Customer Reviews

SiteSpinner Pro

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have used Web Easy 6 and upgraded to 7 when it came out. Although that program was ok, the instruction as well as help from the company is non-existant. If it wasnt for the forums set up for the users, I would have had a heck of time getting my site done.

When Web Easy 8 came out, I decided to look for something else. I was not impressed with the previous WE upgrades. I read other reviews from other sites and decided on SiteSpinner Pro. As with any new program of this type, there is always a learning curve. If you are not willing to look thru tutorials and scour the internet to learn, you may want to go with a site that offers templates where all you do is replace text and pics and your done. That being said, I have found this software to be extremely good and am I'm very happy with it.

STRONG POINTS
It's truly 'what you see is what you get'. I like the fact that where I place an object is where it shows up in my browser. It has a built in Opera browser which is nice since I use internet explorer. So I get to see my design in 2 different browsers to make sure things will look good. Working with text, pics, objects, shapes is a breeze. It's easy to manipulate things and get the results you want. I just recently messed around with adding audio and video and it was easy also. Most everything is built in: want to add your own Javacode? click the code box and type it in. Want to add an mp3? click the multimedia button, choose song, browse to find it and your done. It's just as easy to make a mouseover too!

There is a very strong forum too with lots of help from other users as well as company staff. A few of the users have their own websites dedicated to SiteSpinner for help. Very handy. You can use it to build site for mobile phones (although I have not used this feature yet but sounds interesting). I also really like the eyedropper in the pic & text boxes that allows you to get a color from anywhere (even outside of the program!). It also has a built in animation tool for objects/text to do animations on your page.

WEAK POINTS
It doesnt have an option to give pics or text a drop shadow. There are ways around this but would be nice if built into the program. There are many tutorials with the program that are very good; however, a few of the advanced features lack examples to follow to learn how to use. Other than that i have not found too many things I dont like at this point.

OVERALL
The thing to remember, there is no perfect software out there and all of them will have the high and low points and their own learning curves. I think that Virtual Mechanics is on the right track with this. They seem to also take note of what users would like to see in their forums and try to implement it into their next update. If you dont want to take the time to learn Dreamweaver or spend the money, this is a great alternative and worth your time. I can't give anything a '5' since that means there would be nothing to improve. There is always room for improvement or more features.

You can check out my 1st website I've done with this program here: [...]

I was using Dreamweaver CS4 but the learning curve was very high to put up a basic website. I love using Sitespinner Pro. It is very easy to use and as I learn more about web disign and SEO I have found the program to support my new learning well. In short if you want to learn web design buy Dreamweaver, If you want to put up a site pretty fast then get Sitespinner or sitespinner pro.

The only negative is for every site you have, you have to change the FTP password and file folder and information for each and every site so it is clunky in that regard. If you don't you will over write you site, or upload site A over site B. IF you are not aware of this you can get pretty messed up.

In other words if you have more then one site, be careful to change the FTP information every time or you will over write you online site. What I have been doing is designing my site with sitespinner then saving it to file on my HD and then uploading it using dreamweaver because it will remember the FTP information for each site. If Sitespinner did this 5 starts all the way.
(
Love it but better handling of FTP information for multiple sites must be better. Despite this, would be working much harder to build sites without Sitespinner Pro.

PS. Not like Dreamweaver, Sitespinner pro has been great in WYSIWYG across every browser I have tested it with. Dreamweaver is not Firefix and Explorer, and Crome and so on all looking exactly the same. Sitespinner has been great across browsers. It has always looked like the page on the program for every browser I have tried. Very well done 10 stars for that.

I like the program becuase it allows me to be creative. I can make very professional looking web pages, or very simple pages. It allows me to add as many graphics as I would like and more. The only problem with the program is that it does not come with easy to follow instructions, and it is difficult to find how to use some of the advanced features. I think that more tutorials and videos on how sertain features work would make this an out standing porgram.

Pros: This is well thought out, common-sense SW that enables one to make websites without learning code. I've tried several & this is absolutely the best. Much is intuitive with great tutorials & a user forum that is active with fast turrnaround on answers

Cons: You can't import an old website... but you can copy & paste and recreate an old one easily. They try hard, but picture albums are tough to do... but Jalbum (Jalbum.net) imbeds into these pages with ease.

Summary: This is what FrontPage should have evolved into. This is absolutely THE BEST software for web development IF you don't want to learn code.

That said, don't expect to just pick it up and use it.
... you couldn't do that initially with FrontPage either.
... there's much to learn here.
.... but what you're learning is not about code but about objects on your page and how they interact... it's the right understanding of what is on the page. I feel like I should know this at this level.

The tutorials, the active forum, and at least three experts with their own websites offering tutorials and tips (referred to in the Basic tutorials under What's Next) make all the info you need available.

I had several fairly complex (in terms of layout) FrontPage websites that I wanted to convert because I just got tired of the unreliability of the FrontPage Extensions on the Host site. At first I was frustrated that I couldn't just copy them but had to recreate, but as I did it ... much was just cut and paste objects from the old site.... and....I learned how the objects on the page interact..... and I had both of them done in just a couple of days.

I've tried Namo WebEditor, CoffeeCup, and Compozer... and didn't like any of them.... I was ready to be a FrontPage die-hard.
SiteSpinner Pro changed my mind.... this is really good software.

You can either get a 15 day trial, or, read through the tutorials before you even try it and see if it makes sense to you:
[]


Once I read through this, I bought it and won't be looking back.
SiteSpinner Pro is the best!

