Latest From Blogigs - Build A Free Website

Posted: 24 Jun 2010 12:13 AM PDT

Received a review request via my contact page from a Mr. Sebastian Sarbia, PR manager of a new start-up website creator portal called Neosites. Since it was within my area of interest, I decided it could be fun to try it out and see what this new site can do. Mr. Sarbia was generous enough to offer me a Premium account, but since I have no plans to start anything new, I tried out the free version by creating a simple site for a friend instead.

First Impressions.

If you have tried other website creating portals like WEBs or 110MB, you will be quite at home when you land on Neosites. The selling point of Neosites, like others in the playing field, is the offer to host your sites for free. However, being a new kid on the block, Neosites do not seem to offer much other than the simplicity in creating your first online presence.

A free account means you will have to make do with a sub-domain name riding on Neosites.com. Setting up was easy. All you have to do is to register with an valid email account and a password and within 5 minutes, you can start building your first site.

Once you have chosen a suitable domain name, the rest is really easy and anyone who understands some English will be able to come up with quite a nice looking site within minutes.

The Templates.

The templates available are rather impressive and very professionally done. There are a couple of hundred templates from different niches for your choosing. Each of them is editable to a certain extent, meaning you cannot change the layout or colors but you can edit the logos and the contents.

Pages offered

By default, other than the Home page, you will get pages for

Contents where you are allowed to insert Images and Videos.
A Blog which works just like a normal blog with comments and options to add your RSS, Facebook and Twitter feeds.
A picture Gallery with the lightbox effect
A Video page where you can sort them into albums
A News page where you can post the latest trends in your niche
A Forum Page!
A FAQ page
A Product Catalog Page, if you intend to use your site as an eCommerce site
A Download Page for all your downloadable stuffs
A Contact page which comes with a contact form
A Various Form page
And lastly, Related Links or in our blogging terms a blogroll if you will.

Creating Your First Page

After deciding on your template the first thing you do is of course to make your Home Page unique. You are given the choice to edit the logo. A cool logo maker not much different from those you find elsewhere lets you create you own unique logo. You can also opt to upload your own if you wish to.

Default pictures can be changed at will and you can also add some special effects like peeling corners or sparkles when the mouse is hovered over the picture.

The Contents Page

The contents page unfortunately is quite disappointing as it offers fixed layouts. You are only allowed to place your pictures where the layout permits.

The text editor is also a letdown with very limited options. You cannot even change the text color. There are 2 icons which in normal cases, I would identify as permalink icons or insert links icon. The icon does flash up when you highlight certain text but unfortunately it does not work and I was not able to insert any links in the article.

The Blog Page.

The blog page editor fares much better. You are allowed to insert links, pictures, create ordered list, highlight text and change text colors. It works like a mini version of the text editor you see in WordPress, but I feel it is enough to create a nice and respectable looking blog post.

You can even moderate comments.

The Picture Gallery

Is impressive. You can order list your pictures as thumbnails. Though you cannot change the size of the thumbnails, it does not matter much. The thumbnail pictures opens to a scrolling Lightbox when clicked which I think is quite cool. The pictures however are trimmed down, to save loading time, I suppose.

The Contact Form.

Acts just like the contact forms we use in WordPress with options to let you add text before and after the form, You can also edit the acknowledgment message when the email has been successfully sent by the sender.

Last Opinions

That was as far as I went as the site I was creating needed nothing more. Overall, I think I can say I am happy though not exactly overjoyed with Neosites and it is not because I was using the Free account which has certain limits. The free basic version and the paid versions do not differ in terms of creating the site.

Maybe it is just me. I have been messing with WordPress blogs and Themes so long that creating something so basic just do not give me the thrill anymore. If this was my first attempt in creating a website all on my own, I am sure I would have been overjoyed at my “ability.”

However, Neosites will be a good place if you plan to have some minisites as landing pages for your affiliate products or as a small ecommerce site. The premium version lets you use your own top level domain name and some other added features. It cost $29 a month and even though it says unlimited monthly transfer, there was no hint as too how many domains you can add to that account. I will take it as one domain name per account. If you, like me at one time not too long ago had close to 50 minisites, bring out your calculator and do your own maths.

Visit Neosites to see for yourself what they have to offer.

No compensation was received for this review

SUBSCRIBER'S BONUS DOWNLOAD - 5 photoshop action scripts.
Add your opinions and comments for Build A Free Website

A Free And Soothing WordPress Theme The Soothing WordPress Theme Spent the last few days creating and testing a new WordPress Theme. Named it The Soothing Theme because I made the theme to be very soothing to the eyes and the longer you look at it the better you will like it. It has a...
PR3 Site For Sale Some of you might know that I have a blog that sells PLR Articles and eBooks. It used to have a PR4 but was demoted recently to PR3 due to lack of updates. Due to my many other commitments, I find that I have no time to really promote...
Contact Me Thank You for wanting to get in touch with me! Feel free , and I will reply as soon as time permits. Here are some reasons for wanting to contact me. Read more on Contact Me… SUBSCRIBER'S BONUS DOWNLOAD - 5 photoshop action scripts. Add your opinions and comments...
Build A Niche Site With Niche Devil About a year ago, I was frantically building niche stores using the Build A Niche Store aka BANs software. It was easy and it was fast. More importantly it was a fantastic money earner. In many cases, if I have done proper buying keyword research, a site that was...
Free Thesis Download – Beware! This blog here gets so many queries on the term “Free Thesis Download” or “Download Thesis For Free” and many similar terms from bloggers not wanting to pay for the Theme. In all fairness, paying $87 for a Theme that you are allowed to use only in a single...