XSitePro Website Design Software Message Board

Like yellowhammer, I admire your very nice design work ablewebs. And what you said makes sense for anyone who wants a professional business website built with XSitePro. However I think most of us are still mystified about why it would be so difficult to have more modern "web 2.0+" templates out-of-the-box.

There are many XSP users who see WP with some clean and modern designs freely available regardless of being generic or standardized. There must be some middle ground here. Many want to promote their sites and not be self conscious of how dated they often appear because of their design limitations.

I know BenXSitePro commented on this earlier by asking for clarification of what is meant by " 2.0 style." I am kind of surprised this is not really being addressed much. I am a big fan of XSP and its advantages, however I would guess that this is one of the main concerns for many of us who appreciate the software and still run into this wall when it comes to putting up a modern, stylish site quickly.

I have never, never spoken to Intellimon about this, but here are my thoughts...

XSitePro is very reasonably priced software and it's expensive to have dozens of templates made. XSitePro's developers may not also be Web designers (these are two different skills), so the template designs may all have to be outsourced.

Personally, I would rather that Intellimon's Research and Development money were spent on new features and functionality... updating the "engine," for instance. We need XSitePro to work with a Standards mode DOCTYPE for HTML5 and CSS3 compliance. We need a better editor than PinEdit. We need a better Photo Gallery. We need all Panels to be customizable, not just the Right Panel. And so on.

In a way, it might be better if XSP had never contained templates at all because I think they are a distraction (my opinion!). I think they take away from the "seriousness" of the tool and make it into more of a plaything (not the right word, but I can't think of a better one at the moment)... and it's so, so much more than that! Even though Dreamweaver is much more expensive software, it does not come populated with dozens of beautiful templates. Adobe maintains the "seriousness" of the tool and puts its R&D into new features and functionality. They leave template design to the myriad Web designers out there.

Okay, my rant is done now! And please remember that I'm a Web designer, so I am speaking from a completely different point of view than the "average" XSitePro user!

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Andrea Wilson

1. Custom XSitePro Templates. XSitePro Consulting and Training. FREE TIPS!

2. Off-the-Shelf XSitePro Templates! Versatile designs. Easy to manage and maintain!

3. AllWebMenus Pro and XSitePro Work Perfectly Together! NEW!

I completely agree with this point. That's why I would gladly "PAY" for more "modern, current, 2.0, 3.0, wordpress, whatever you call them" templates.

Maybe Intellimon has addressed this topic somewhere else in the forum. I think better templates would be a real opportunity for them. If the new templates are too expensive for profit, they could at least break even and make their product so much better for a total noob like me!



IMHO images are everything on some websites and I would love to go to XSP for the images rather than searching, downloading, editing somewhere else and importing. Maybe Intellimon could work a deal with a photo website.

I understand all this is a lot harder than it sounds. Just my opinion.

Hi Guys

I am with Ben on this one because in the past year or so the term of Web 2.0 has indeed been bandied about as being different to some degree.

Web 2.0 has nothing to do with the site's visitors, so it must be about the web designers / creators. And of course, it is about the way we build our web sites.

There is no rocket science involved... it is just the content of the site. You cannot have web 2.0 graphics. Graphics are graphics whichever way you look at them. However, graphics are used to complement the content of the site's pages.

The only difference - that I know of - is the way the Web 2.0 style sites are assembled. I firmly believe that Web 2.0 is a term for "modern internet marketing" included in a web site. For instance, many sites have "tons of articles" down in the hierarchy somewhere. And of course, we have sites like ezines and other similar sites where articles are peddled and stored. What is the point of these articles? My view is that they provide "links" back to the site of the article writer. Of course, they are also a source of content related to your site, but you get the content, the author gets a link to his site, and so it goes on. This is a new form of SEO and marketing of your web site that has evolved over the past few years and has really taken off in the past 2 or so.

Some articles have very little bearing on the web sites they are on. Many of them are back door pages from outside links - another way of getting traffic via Web 2.0 methods.

Whichever way your opinion leans, the most important material on your web site should be good honest content. If you produce that and do it properly, you will automatically get the traffic you need.

But the main target of any reputable web site should be taking care of what the site visitor wants. A great majority of web site owners want to direct their site visitors to their products and what they want to sell, instead of taking care of what the customer actually wants. This means we should always think of the other guy. Designers and many webmasters rarely think this way. A pretty web site is not what paying customers want to see... they want to see something related to what they searched for.

Phew! I feel better now. Sorry for the rant.

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Greetings from Mount Rainier Country

Why do we drive on parkways and park on driveways?

Web 2.0 WEB SITE DESIGN refers to sites with the following attributes:

Simplicity
Lots of whitespace
Central layout (no left-aligned or fluid designs)
Fewer columns
Separate top section (often using a 100% width header)
Solid areas of screen real-estate
Simple navigation
Bold logos
Bigger text
Large headings (text)
Strong colours (often vibrant blues, greens, oranges)
Rich surfaces (e.g., subtly textured backgrounds)
Gradients
Reflections (the popularity of reflections is already waning, though)

The list might also include: cute icons, over-sized icons and starbursts.

Each feature has to be used when and where appropriate, of course! And no site will likely use all of these features.

Web 3.0 design will get even simpler as we struggle to focus the viewer's ever more scattered attention on content and our Call(s) to Action. We will need to create designs that work well on smaller platforms like smart phones and tablets, but also on platforms such as tabletops in restaurants, huge display screens in public places, etc.

Look at Google.com and Yahoo.com. Both of these sites are search engines. Which one focuses your attention best on what it wants you to do? Do you agree that simpler is better?

_________________
Andrea Wilson

1. Custom XSitePro Templates. XSitePro Consulting and Training. FREE TIPS!

2. Off-the-Shelf XSitePro Templates! Versatile designs. Easy to manage and maintain!

3. AllWebMenus Pro and XSitePro Work Perfectly Together! NEW!

Great explanation and thoughts.

In this thread you mentioned XSP needing a better HTML editor than pinedit. I went to the pinedit site and also searched Google for HTML editors after reading your comment. In your opinion what HTML editors are the best? Is there a way for us to maybe use another editor and import into XSP.

Just brainstorming ideas about how to make this process easier and faster.

I am working on a site I published for the first time today and when I went to check it the footer menu was not there. I have all the footer boxes checked and still nothing. This is extremely frustrating. I just want to move on with it.

YH

YH, I suggest you start a new thread for your footer problem.

I haven't researched editors, that's something developers at Intellimon will be working on. Changing editors may not even be a good option; I really don't know.

_________________
Andrea Wilson

1. Custom XSitePro Templates. XSitePro Consulting and Training. FREE TIPS!

2. Off-the-Shelf XSitePro Templates! Versatile designs. Easy to manage and maintain!

3. AllWebMenus Pro and XSitePro Work Perfectly Together! NEW!

Just venting about the footer menu (still not working).

Thanks

Andrea nails it in her description of this style. We are all trying to keep up and that makes XSP evolve and stay relevant. It is adaptable to a degree, but it was not intended to replace DW or other high-end high-cost professional tools. XSP is a great tool, somewhat flexible, but is designed for a particular type of use (IM, niche site building, small business marketing... ).

With regards to its flexibility for those of us who want to "keep up" with contemporary site design (such as the OP), Andrea describes how to extend it beyond what I thought was possible. Also, a designer here named Jason is generous with advice for this.