But if I told you the good news, that means I’ve got bad news: with a few exceptions, Homestead is just not any better than the plethora of website builders out there. Yes, it has a free trial you’ll want to give a try if simply to experience the web site for yourself. Go ahead, prove me wrong. But this Homestead review intends on giving you the straight facts – the good and the bad – about this Intuit-published website builder.

Homestead? Why Not Just Use Intuit?

Considering Homestead and Intuit will both run you about 5 bucks a month after you end their free trials, there’s one simple hurdle I can’t get past: why does Intuit even publish Homestead? Sure, Intuit is built and geared for small business owners who like features like online payroll and setting up stores, but Homestead is similar enough that there are more than just a few redundancies. Maybe Homestead is simply Intuit’s answer to other website solutions like Weebly or Site Build It, but there must be more to the story.

We bring this up because not everything is as hunky-dory in the world of Homestead as it is over at the Intuit flagship. The designs and templates present at Homestead are nothing to write home about, and the features – though comprehensive – don’t excite you like the ones over at Intuit. It’s quite the head-scratcher.

The solution is to review Homestead and forget that Intuit exists. Once we do this, we see it is actually a worthy entry into the world of Weebly’s and Jimdo’s. Just remember that the free trial runs up!

Building and Publishing with Homestead

There are two main strengths to Homestead’s overall offer, which we’ll address here: price and features. Let’s take a look at each.

The Big Variable: Price

As we stated before, you start out your Homestead experience with a free trial, which actually better resembles a “first month free” offer. If you don’t sign out of the free trial after a month, then you’re on the hook for $4.99 in proceeding months. It’s not a bad way to get people to sign up and, hey, if you can’t remember to cancel an account after a free trial then you probably deserve to be billed that $4.99.

The escalation to $4.99 each month isn’t exactly horrendous, either. Considering you can handle just about all of your website needs at Homestead for that price, it’s a great way to build a quick, easy, and cheap Internet presence. And since one of the features at Homestead allows you to use your own domain name, you’ll avoid the hazards of a “yournamehere.homestead.com” monstrosity. Oh, and speaking of those features…

What Will You Get in the Features?

This is where Homestead makes up the most ground. A simple browsing of their features yields important information. You can use your own domain name, have your own email address, employ analytics, add a blog, accept payments through PayPal – the whole shebang. While it’s not quite as sophisticated as its parent sitebuilder, Intuit, it’s still a capable website builder in its own right. Other sites might make you pay more for the full gamut of features, so Homestead’s flat-price option at least keeps things simple. And you always know what you’re getting.

How it Feels Using Homestead

Admittedly, Homestead is better tailored to a less advanced audience than is Intuit. Intuit allows for a legitimate small business presence online; Homestead is more like pitching a tent and camping out online. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, and heck – if you’re someone who wants to get started off simple, Homestead is exactly the type of sitebuilder you’ve been waiting for.

Because you’re not on the hook for the first thirty days, you’ll be able to explore all of the features Homestead has to offer without a credit commitment. This gives you the freedom to take your time in selecting from a lot of templates – though don’t expect Homestead to reinvent the design wheel for you – and upload your own images and logos while integrating a store or blog. Depending on your ultimate goals, Homestead should be able to suit your Internet skills pretty admirably. And yes, that’s a fancy way of saying it’s a great “Internet for dummies” site.

The Big Question: Do I Recommend It?

As good as I’ve made Homestead sound, there’s still one big complaint I have: Homestead doesn’t really have a strong identity. If it’s for small businesses, why charge as much as a superior service like Intuit? If it’s for the simple crowd, wouldn’t you be better off paying nothing at a quality site like Yola or Weebly?

It sounds like a rhetorical question, but it’s one you’ll really want to ask yourself. Because depending on your goals, there’s a good chance you won’t find that Homestead is the right sitebuilder for you. Unfortunately it’s got some excellent features and a simple pricing system that don’t really seem to fit the intended market. I know: $4.99 a month isn’t exactly steep, but it’s $4.99 per month more than you should be paying if you really know what you’re doing.

If you want to follow this Homestead review’s recommendation, give the free trial a good testing out. You may find that Homestead’s quality features are easier to use than the ones you find at another site. Heck, you don’t have to listen to me. But if you only want to sign up for one website builder today, keep browsing Clickfire for a review of one of the superior sitebuilders. After all, if Homestead is not the best website builder you can find, that’s probably just good news.

