I was impressed by features described in a screencast on this website maker front pages: it does not matter who you are and what you do – whether your goal is to create a simple multipage website, this site builder is for you.

You do not have to be a web developer or be familiar with HTML and programming languages – intuitively understandable interface and an astonishing variety of tools makes the process of creating a website a pleasure comparable with working on a enduring masterpiece. At  the same time, if you are a developer and your up to your elbows in code, you must remember the revolution in Windows programming world that has been made by Borland Delphi; BlueVoda website builder is quite the same for web! There is even an Alignment Palette in this website maker! :]

Frankly speaking, a memory of Microsoft Frontpage, poor quality of HTML pages generated by it and  a necessity of using different tools to clean it up was still fresh in my mind when I first bumped into BlueVoda website maker in November, 2006. While searching a handy tool to create a website – this website maker has dramatically changed since then and become even more mature and cool. To cut a long story short, BlueVoda generates quite pretty code and includes only those “libraries” that are required for functions you have selected for creating your website by this website maker. For example, if you want PayPal cart to work on your site -  ok, BlueVoda site builder adds support of PayPal features automatically.

Let’s take a closer look at this site builder I am so satisfied with (as they say, it’s easy enough for children to create websites).

To start with, after downloading the website builder installation package (very light – 4 megabytes) and  a successful and quick setup, I received “How to get started” email from VodaHost team . In order that the user’s life became a little bit easier, they created an article explaining everything that a user needs to know on topics of creating and publishing a website with help of this website maker.Then I started to investigate what this website builder can do for me.

It is a typical (in the best sense of the word) WYSIWYG editor with dragging and dropping ability, which requires minimum effort to create a fully functional website with e-commerce enabled. You do not have to use table layouts at all. There is a great range of objects like text, buttons, stylish drop down menus and multimedia items.This site builder runs on any modern Windows version.

I started from pasting a YouTube video into this website builder.It took 5 seconds to paste the embeded HTML code that I got from youtube.com video page. Then I selected “Preview in the browser” menu item, and voila! – Milo Ventimiglia gives an account about ‘Heroes’ series on my web page generated by a site builder! Yes, multimedia support works well in  the described website maker – QuickTime, Windows Media, Flash, Real Player and audio as well,  are entirely at your service.

It’s not a big deal to form your website into a professionally designed one with help of pre-designed website templates available for  a free download at BlueVoda site builder image library. There are lots of good pics for your website (for example, free US Government graphics and photos courtesy of Uncle Sam :] ), web page icons, bullets and arrows.

Then I attempted to create a website of my little company. As  a beginning, I selected “Grid” and “Snap to Grid” options to make it easier for me to place controls on the page with good alignment automatically. I added a navigation control (necessary if you want to create a cool website) and defined its items, captions and links. Then I added a logo of my company, typed some description texts and put them on the background of gradient cloud shape. I then added a gallery of our products by adding the correspondent HTML control and defining the list of images from my hard drive. Also,  I used this website builder’s layout control and put several nice looking glass buttons onto it so that I do not have to replace the buttons one by one every time I want to move them all several pixels right or left.

I do not recommend you to abuse the Marquee control since it can become irritating for users of your website.

In addition I used this website maker to add an ad banner rotator to show ads of our partners. After all this, I opened “Page HTML” dialog and pasted Google Analytics tracking JavaScript snippet in the “End of Body” section.

What is cool about BlueVoda site builder is that it copies all my selected images to its internal place so I do not have to worry about uploading them one by one.

The hardest thing about BlueVoda website builder is the problem of choice – it is tempting to add all the controls on the web page :]. There are 4 different kinds of menus you can add to the page, can you imagine? So be smart and check twice before publishing your page.

BlueVoda site builder has its own File Transfer Program – ‘One Click Publishing’ feature makes it a piece of cake even for novice users to publish results of their work. By default you can post your chef-d’oeuvre at VodaHost servers, but it is not a rocket science to do the same for your own one, using the same site builder.

All this seems even simpler if you check out the video help tutorials on most BlueVoda site builder features that can be found at BlueVoda website builder website.

Funny thing is that “Voda” means “water” in Russian, so “BlueVoda” must mean “blue water”. I do not know whether it is true or not, but this website maker’s logo contains something like a wave, and the uncluttered interface of this site builder is really designed in shades of pleasant blue.

All in all, I would strongly recommend BlueVoda website builder to those of you who have  little experience in building sites and want to be able to create professional websites.

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Warm regards Louise.

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Once you have installed the the BlueVoda website builder and you are ready to create website, you’ll find yourself facing a nice interface that can be completely customized to your will. For example, you can take away the menu bar, drag it and drop it wherever you think it will serve you better. The same applies to all toolbars that can be found inside this application.

This website builder doesn’t require any programming! Don’t get too excited, since not every grandma can use this tool in a blink of an eye. No matter if you like it or not, since even a hammer requires its user to know how to hold it, the same way you will have to know some basics about terms like Flash, ActiveX controls, Navigation Bar, Image Map and many others, but that’s not hard at all, since the program comes with links to some good video tutorials available for free on the Internet, just great to get you started.

If we leave the menu bar aside, we still have seven toolbars available – Standard, HTML, Align, Advanced and Extra Tools, Form Fields and Format. Each one has a lot of options available, and you can further customize them by adding and removing buttons as needed.

For example, the Extra Tools in the website builder allow you to add banners, image rollovers, ad banner rotators, photo galleries and more. Talking about each of the toolbars will take away your pleasure of discovering the program, so my advice can be only one: after installing it, hit the Video Tutorials button that you will find in the lower left corner of the interface (it took me a while to see it…) and you’ll have the world at your feet soon!

Templates is a magical word today, and BlueVoda couldn’t miss such an opportunity. There are a lot of templates that you can get and install from the producer’s website, which is good, but after installing the program you won’t find any template built in, which is bad.

Don’t hurry to leave your seats, there’s still something hidden! BlueVoda
Website Builder comes with a free FTP client, called Blue FTP. That would be great, only if this handy little tool wouldn’t be limited to connect only to VodaHost’s servers, which is pretty unfair, I think. This is like giving somebody a free car that won’t work unless it uses your gas and your roads.

Hurry up, install this and hit the Video Tutorials button!…and the Templates! Most of all, don’t forget about the Community Forum! Hit’em all and prepare for having a lot of fun building up your website!

The Good

This website builder program is small, has a nice interface that’s highly customizable and easy enough to use for most of us. Add the fact that it’s free to use and if you want to publish your sites to the Internet you will have to get a hosting account well priced with VodaHost…

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