We are planning a new public website for a client and we are considering Xojo for creating it, as well as other options. Low traffic - 10 to 100 visitors a day. Needs to look modern with good photography, clean layout. I suspect we will need some slick interface elements (not sure if we have many options in xojo). There is no login needed at this point. No product sales or online store. Also, this is business to business, so a mobile layout is not critical. However, we need to use some method to create the site that will let us get this done quickly without a huge learning curve.
Here are some thoughts.
Why not just use Xojo and host on our own server? We already have the experience.
We have not explored Adobe products in a while, but years ago it seemed that Dream Weaver was overkill with a steep learning curve.
Use an online site tool, such as Wix or WordPress hosting with someone like GoDaddy.
Use standalone web design software such as Everweb, CoffeeCup Responsive Site Designer, NetObjects Fusion, etc.
Is there any specific reason not to use Xojo? Does anyone have a recommendation on a website design app or service that they like?
I wouldn’t suggest Xojo for this job. Xojo creates functional WebApps not Websites. If you need good looking, responsive and SEO optimized websites then suggest option 4) but with RapidWeaver for Mac in combination of Foundry (Bootstrap) or Foundation Addons. I am using this combination for many years.
RapidWeaver is a CMS, not a design tool.
If you have content and are happy with a premade design, then RapidWeaver is okay.
I recommend against anything GoDaddy.
Hosting, registration, any of it - use a better company like Dynadot http://dynadot.com
I recommend against WordPress.
It’s a tremendous resource hog, and is quite often overkill for simple static websites.
The specific reason not to use Xojo in this case is that Xojo Web is not a web design tool. Xojo Web is for making web apps, not static websites. If you’re looking for a full service situation, you’re going to want to hire a web designer.
correction Tim, RapidWaever is not a CMS, there are CMS plugins yes, but by default it creates static html websites ideal for uploading to cheap webspaces. And it allows you in combination with Stacks and Foundation completly free designs without restrictions of themes.
Honestly, having written hundreds of client websites for the past 20 years, B2B, B2C, using everything from HTML to PHP, FileMaker, Flash, CDML, I can honestly recommend … Squarespace!
Its costs less than most hosting alone, it has apps for updating your news or blog and even an analytics app. It is template driven but don’t judge it by that, you have complete control over what you place on the screen and where. It also does mobile responsive very well. We have built about 10 sites in it now and every time I think of how we used to do it I just laugh!
If you want to see some examples we have built in it you can look at:
A great site is rarely about the technology you use to build it any more than a book is great because of the typewriter you use to write it. Its all about the content - great pictures, sharp graphics, snappy words. Give it a try and think of all the Xojo code you can write in the time you save!
Thank you all. There are quite a few great options. RapidWeaver and blocsapp look good. However, Squarespace sure looks like a quick and easy way to get a site online. Almost feels like cheating.
Hey, this is the Xojo forum so someone has to cheer for Xojo, right?
Xojo web is actually very capable of performing the type of task you are describing.
Depending how you choose to use it it can actually perform very well as a “classic” web server with CMS backend. Xojo web can indeed create Websites as well as WebApps, or both.
If you use the Xojo web interface to build the CMS backend interface and use the handleURL to feed out the front end web site you can actually scale things up very well and use any responsive CSS, HTML5 or Javascript you like to flash up the front end.
I started working on this Xojo web CMS project a while back to make my life easier for some internal projects https://www.barsark.com/insanely-simple-cms-server
After a while I realised that it actually worked much better than I expected so I decided to take it live on a few public web sites to test it out further. So far it has been great, running standalone on a Raspberry Pi 3.
So, depending on your needs and aim, don´t count out Xojo web as a valid solution.
RapidWeaver is great too but can get a bit tedious at times especially. It’s a bit like Xojo in that you end up buying a lot of plugins. Squarespace is constantly improving and provides a lot of out-of-box functionality.
Xojo Web can certainly do a public facing site but there are some downsides. SEO is a royal pain if not impossible. Some users will hate you for the giant javascript library to read your marketing content. Responsive design is very challenging to do limiting your audience by screen sizes. Aesthetics are hard to get right without a lot of work. Lastly you have like 10 seconds before a user clicks away of boredom or another tab blasting audio and they forget they were on your site. 8 of those are spent loading your app. You do the math.
The trick to avoid all the issues Phillip mention is to use handleURL for the public Website front end. There is absolutely no need to give each web site visitor a full Xojo web session and have them load the whole Xojo javascript library etc, all you need to do is to spit out some dynamic html or a file.
handleURL does just that, and also gives you great SEO flexibility and whatever CSS based responsive design you like as well as full aesthetic design freedom, without loading any javascript library or app at all. It is very light weight and fast, only takes a few ms to deliver a web page to a user. I have done the math
[quote=320796:@Phillip Zedalis]
SEO is a royal pain if not impossible. Some users will hate you for the giant javascript library to read your marketing content. Responsive design is very challenging to do limiting your audience by screen sizes. Aesthetics are hard to get right without a lot of work. Lastly you have like 10 seconds before a user clicks away of boredom or another tab blasting audio and they forget they were on your site. 8 of those are spent loading your app. You do the math.[/quote]