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So after all that hype, how do they really compare? It’s time to turn to one of our favorite reviewing tools: the Table of Truth.

Comparing Features

The first Table of Truth deals with the big issues – bandwith, domain add-ons, customer support. These are the kinds of things users are looking out for and want to know if they’ll be receiving it before they place an order with any one company. Suffice it to say, it can be a big deal to a lot of people, and if you’re shelling out your own money for a .com acre of your own, you might just be one of those people.

As you can see, BlueHost (by the way – check our our individual Bluehost review here at Clickfire) spends a lot of time in either the “unspecified” or “unlimited” category, suggesting it has a lot of potential as a hit-or-miss hosting provider. But a simpler explanation might be that BlueHost isn’t as good at posting up a lot of its features as it could be, especially considering how much they’ve already got to brag about, keeping up with Just Host in a number of categories that no one else I’ve recently reviewed has been able to.

Pricing

How about the issue of cold, hard cash? Let’s take a look.

You’ve got to hand it to BlueHost for keeping things simple – there’s no incentive to committing to more or less time with them because the price remains the same. At least as far as their current offerings are concerned. Just Host gets an edge because you can save a few bucks by going with a longer-term commitment, but the edge is small because I dislike long-term commitments (Not all long-term commitments, ladies).

Note: Prices above don’t include coupons or discounts. Check the web hosting reviews to see if coupons or price cuts are available. We try to list the best and most current discounts in the list and on the Clickfire review pages.

Conclusion

What are we to conclude of these well-matched and entirely-similar hosting providers? Well, there’s simply very few ways you can go wrong if your choice is down to BlueHost vs. Just Host. Both of the companies provide plenty of bang for the buck, unlimited real estate, and generally won’t charge you an arm and a leg for their services. You want more for your money? Start gambling.

So I was actually a little surprised when I checked out Yola and found it to be quite the audacious little website builder. Their portfolio of Yola-created sites was better than most cookie-cutter website builders. Their shopping cart abilities instantly makes them a contender for any small business coming Yola’s way. Their drag-and-drop interface keeps things simple, which is nice if you’ve never even heard of HTML, let alone understand it.

What does this all mean for you? Well, it depends on what kind of website you’re looking to build. But the truth is that Yola has a surprising amount of versatility with an attractive price range – depending on what you need, as we’ll detail later – and is simple enough to use that even your 15-year-old should be able to figure it out. Heck, even Internet newbies who can qualify for senior citizen discounts shouldn’t be intimidated at all.

You might be convinced too, after a quick gander at this humble Yola review. So without any further ado, let’s see what has this reviewer so giddy.

First Things First: When I Hear “Free,” I Like It

Usually I like to tackle the price issue last in my reviews of sites here at Clickfire.com, but for the Yola review I’m going to change up the formula a bit. Let’s talk about price right now. Yeah, I said it.

I bring it up because the price is one of the things I can’t quite figure out about Yola. It essentially works in three tiers: free, less free, and way less free. In other words: free for the Yola Free package, $49.95 a year for Silver, and then $349 plus $49.95 every year after that for Yola Premier. Confused? Now you see where I’m coming from.

The good news is that much of the meat of Yola actually comes with Yola Free. The website creation tools are all available there, including analytics, customer support, and the click-and-drag site builder. You’ll also be able to create 5 sites from your Yola Free account, which is a lot more than you’ll see from other providers.

So with all of this good stuff free, why does Yola really have more advanced pricing tiers? Do they really expect me to pay over $300 for their “professional design help”? I’m sure it’s nice and everything, but if I’m building a site on my own, I’m expecting to pay zero and expecting to be happy about it. I’m not very motivated to pay $49, let alone $349.

But since all of the important features come with Yola Free, there’s really no reason to fret about it. The price is right, and this means you can really build “websites for nothing,” as the title of this humble Yola Review advertised.

So if you’re paying nothing, you can’t expect much, right? With Yola, you’re wrong.

