Comparing Website Building Platforms

 For the final two projects of the ETEC 5213 course, we designed two websites using two different platforms. I chose Wix and Weebly. The two platforms are very similar in that both are free services (with paid subscriptions available) and has similar functions. Wix is unique that it offers an Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI) which designs very visually appealing websites with little effort from the website creator. Much of the layout has been done for you, and you as the creator simply needs to customize specific elements such as pictures and texts. Weebly, on the other hand, is much more hands-on, requiring more effort to design but offers greater degrees with flexibility in terms of layout. 

Ironically, as easy as it is to use Wix's ADI to design my website, I encountered the most amount of difficulties with this mode of editing. Because much of the layout design has already been done for you, you as the creator has little to no creative space. A lot of elements (color schemes, layouts, etc.) are fixed in place and are immovable. While it is possible to have more creative freedom in the Wix Editor mode, I found the Editor even more difficult to use. Not only is the user interface very complicated (many functions are hidden or difficult to find), it is difficult to do simple tasks such as click-and-drag. The elements are almost never placed in the space where I wanted.

To overcome this obstacle, I simply decided to work with the Wix ADI design instead of against it. Instead of reorganizing the layout and changing the color scheme, I used what was already given to me and just subbed in pictures and texts. In the end, I decided to be content with what Wix gave me to work with. To Wix's credit, the ADI does in fact perform very well in visual design. My website with Wix, though much of the visual layout was not my own work, does indeed look very professional.

Weebly, on the other hand, proved to be much more user-friendly. Weebly also provides a lot of beautifully designed layouts, but nearly every element can be easily customized. With Weebly, I was able to use a true click-and-drag method of placing elements. One issue that occurred with Weebly, though, is uploading images. For whatever reason, every time I uploaded an image in the HEIC format (default format for pictures taken using iOS devices), my entire web browser (along with all my other tabs) shuts down and closes. This happened repeatedly. Fortunately, I was able to get around this problem by editing my photos in a photo editor (I used the Photoshop Express app on my phone), which then saves the pictures in the JPEG format on my phone. This was somewhat time-consuming, as all the pictures I uploaded to my Weebly website were taken with my iPhone. I'm not sure if this is an issue with Weebly, Safari (the web browser I was using), or both. Hopefully this can be resolved in the future.

From these projects, I learned to not take web design for granted. It is much easier to design websites poorly than to design them well and make them user-friendly. A well-designed website takes a lot of effort and has to consider everything: color schemes, fonts, sizes of graphics and pictures, placement of texts and pictures, and the list goes on. Even artificial intelligence can only do so much (in the case of Wix).

In the future, if I had to design a website outside of this course, I would definitely use Weebly. It is easy to use, most functions are visible, and allows for customization and creativity. In addition, I noticed that Weebly does not slow my computer down as much as Wix does. Weebly would be the perfect website building platform if support for HEIC images are added.