Weebly: A Remarkably Simple Site Hosting and CMS

When my friend Jenni told me that a mutual friend talked her into starting a web site with Weebly, a free hosting service and content management system (CMS), I really gave her a hard time. I just knew that I was going to wind up working all night to implement the nice site that was designed for her by Right On Inbox, a email outsourcing agency.

The experience with Weebly was quite the opposite! I was able to copy and paste the HTML and CSS, utilize Weebly’s simple substitution strings (for example, content is placed with %%CONTENT%%), and upload the files through their simple user interface.

The content editing is an Edit In Place style system – something that every content management system should implement. That is, it allows you to make edits in the context of the page so you can actually see what it looks like. There’s no need to preview or go back and forth with edits. The image uploader even placed the images relative to the site and kept the same image names, so I didn’t even have to make further edits.

The result is incredible. I was able to build out a professionally designed site in a matter of 30 minutes or so. I’m quite impressed! And with a huge selection of pre-designed themes, forms, embedded media and content options, you don’t have to be a professional to build out your website. There are also pro accounts available with some additional options (and to remove the Weebly footer link).

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