Features of the Attractive Variety

Yola really delivers the goods here. I love the drag-and-drop editing system, and I love how easy it is for you to design a site that isn’t really anything close to the cookie-cutter templates we’re so used to from free website building sites. Yola definitely overdelivers on its free pricing features, which may be why it seems to be underdelivering elsewhere.

An editable background is a nice feature that allows your site to pop free of that cookie cutter. How many times have you created a site only to hate the fact that the background was only black or only blue, or only…well, you get the point. If you can create a nice-looking site like this using Yola Free, then you’re good to go. (You can find more examples of Yola sites in their site gallery).

There’s a limit on the files you can upload to your site – a maximum of 15 megabytes isn’t so great – but that seems to be one of the few weaknesses of the Yola free package. To sell your wares on your Yola site, just use PayPal’s shopping cart, which you should be able to integrate easily into your Yola site. This does appear to be part of the Yola free package.

Admittedly, the Yola designs and templates aren’t spectacular, but they’re much more serviceable compared to the other free website builders out there. If you definitely want to go with a free website builder, then Yola should be at the top of your list.

Other features? You can buy and host your domain names through Yola, which costs extra but is a way of simplifying things if that’s what you want out of your website builder. I’d recommend keeping your own hosting arrangement with a reliable and cheap hosting company and integrating it with a website builder like Yola – but that’s only if your heart is set on using a website builder in the first place.

Do You Seek Yola?

What to conclude about Yola? It’s definitely on my list of “impressive sites to suggest to friends should they ever ask about free website builders.” And no, if you’re wondering, I don’t actually have that list hanging around somewhere. Even so, it’s hard to argue with the quality of Yola’s templates, the ease of the design functionalities, and the general value you get for registering for free.

If you want to use Yola properly, try to avoid the payments and simply work things out yourselves. Treat Yola like a free site and use all of its free features to the fullest – when you do that, you’ll be getting quite a bargain. It’s also simple enough to introduce to the less computer-savvy among us, so if you want to show Yola to your friend, you can definitely do a lot worse.

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The Yahoo! Site Builder is the kind of thing you’ll want to either bookmark or add to your mental list of online resources so you’ll remember that it’s at your disposal. If designing a web site used to be difficult, it certainly isn’t these days. And while it will take a little creativity and skill to turn Yahoo’s templates into professionally-styled website, you should never feel like starting your own online business is really all that tough. Ever.

But like most online products and services, there are a few kinks and issues that we’ll have to wrestle with. Stick with us and this Yahoo! Site Builder review and you might just learn that these kinks aren’t enough to deter you from starting your own online shop in about an hour. And yes, things move just that fast these days.

Above: From maybe two minutes from downloading to using the program, I was already designing a new site.

What’s So Great Here?

Truthfully, what excites me about Yahoo! Site Builder (other than the required exclamation point after “Yahoo,” of course) isn’t anything that really reinvents the wheel. Putting together a website using Yahoo’s free downloadable software (which is easy to procure, by the way) is just as easy as putting together a website in an online software like Weebly. You choose from templates, you upload pictures, you enter in text. People have been doing that since the Internet Stone Age.

But what works out so well is Yahoo’s eagerness to please. Yahoo, after all, offers online stores that can easily be created and hosted within just a day or two, provided you know what kind of store you want to build. And this short timeline applies whether you’re an expert HTML author or someone who just wants to sell recipes online: it’s just…easy.

Yahoo works to make it that way by integrating its sitebuilder with the rest of its small business services. Having all of the above can put you out around ten bucks a month, depending on your individual pricing plan, but if that’s all it costs you to host your online shop, then that should be considered nothing less than a coup for your small business.

Setting up a shop on your Yahoo! Site Builder program isn’t a major challenge. Using a third party like PayPal should enable you to procure a solid bunch of HTML codes that you can simple copy and paste right into areas on your Yahoo site. Once you’re ready to roll, you simply export that Yahoo site to your Yahoo account and you’ll be good to publish. That is, of course, as long as you get everything else from Yahoo. And therein lies a complaint.

What’s So Bad Here?

There’s really not much to complain about when it comes to Yahoo! Site Builder except that it makes you publish your site to another Yahoo! service – and if you want to circumvent this process, you’ll have to be a more tech-literate user than I.

This isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the world. Some people can use Yahoo’s small business services to create an online shop and perform just fine. Even if your long-term goals include hosting your own online shop, it can’t hurt to start somewhere. It’s a great overall “foot-in-the-door” program that Yahoo offers. You should definitely consider it.

But if you’ve already got other solutions handy, then there’s a chance Yahoo! Site Builder isn’t the right sitebuilder for you. But if you’ve already paid for it and need to get your money’s worth out of it, you can definitely look into ways of publishing your third-party designs and integrations via the Yahoo! Site Builder.

Hey, it’s a minor complaint, and that’s a good thing.

Building a Blog, Album, or Portfolio Site with Yahoo

As Yahoo tailors its web publishing services around creating a web site you can sell from, its individual functions have their advantages and disadvantages. For example, if you’re looking to create a blog, paying for all of Yahoo’s site design services doesn’t make any sense. Other sites like Blogger and WordPress can offer you all you need to publish a blog without charging you for it.

Similarly, album and portfolio sites often work better with other vendors. Yahoo! Site Builder might work for some specific purposes, but truly optimizing your web presence probably means going with other software and online providers if you want to really think outside the box.

Conclusions

Yahoo! Site Builder is a great product and service – definitely something you’ll want to look into if you’ve never launched an online business before. Setting it up is simple, as is integrating your online store and accepting credit card orders. If you’re the kind of person who feels overwhelmed at the prospect of creating as complicated as an online store, Yahoo! Site Builder is exactly the type of software you need to become acquainted with. Things aren’t as difficult as they might seem.

At the same time, however, more advanced users will probably graduate from Yahoo! Site Builder and embrace other ways of getting their business established online. Yahoo! Site Builder makes for great training wheels and, heck, if the business works, there’s no reason to fix what ain’t broken. But not everyone will think Yahoo! Site Builder is right for them.

If you’re a beginner to this web design thing, however, that’s not really your concern. You should be excited that software like Yahoo! Site Builder even exists – and is as cheap and easy to acquire as it is. I don’t mind living in a world where Yahoo! Site Builder exists. Why should you?

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Blog Engage is a “community” for bloggers, a much smaller operation than Digg, but reminescent of the large scale Digg bannings that occurred not long before Digg v4 and the decline in traffic. Many recall the controversy surrounding Digg’s ban of its number 2 user, Zaibatsu for what was arguably a technicality beyond the users control.

In this screenshot Clickfire obtained from the Google cache, David Leonhardt’s Blog Engage stats confirm his investment in the site. If one could estimate it takes 1 minute to submit a story for voting, his time spent contributing would be a little over six hours. This doesn’t include the over one hundred comments and thousands of votes.

Why did Blog Engage ban Leonhardt? Leonhardt and other Blog Engage users ponder the question in a blog post about the social media “fail.” Unfortunately, no definitive conclusions have been reached or communication received from the owner of Blog Engage as to why the banning took place. At first, it appeared it was a technical issue as Mr. Leonhardt and the owner of Blog Engage reportedly had a friendly channel of communication. However, there seems to be at this date, no answer.

One Blog Engage user speculated that the owner was not merely joking when he remarked:

“Yeah great idea for an article, now I know who to ban and not ban at blog engage haha Joking guys! At the end of the day we have to find what works best for us. If you have the right people working for you and you pay well all these ideas can be successfully implemented.”

We couldn’t help but note the irony in the Blog Engage Twitter account description that states:

…Build your Backlinks with our RSS Services, Increase SEO, Comments, Traffic, Readers, and Build your Brand

Disclosure: the owner of Clickfire also had an account deleted at Blog Engage.

And while we’re having this depressing discussion at the corner of the bar, in walks Wix, a free website builder intent on changing that public perception and nailing the niche market of people who want flashy websites with none of the canned-Flash juices.

So how does Wix deliver? Well, like so many free website builders, it’s based on a fairly easy-to-edit, easy-to-publish template system, which doesn’t leave room for a lot of originality but can be pretty satisfying indeed. Here are a few more notes on the Wix system.

Flash-Can Juices or Delicious Pan Drippings?

After checking out Wix and its templates a bit myself, I was able to discern that this is indeed a Flash editor (really, there’s no Flash creation going on here, because you’re frequently working from their templates) that can deliver you that brand-ready website you’ve been craving without a lot of the hassle of going through a professional Flash designer. Flash design can be a fickle thing, and it takes a good amount of skill to execute well – in many cases, a bad Flash sight is more distracting than a bad HTML site.

