WebPlus X2 Website Maker

WebPlus X2 is an amazingly powerful, if eccentric, site-building program, and an incredible bargain at Amazon's current price.

I've been using it for a few weeks now, and I'm constantly being pleasantly surprised by the ease of use and the depth of the options. The individual features are way too elaborate to address here; one can download a full manual from Serif's site to get a sense of the full scope of the program.

If you're a raw beginner, prepare to put in a lot of work before you can take full advantage of the software. But if you give it time, you'll be rewarded. The combination of the enclosed printed manual and the help files are very well-produced, and don't make any unwarranted assumptions about the skill levels of the user.

About that eccentricity: An important thing to understand about WebPlus is that in many respects it's more like a desktop publishing program than a traditional WYSIWYG web page creation program. You specify a page width and depth, and build within that canvas. It relies on a lot of absolute positioning of graphic elements, which means you need to make a good assumption about the screen resolution and and browser window size your viewers will be using. And there are a lot of type effects inherited from the program's cousin, PagePlus, which result in creation of graphics files that are placed within the page. Attractive, but at the price of compatibility with web standards. (I've been using different incarnations of PagePlus for years, so I started out being familiar with Serif's tools and tactics.)

The skilled web programmers who offered rotten reviews, comparing with the likes of Dreamweaver, are missing the point. Dreamweaver (which I've used) is a muscle program that costs about 10 times what you'd pay for WebPlus. Different products, different markets.

I was surprised and delighted when I opened the package from Amazon and found not just a program CD and a jam-packed resource CD, but also a printed manual and two template packages, one with sample business sites and the other for home and hobby use. Those last three items are a la carte products elsewhere. Also, there's a thriving user forum that offers great tips and quick advice.

This latest incarnation of WebPlus was marketed strongly on the abundance of Smart Objects, which rely on a Serif host server to make response forms, forums, blogs, analytics tools, etc., a drag and drop process, rather than items that require scripting on a full hosting service. Giving credit, these are free with the software, with only modest limits on total data volume (you can buy extra). But in the past few weeks that server has been plagued with large chunks of downtime, which can cause a whole site to hang. The user community has been up in arms, and Serif recently responded that the problems came in their expansion to a bank of multiple servers, and said they believe the worst is over. The service has been stable for several days, but I'd say the jury is still out on whether these tools are reliable in a commercial setting.

Bottom line: If you're starting out with a modest understanding of computers and the web, you should be able to use WebPlus X2 and its templates to produce professional-looking sites rapidly, at invitingly low cost.

Rating: 4 / 5

Web X2 is a little counter intuitive at first. Then again, isn't any bit of new software? Once you figure it out, it is a breeze to use. People keep telling me how professional my site looks. I have even started to build sites for other businesses. People are asking me to do web development more than my real business! I never expected that. [...]. My next big adventure will be using the Flash tools. Web X2 builds a great site for a fraction of the cost of other design tools. I am very happy.
Rating: 4 / 5

I really wanted to like this product, as in the past I've used PagePlus (long ago, when Serif was in Nashua, NH) and thought it was great value for the money.

Unfortunately, WebPlus X2 was a disappointment. I design professionally, and planned to use WPX2's touted eCommerce features with my existing sites. In HTML editors like Dreamweaver, one can open HTML pages in the program and see a reasonable WYSIWYG graphic representation of what the page will look like. With WPX2, you must import the page, and if you have used external CSS, you will NOT see what you designed.

Here's the problem: WPX2 does not recognize external style sheets--a major drawback for any serious designer, because external CSS is widely regarded as best practice. When you import that HTML page, all you see is a stack of disordered content. What this means is that you must design your site in WPX2, or restrict yourself to using table code and/or internal CSS if you want to see your design displayed properly in the editor.

It's all the more absurd, because Serif's own website is using external style sheets.

I contacted Serif tech support, trying to find out whether maybe I'd missed something. So far, no response.

The sad thing is that the program otherwise has a lot of nice features, and perhaps if I were a novice, it would be fine for my needs. The tools seem easy to read, and there are palettes galore. I'll hopefully be able to generate code for eCommerce and password sign-in features, and add it to my existing sites manually. But it would be much easier to open/import pages in WPX2 and work directly on them there.

Message to Serif: SUPPORT EXTERNAL STYLE SHEETS!
Rating: 2 / 5

This product is not very useful if you are buying it for blogging. You can't use the search feature with the blogs, also you can't control access to blogs. But the reason I gave this software only one star is because the support is so bad. No free telephone support AND no telephone support you can pay for. All you can do is send an e-mail request. I sent three and never got a response.
Rating: 1 / 5

I keep trying to tell myself that this program is not as good as it is, but it ALWAYS surprises me with the power and flexibility. It just doesn't quite make sense that I can make the websites that I make with a program so easy to use. I keep expecting to run into a wall, but I never do.

This is an absolutely stunning value.

Sure its not quite as powerful as Dreamweaver, but I think for most sites, it could really replace the Adobe offering.
Rating: 4 / 5