Welcome to my Synthasite beta test site.

I'm building this site right now using the Synthasite web-based publishing tool.  I'm actually finding this much easier to use and simplified over the initial developer preview a launch of the summer. I wanted to share some of my thoughts in her view, and what better place to do it in right here on the Synthasite-powered page that I'm building right now.

  • It's easy to create pages, drag-and-drop widgets, text blocks or whatever else you want to pull into the page.
  • Styles are easy to change with preloaded site templates.  Double click on any of them in your site immediately appears based on the template you choose.
  • Uploading images simple as can be too. I really like that Synthasite has built-in image hosting, I think this makes it much more accessible than some of the other online site builders which require you to use Flickr are other hosting services that some of their potential users may not be that familiar with.
  • The site management has been simplified since the alpha preview.  A default navigation structure is automatically created as you add new pages.  But you have complete control over this and can visually update the navigation with a drag-and-drop interface.
    • One thing that is nice to be able to control is both the page name and the link title for pages. Often I want to name my page one thing, but I want the links to it in my navigation structure to be named something else.  This was always a huge frustration for me with FrontPage back in my early web creation days.  Synthasite clearly has this figured out.
  • One of the problems that I've run into overt over again with software like FrontPage, and other HTML publishing tools is the publishing and site management functionality is nonexistent.  So many pieces of software have the HTML editing down pat and don't help the user through publishing their website online.  I get extremely frustrated when I'm using HTML editors like Nvu and Coffee Cup and then I have to use my own FTP program to load these files online.  This in my opinion, is where Synthasite hits the ball out of the park.  The site management functionality and brain dead simple publishing tool solves what has been the biggest problem for me with quickly putting up simple websites.
  • Synthasite now offers the ability to download a zip file of your website that you can republish on your own Web server.  This enables you to publish your site on your own host and on your own domain.  This in my mind already makes this tool something that businesses or individuals can use in everyday life, not just something for tech geeks like us to play with.  Already in beta, Synthasite offers value to its users enabling them to publish their own websites and host them themselves.  All for FREE.
My overall impressions are very positive.  Synthasite has created a robust website creation tool is to let people put up simple websites are easily and quickly.  You don't have to be a web programmer to launch a website anymore.  You don't have to have front page on your computer.  I can't tell you how often I'm approached by people who want to create a simple website for their business, or to have a presence online.  There is a major void in the Web publishing space in my opinion for simple website creation programs.  I'm not a web developer, I don't know how to use Dreamweaver.  I know have used FrontPage, but have grown more and more frustrated with it over the last few years.

Synthasite represents where I believe Web publishing is going.  Make it simple, make it work, and get your site online. Congrats to the whole team behind Synthasite for the beta release. It's really looking great.

- Chris

* in the screenshot attached below I'm composing this review.