Wix?

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AWills

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Hi guys.

I have been playing around with Wix to build my website. I haven't committed to publishing or subscribing yet, but it seems very easy to use and the website I've created so far looks very clean and it is easy to navigate. The design I've chosen means that the images are showcased really nicely too.

Before committing myself to Wix, I wanted to hear what you guys thought of it, if any of you use it or if any of you have some other suggestions.

Thanks!
 
I use it. The flexibility makes it shine above "portfolio" sites - and I trialled a *lot* of them looking for a particular fit.

I've lost touch with a lot of the SEO stuff these days, so I don't know how flexible it is for that. It has far less options than Wordpress for example, so if you're a professional, looking for behind the scenes site tweaks - it's not great. You also (currently) can't get an SSL certification to get your green Google padlock (caveat: shop stuff is handled securely) which may be a turnoff. It's very flexible though, and for a vanity site/blog it suits me down to the ground. The shop functionality is an expensive add-on, but if you're selling services and taking payments *not* through the site, it is fine. Selling prints though - probably too expensive for me.

I'm a hobby photographer - not a web developer, so I want to spend as little time as possible fiddling with a website. Wordpress, themes, and updating everything was an overhead I didn't want. I found Wix to be the best alternative (in terms of cost vs functionality vs what I need from it). The ability to create as many sites as you want is good too. Create a new site design and flip them over seamlessly. Want to help a friend? Design the site and transfer it to them easily. Set up different designs for phones/tablets/desktops really easily.

Thumbs up from me.
 
I wouldn't go near the thing personally. I used it years ago for my first website and don't think it's moved on that much since. Shocking for SEO too I hear.

Get yourself on to Wordpress and find a good theme to build your site around - something like Photocrati, for example.
Or have a look at SquareSpace.

I doubt you would find a professional photographer using WIX and for very good reasons.
 
Thanks for your replies.

I want a site to display my portfolio and give potential clients an idea of the type of work they can expect from me. So it's important to me that it looks professional and suits my minimal style, and because of my popular name I did wonder if SEO would be something I need to seriously consider. This is the very beginning of my business adventure so I didn't want to spend too much on my website incase, for whatever reason, it doesn't work out.

All of my social media pages will point to my website, too.
 
If you do go Wordpress and use third party themes/widgets/plugins - don't make the mistake I did and get one that's a) not responsive for phones/tablets and b) not continually updated.

When Wordpress updated, my theme broke and the author never updated it so I had to get a new theme. Reformatting blog posts & images was a nightmare. And the time spent... Same happened with a gallery plugin.

Wix can look very professional, but whether it has the functionality to support a proffesional is a different matter. Also, bear in mind that if you decide to move off Wix, you'll need to rebuild from scratch - but that's the same for all non-Wordpress website builders - you're locked in.
 
I'm just moving away from Wix to Squarespace as Wix still doesn't appear to be mobile friendly. This borders on the unbelievable in the web world today, especially as Google takes notice of responsive sites. Other than that, I found it easy to use and set something up quickly, but then so far Sqarespace appears the same.
Personally I just wouldn't use any template solution that wasn't responsive these days, especially if I also had to pay,
 
I have a trial of Squarespace at the moment and it seems like there isn't much freedom in terms of design. Maybe I just haven't worked it out yet but it seems like you can't change the margins on the header for example, and I can't change the settings on my slider.

@Giles2373 my website on wix has a mobile friendly version that I am able to edit - what kind of problems are you having with it? Do you find that it just doesn't look great? I haven't published my site... how do wix websites look on iPads / tablets?
 
An alternative to Wordpress I've recently picked up is GravCMS. It's not dissimilar to Wordpress when installed Admin plugin, but it's one key advantage is that it's a flat file CMS. There's no Database to backup/restore when migrating the site from your local machine where you're developing it to hosting provider,

I'd argue it's modular layout is more flexibile than Wordpress ... it's possible to have a page made up of modules, adding and removing them at whim, rather than fixed templates. Very easy to add your own modules too - much better than creating a whole new page template.
 
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