Build a site with no experience and look like a pro! (moonfruit.com)

Member Name: jennystevenson

Product:	moonfruit.com
Date:	04/03/01 (181 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy, professional looking, no experience required.

Disadvantages: Flash animation means slow download times, restricted options for the experts.

I've wanted to build my own website for a couple of years now, but have had no idea how to go about it and the thought of learning HTML or Java was daunting to say the least. Of course, I've visited user friendly sites such as Tripod, which help you build a website easily, but you always end up with the most basic of sites.

I saw a magazine article about moonfruit.com and how anyone could build a professional website with no experience of computer programming. Sceptical, I checked this site out and was hooked for hours (I still am).

Basically, you register with moonfruit, choose a username and password and you're then thrown into the world of web design to find out it isn't that scary after all. Unlike other sites, where the price to pay for free web space is a complicated address, moonfruit gives you an address at www.USERNAME.moonfruit.com : simplicity itself.

Instead of slogging through codes and commands, moonfruit lets you set up pages tailored to you, with the aid of various templates, which you can customise further if you want. It's basically done in a point and click fashion, selecting the components you want, adding text, moving images around the screen etc. If you want to customise it further, you get 20mb of webspace for your own uploaded files and images.

At a push, you could probably construct a well packed website in a couple of hours....pretty good going for a novice like me. If you get stuck, there's a comprehensive help function and technical support via e-mail at hand.

Moonfruit is very much a "Flash" animation orientated site, which has its blessings as you can add animated games, characters and music to your site to show off. On the down side, this does make for slow loading times, but as long as you have the flash plug-in it pays to be patient. Moonfruit is no place to make money on the net, as they forbid you from placing advertisers banners on your site,
but then again, this is a great place to ease you gently into the world of web design.

It's free, you've got nothing to lose and Moonfruit is a community orientated place where you can browse through other members sites. One site not enough for you? You're allowed to create more than one if you feel like it.

This place may seem restricted in what you can do for anyone who is an expert in the web design field, but for the rest of us out there, it's a fantastic stepping stone and a bit of fun.

Oh and by the way, moonfruit will submit your site within categories you specify, to ten of the most popular search engines at the click of a button.

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