So if you already know that you’re the Flash type, you’re ready for Wix. But there are still two things to consider:

Customization
You want your website on your Flash terms, right? So how are you going to deal with the Flash templates that restrict your overall vision in to the presupplied tables and backgrounds they provide? You’re going to need a bit of skill. That’s not daunting for many people, but if you’re someone who’s intent on getting a professional-looking website for cheap without having to work on it hard yourself, I’d probably recommend a different website builder. Such is the fickle nature of Flash.

Is the Flash Worth It?
Seriously. If you aren’t doing Flash right, it probably isn’t worth it. You’d be surprised just how little your potential customers or readers care about you having Flash, as long as your website delivers what they came for – the content, the shopping, whatever you’re offering. Is Flash really worth the extra effort it might take?

Is It Really So Hard?

To be fair, there’s nothing Wix does that makes the process of Flash editing really hard. The thing is as simple to use as Microsoft Paint, for crying out loud. But with simplicity comes the sacrifice of options. This is indeed Flash for the masses, and if you’ve got bigger ambitions, this might not be the Flash provider for you.

Still, ultimately I can recommend Wix because of the following features:

• Price. There is none. You simply sign up, start working – you don’t even have to verify your e-mail – and that’s it. It’s really hard to knock a service that doesn’t ask, well, anything of you.
• Simplicity. Yes, it can be a double-edged sort because simplicity means sacrificing options, but let’s be honest – if you really wanted a Hall-of-Fame Flash site, you wouldn’t be reading this review right now.
• Quickness. Quick Flash is not an easy thing to pull off, and Wix does it. If I’m honest, it’s the first I’ve seen accomplish this feat.

So yes, ultimately I give Wix the thumbs up and the luxury of a positive review. Even I am not immune to the charms of Flash.

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Many businesses are turned off from using public cloud services whilst fears over the security of sensitive data and applications exist.  Public cloud hosting services are now well established but experts still point to it taking up to 2 years for all potential risks to be identified and security improved sufficiently for businesses and enterprises to have enough confidence to use a cloud service.

Even the release of a summary of the strategic security issues within a cloud service by the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) has done little to allay fears.  This report issued earlier this year looked at the strategic and tactical security issues facing any data center which provides cloud hosting services, along with recommendations to deal with them.

Despite the low uptake, confidence within the industry is growing as the biggest security firms have issued notice of pending product launches which are aimed at solving many of the problems associated with cloud hosting.  For customers this is a big change in the way security issues are being addressed as typically they are forced to take up a new service before any consultation on security has occurred.  Instead of dealing with security problems on a ‘as they happen’ basis, they are instead looking at security pro-actively and putting measures in place before businesses take up a service.

A study by Aberdeen Group’s Derek Brink was published in July of this year.  The study called ‘Security and Cloud Best Practices’ talked to 110 IT business, yet almost half of these said they were pushing cloud providers to apply adequate security measures before they will switch.  Trust within the industry is fairly low at present however, analysts do point out that there is little evidence to show that security within a public cloud is poor.

In the fact, studies have proven that cloud hosting structures provided today are often more secure and able to deal with any attacks far better than most private networks.  But businesses are still reluctant to sign up with less than 170 of 500 surveyed by IDC in August of this year saying they thought a cloud hosting provider’s security was more secure than their own in-house architecture.  This comes in direct conflict with those who have made the move to cloud services who say they are confident that their providers offer better security than their own IT department could deploy.

It would appear then that there is still some confusion about cloud hosting and the level of security if can offer.  Providers have done little to build confidence with most remaining silent about their security measures, partly because they do want to divulge those practises which give them an advantage over their competitors and partly because divulging their security practises could leave them open to attack.

This it seems could be the deep rooted problem.  If providers are not forthcoming about their security practises and the depth to which they run then businesses will not be satisfied that a provider is doing enough to ensure security of data and critical applications within a cloud environment.  It may only be through certification by third parties such as ISO 2077 that businesses will gain sufficient confidence that providers will deliver on their security promises to take up cloud services.

