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4 stars
Version: Web Page Maker 3.1
"Very Good WYSIWYG GUI Program With Plenty of Features"
Pros: Auto backup of whole site (or sections). Universal automatic link changes when page name changes. Include elements on all pages or just some. Re-order page elements. Built in flash slide show, add HTML or script elements, & 1 click iFrames a breeze.
Cons: No image wrap and text doesn't expand well when users increase text size in browser (so use size 12 font). This means you must take care when splitting text around images. CSS is on each page (slight clutter issue) but basic sites do validate.
Summary: As a Network Administrator (and not a web developer) I had used WebPage Maker Version 2 for years and was impressed. Each page needed it's own WebPage Maker file, so if you had a site with 300 pages, you had to have 300 separate files, and there were other problems. The New version is a dream - it creates the whole site within one single file. What's more, you can split a really large site up into folders on the web by creating more than one file, one for each section of the site, and just assign a different name for each upload area.
WebPage Maker has a built in Spell Checker which is really nice. It does lack the ability to create H1, H2, H3 etc. tags, but you can manually insert a block of HTML. I'd like to see that change in one of the next updates to have it done with the click of a button, but right now it's not there.
A few interesting things about the newer version 3.x are that you can re-order the page elements which is really cool if you do any SEO (Search Engine Optimization). This means that you can have five paragraphs (numbered 1 through 5) showing in one order for the site visitor - lets say paragraph 3, then 2, then 1, then 5 and finally 4 - but for the search engine spider you can show them in a different order. You can also put all of the text elements at the top of the order, and have all the flash, images and shopping cart code etc down at the bottom so the search engines get the pure meat of the text quickly.
You can also choose to upload each page or all pages as file extension .html, .htm, .shtml, .asp or .php and in the page properties instruct the program not to include the name of the generator (so your competition won't know you're using WebPage Maker - you can put any other "generator" in the header section that you choose.
You can create an image slide show quickly and easily (works best with all images starting out the same size and orientation - either portrait or landscape), resize the slide show by just dragging the edge - and you can create titles for each image with separate links to other pages in your site or to other websites - and use buttons so they can choose which image they want to see.
There are a bunch of built in canned flash effects like snowflakes and a little clock etc. but inserting flash, javascript, YouTube videos etc. etc. is super easy. Let's say you have some javascript for your sitemeter (so you can track visitors) or for your Google Analytics that you have to add to all the pages on your site. You add it to one page, right click and choose "include on all pages". Later, if you want to replace the sitemeter script with a different tracker (or add a second tracker) you just paste it into one box and it puts it on every single page automatically. You can also choose exactly which pages you want that code on by unchecking the pages where you don't want it.
Another really nice feature about the Version 3.x is that you can create a multitude of different types of text links that highlight in different ways. So if you want one that highlights the words in yellow, green, blue or red when the site visitor places his mouse over the text, you can do that.
WebPage Maker is the hands down easiest way to quickly build a professional looking website that I know of. I've tried dozens of programs - Kompozer, Dreamweaver, Front Page and others. You will need months of practice, maybe longer, to learn all of the features available in the new WebPage Maker, but you'll also be able to almost immediately get a good looking, functional, fairly simple site up faster with WebPage Maker than with anything else out there. WebPage Maker also re-sizes your great big oversized images for you when it uploads your pages to your site! That means no more giant pictures that take forever to load... Oh, and you can "import" pages from other web sites on the internet. That really comes in handy sometimes. For $49 bucks there's no way you can lose.
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