a user-friendly wizard-based interface, it's the best yardstick for this crucial tool.