News article written by Georgina Clatworthy, a freelance writer working on subjects related to business, IT and technology.  I am not associated with Quality Tech but I can recommend them for secure hosting services to suit any business need.

Image source

This is one of the coolest little generators especially if you’re an SEO! Creating linkbait articles is a great way to draw readers in to your website or blog. Link bait articles typically contain a catchy title and a list. People tend to like them as they are usually an easy read, interesting, and can be fun or whimsical. This generator will give you plenty of ideas for writing linkbait articles! Just put in your desired keyword and “submit” for great, catchy titles.

Create some linkbait now!

2. The Dialectizer

This is one of the most entertaining generators I’ve ever discovered! The Dialectizer can take text or web pages and instantly creates parodies of them. Try it out by selecting a dialect, then entering a URL or English text in the fields. My personal favorite is to transform my articles into Jive.

Use dis doodad to dialectize yo’ content! Right on!

3. Insult-o-Matic

Again, this is one of my favorite generators not only for entertainments sake, but also to add some comedy or flare to my content. There have enough insults, put-downs, come-backs and rants to occupy you for the rest of your life. As they state on their site: “Be prepared to be severely insulted! Insult-o-Matic is not for the weak at heart, the easily offended, or children.”

Get insults here!

4. Upside Down Text

Create upside down text with this generator. This JavaScript program converts English letters to unicode characters and symbols that look inverted, to make it look like you’ve created upside-down text on the computer. Enjoy this trick on internet forums, blogs, IM, & chat!

Turn your text upside down…

5. Dummy Text Generator

This tool is helpful for web designers who need to fill in their sites with “dummy” content. This generator gives you the option for Lorem Ipsum or English dummy text. Choose the number of words, paragraphs, and other options. This is one of the best dummy generators out there. Simple and sweet!

Generate dummy content here…

6. Article Title Generator

Have a keyword you’re trying to write about, but just can’t think of the right kind of article to write? Plug it into the Article Title Generator and you’ll get more ideas than you can shake a stick at! Just enter the keyword or topic and get your list of article title combinations.

It only takes a second. Give it a spin…

7. Random Word Generator

Generate a random word based on the parameters that you choose. Select a Word Type and Complexity and hit “generate” to get your random word. This can be useful if you’re having a creative block.

Get plenty of random words here!

8. Word Constructor

Are you looking for a random word or do you want to generate a nickname? Do you need a domain name, a name for your child, company, pet or band? Use this random word generator to generate new words or change existing ones.

Construct creative words in a snap!

9. Word Generator

Still need a good name for your domain or business? The Word Generator is a tool for creating keywords or keyword phrases based off of the root word or syllable you choose. So, just choose the length of the word and the beginning of the word and you’re good to go.

Word Generator…simple and good

10. Anagram Server

Type a word into this little gizmo and you’ll get a list of anagrams spit out for you. Did you know Rice Flick was an anagram for Clickfire?

Get your hot, steaming plate of anagrams here!

11. Random Story Generator

Want a short story made for something, but you’re not a good writer or just too lazy? Use the Random Story Generator to quickly create a hilariously random story. Just choose your characters, how the ending should be, and some other story points.

Get a laugh out of this generator!

12. Random Title Generator

Generate random titles with the click of your mouse! If you have writer’s block for that next great novel or article, just start clicking away on this generator. You’re sure to get lots of ideas as you click through all these random titles.

Give it a shot if you want titles!

13. namefunk

Have some fun with your text and convert it using namefunk. This one’s mostly just for fun and to add a little pizzaz (or confusion) to your readers. But we wouldn’t have it here if it was completely useless. So get creative with this one and make something cool!

Funk up your text with namefunk

14. Weird Generator

And wow! If you liked the namefunk (above) you will like this one even more! Create more funky text styles with this Weird Generator.

Show off your text bling with this weird generator…

15. Pass Phrase Generator

If you need passwords created then this is the perfect tool for you! I’m usually not very creative with my passwords, and I can always use new ideas. This generator is awesome for creating any kind of password you want.

Give the Pass Phrase Generator a go!

16. The Instant Art Critique Phrase Generator

“Although I am not a painter, I think that the disjunctive perturbation of the Egyptian motifs brings within the realm of discourse the distinctive formal juxtapositions.”