I bought Sitespinner Pro in mid-2009 to update my website to replace Front Page which was no longer supported by my web host.
It did frankly take me several hours to figure out how to put the pieces together. If your experience is similar to mine, you'll need to download and print the tutorials. They're rather well written although it appears some of the material was written for an earlier version of the program and not entirely consistent with the current version.

You may need help as I did with all sorts of small issues. In my case, my forms didn't work; I couldn't figure out how to locate the bookmarks I created ;and it seemed to me the program limited the length for its pages. Fortunately, one Derry at the Sitespinner help desk solved all my issues within hours of my asking him.

In sum, you will need to spend several hours to get the hang of the program. It's very much different from Front Page . But it has all the elements you need to create a functional website. Unlike Front Page which I found inflexible in many ways , Sitespinner Pro does all you want it to do. My site is all text, so I can't comment about the bells and whistles in the program. But definitely a ton of them are there.

Use the tutorials. Do not hesitate at all to ask help from whoever is manning the help desk at the Sitespinner help forum. You'll save hours of frustrating unproductive time trying to figure it out yourself.

Also, you may want to watch the Sitespinner instructional videos on you tube for some helpful tips. They're not a complete course, but you make pick up a hint or two.

I've used SiteSpinner for a few years to build a number of sites. Like all software it has good and bad points, but overall I love it. Though if it wasn't for the amazing help by the regular forum users some features would be rather difficult to understand. If only they showed techniques as videos instead of a manual which is not always easy to understand.

But, when you get stuck in and give it a go it's surprising how a complex-looking thing in the manual actually turns out to be rather more simple.

What 'Bill' above is querying about FTP I'm not sure.....but I have a feelng that he's simply not saved the settings for each of his sites under different names. I run lots of sites in SiteSpinner and just click a button to upload each one...as all the settings for each site can be stored independently, just by entering a different name.

I agree with another reviewer that it's a shame that a number of extra features widely available elsewhere as scripts etc are not included, though with help from the forum regulars most things can be set up quite easily.

SiteSpinner is good and in the main easy to use. Though I would recommend people ignore the supplied templates and start from scratch......it made it so much easier for me and I learnt a lot that way.

My overall recommendation? Download the free trial and put in a lot of time playing about before actually setting up your first site. Getting the initial set-up of the common (included) items on the first page before adding extra pages is essential. That includes the 'Z' order (loading order) of each object.

[...]

How good is SS? I'll put it this way: if Steve Jobs suddenly decided to buy the company and re-introduce it as "iSpinner," the press would be gushing about how "Jobs has done it again!--a miracle program revolutionizing website creation!"

Ever try to build an org chart in MS Word? Yes, it can be done, but what a pain. Ever try doing the same thing with PowerPoint? Trivial.

SiteSpinner is like PowerPoint for webpage creation. Start with a blank web page. Throw some text there. Put in some graphics over there. Add a hyperlink here. And so on. No HTML expertise needed, though feel free to use that if you have the ability.

I've been around computers long enough to remember when the original Mac was a revolutionary advance over the PC because it was intuitively simple to use compared to DOS. SiteSpinner is like that, too. Build websites without having to be a coder. Really, it's that easy.

I am far from a programmer and just a person with a small business that needs a venue to promote ongoing ventures. I definitely did my share of trial and error in the beginning, but once you conquer a task in SiteSpinner, it's yours and you can move on to the next thing. I still have a lot to learn, but it's now a welcome challenge. I tried several other software programs and encountered stress and frustrations to the max. Thank you SiteSpinner for being there for me.

I've been making my own web pages since 1992, and for many years used a variety of free webpage coding softwares including "Web Dwarf" by Virtual Mechanics.

When I felt I needed to upgrade, it wasn't hard to choose Virtual Mechanic's software since I was so impressed with their freeware. A winning feature is that the software can automatically create a mobile version of the pages I code so that the same site is visible either in normal or mobile browsing.

This software does have a learning curve, but every software does. Web pages only get more advanced over the years, and so do the browsers that view those pages. Site Spinner Pro has the features needed to code solid pages that can be viewed from not only browsers like IE and Firefox, but the famous Opera Mini and Opera Mobile.

I am using Site Spinner Pro to recode all of my current websites, which brings me to the one reason I give this product four stars instead of five.

The reason is because Site Spinner will not open html pages. It will only open it's own project files. It is designed for coding pages, not opening pages made with other software. Every other web coding software I've ever tried will open such html pages, however.

This is not something to regret. I am happy with the price and happy with the product as I recode my old web pages into sites viewable on today's web.

Thank You Virtual Mechanics for the excellent product and support.

I'm impressed.
I have a hobby website jrhscalecars that, initially, had been written by my daughter. The site needed refreshing and she was way too busy to help. But I had neither the time to learn HTML/CSS nor money to pay someone to build the site. After checking the reviews I bought SiteSpinner Pro in January and, just two months later, working a few evenings a week, launched a completely re-written 20+ page website.
It took a little while to get into the swing of things and some of the step-by-step tutorial instructions are a little confusing. But the great thing is that the preview capability really works. Definitely a case of what you see is what you will get.
I'm not skilled enough to mimic a truly professional, media-intensive site, but that wasn't my purpose. I just wanted to get on the board with something decent ... and SiteSpinner let me do that.
Definitely an excellent buy.