Yeah…you get the idea. The instructions are simple. Just type any five digit number in the field, click ‘Create,’ and enjoy your ready-made art critique.

Simple art critique for the uninspired…

17. Dislexicon

If you’re still looking for more crazy words to inspire you then check out Dislexicon – The English Language Extender.

Get dyslexic with your words here…

18. Lipsum

Lorem Ipsum galore! Need that perfect chunk of randomness for some filler content? Check out this generator. You won’t be disappointed here.

Lorem Ipsum for any occasion!

19. HTML Text Generator

Don’t know HTML? Use this generator to create some of those basic text lines you need. Choose from the dropdown options and insert your text you want displayed.

Get HTML text for any situation.

20. Textism

Still need some more HTML to satiate your appetite? This one should do the trick! Similar to the generator above, but with some different options and a little sleeker interface.

Get more HTML here.

1. Can Impact Your Search Engine Ranking
2. Can Increase Traffic To Sites
3. Universal in Popularity
4. More Budget-Friendly Than Ever
5. Communicates Like No Other Media
6. Not Just For The Web

1. Web Video Can Impact Your Search Engine Ranking

Web video is playing a vital role in the search engine rankings thanks to Google’s Universal Search system. The new system pulls in news, local listings, images and of course videos that are relevant to your search. As a result YouTube videos are frequently appearing on page 1 of Google, rapidly taking over the rankings of standard website results. Video sharing sites like YouTube also have an array of tools that can be optimized for the search engine results. Making use of keyword heavy titles, tags, descriptions and closed captions when filling in the data on your YouTube web videos can help to get your content found and push your YouTube video to the top of both Google and YouTube search rankings.

2. Web Video Can Increase Traffic To Sites

Web video is being used as an online marketing strategy due to its great ability to increase traffic to websites and blogs. By embedding a web video onto a website next to interactive web-links you can increase the chances of those web-links being interacted with. As the audience’s attention will be sustained through the use of the embedded video the user will spend time looking at the content and information around the video such as the interactive web-links. By getting the web-link to tease the audience’s curiosity or by using it to provide information relevant to the video you will start to see more traffic appearing in your desired locations, which could help to improve those crucial conversion rates.

3. The Popularity Of Web Video Is Universal

Web video has become a staple in the online browsing experience for the majority of Internet users. Website YuMe gave some insight into the popularity of web video in February 2011 when it documented that 49% of Internet users watched web video daily. Now this wasn’t for just a few moments, YuMe reported that this percentage was actually on the basis of watching web video for over 7 hours per person, per week. With the popularity of video sharing sites like Vimeo and YouTube rising every week, these figures will only continue to rise in the future.

4. Web Video Is More Budget-Friendly Than Ever

Web video is now so accessible and affordable to businesses that it can be easily commissioned and marketed within their budgets. Technological advancements, increased technological competition and improvements in free technological equipment such as software, web hosting and online distribution has meant that every area of web video is now more universally available to businesses of any size than ever before. For example your Webcam on your computer can record the video, if you’re a PC or Mac user you can use free software like iMovie or Windows Movie Maker to edit your video and you can use free hosting site like YouTube to distribute it to a worldwide audience for absolutely free.

5. Web Video Can Communicate Like No Other Media

Web video can connect with clients and consumers in a way that no other media can. DoubleClick reported that web video based advertisements saw their brand awareness improve amongst its audience by 10% more than standard print or audio ad formats. DoubleClick also noted that audiences appeared to favour the businesses with web video content much more than those without such content or using alternative content. DoubleClick stated that this change was because the web video represented the brand messages of such businesses in a simple and effective way.

6. Web Video Isn’t Just For The Web

Web video can be enjoyed off the Internet too. Digital videos will be saved in digital video file formats. This file format can be uploaded to the likes of Vimeo, YouTube and Daily Motion as mentioned previously, but it can be just as effectively offline as well. Video files can be put into Power Point presentations, distributed on DVDs, USB sticks, portable hard-drives and on phones and tablets for users to access at their own convenience. This flexibility makes web video a very versatile and useful media that can cater for the purposes for any business.

Summary

By understanding and taking in these essential reasons why businesses are using web video in their marketing strategies you can start to develop similar strategies for your company and start getting involved with video.

This guest blog post is courtesy of Andy Havard, a Marketing Executive at Skeleton Productions, a UK based web video production company.

But that’s a small gripe. A quick glance at the features and capabilities over at uCoz will COZ U to give it a second look. And, yes, they already have me marching in step with their tagline. There must be something to this mysterious and intriguing website builder. This calls for a comprehensive uCoz review. U with me?

A Million Things to Like

Believe it or not, uCoz’s features – which they’ll tell you about right away – are quite advanced as far as free website builders go. Some of the most memorable ones include:

Free hosting and unlimited disk space. How many times will you run into a Jimdo – a site that gives you just a pittance of disk space and hosting in its free plan only to give you just a little more in their pay-us plans? uCoz avoids these hoops entirely and gives you the goods with their free website builder, meaning you’ll have a lot of space to explore your sitebuilding techniques in and it won’t cost you a thing. Always a plus in my book.

Free domain hosting. In other words, you can use uCoz to create a site that you host at www.yoursite.com. This should be a basic function at just about any website builder but, sadly, it’s not.

Free support. Are you noticing a theme here? Just about all the good features at uCoz are available for free, including customer support and access to a community of fellow uCozzers. This means you don’t have to worry about being ripped off by customer support once you commit your credit card to your cause. After all, nothing costs anything here.

If you’re a careful consumer, however, there should be one alarm bell ringing in your head. If everything is free, it must not be such a great service, right? Well, there are a few ways to evaluate the overall quality of a sitebuilders like uCoz. Let’s take a look at each of them and see what kind of dirt we can dig up.

Delving into the Template and Design Quality

The truth is that the uCoz designs are not the greatest you’ll find out there. They’re better suited for personal and pleasure sites than a true-blue professional web presence. Heck, isn’t that the case with most of the free website builders you’ll find these days? A quick browsing of some of the better-designed websites at uCoz doesn’t yield the most amazing designs in the history of web design, but they’re up to a certain standard and certainly seem to serve their individual purpose. uCoz isn’t a great website builder for anyone with a ton of ambition for their web presence, sure, but that’s not what you really care about if you’re looking for a free website service to begin with.

If some of the web sites you post as shining examples of how good your website builder works, then they should all look clean – and they should all work. uCoz’s portfolio doesn’t always live up to this simple standard, which makes me wonder about the end result of the websites you plan on building.

What About Function and Use-ability?

Part of me wants to be more than superficial here, but uCoz’s web site is pretty ugly. The registration form seems like an HTML student just created it and while the “create a website” button is nice and big, it doesn’t guarantee an easy website building experience. I much prefer the in-your-face drop-and-drag simplicity of a website like Weebly because it’s the kind of website I can recommend to someone who’s looking to build something quickly. uCoz’s own interface leaves a lot to be desired.

That’s not to say that uCoz’s sitebuilding process is a complete failure. It’s just not quite as satisfying as some of the other big-button sites. And since we’re really talking about setting up a simple site here, I want as much simplicity as I can get.

Let’s be honest: Function or Fun?

If there’s one thing uCoz excels at, it’s the overall functions it serves. For free, no less. We’ve detailed the features earlier on, but it’s important to remember that these features should be considered crucial to discerning which website builder really delivers the goods. uCoz is eager to give away some of these features when it could easily charge you $10/month for them and no one would bat an eye. That’s an excellent sales pitch right off the bat, and certainly reason enough you should poke your foot in the door and give their site a try.

But uCoz doesn’t have the “fun” factor you’d expect from a sitebuilder in its class. The site isn’t fun to explore and use, for one thing. If you want a great website, you’d kind of expect your sitebuilder to host its own great website too, no? You can’t really trust a web designer of any sort if their own web page looks like they created it from scratch and never bothered to polish it. That’s exactly the vibe uCoz puts off.

Even so, you can’t deny the attractiveness of the features and pricing at uCoz. It’s worth a good look if you’re really dead-set against paying anything to set up your own website. Unlike other website builders, uCoz isn’t going to raise the price on you after thirty days and say your first free month was a “trial.” Instead, it’s just going to give you everything it has – without the style or panache, perhaps, but some people have no need for such things. If you’re interested in creating a site for free, uCoz should be considered a must-visit.

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