Web Design Blog - Without Code | Website Builder

New Blog Updates: Multiple Post Layouts, AI Drafts, and More

Thu, 12 Mar 2026 19:51:29 GMT

If you use the blog inside the Without Code editor, you’ll notice a few new improvements that make it easier to create different post layouts, experiment with blog designs, and guide readers toward more of your content. These updates give you more flexibility when creating blog posts, along with a few workflow improvements that make managing your blog faster and easier.

Whether you're publishing long-form articles, quick updates, or visual posts, these new options give you more control over how your content is designed and how readers explore what comes next. Let’s take a look at what’s new.

Use Multiple Layouts in the Same Blog

Until now, blog posts within a single blog shared the same layout, which meant every post followed the same structure and design. Now you can create multiple layouts within the same blog and choose which layout each post should use, giving you more control over how different types of content appear.

This makes it easier to design posts around the content they contain. For example, you might create:

A layout designed for long-form articles
A layout that highlights images for photo-heavy posts
A simpler layout for quick updates or announcements

Each layout can be customized just like before, but now you can apply them selectively to different posts. This opens the door to more creative blog designs while keeping everything organized within a single blog.

This feature is available when using Editor 2.0.

To Use:

Open your blog layout settings to create additional post layouts. When editing a post, choose the layout you want to apply from the Post Layout dropdown .

Draft Blog Posts with AI

You can now generate an entire blog post in seconds using a new AI-powered draft option. Instead of beginning with an empty editor, you can choose to generate a full draft to help speed up the writing process.

The setup walks you through a few prompts, including your business details, what the post is about, who the content is for, and the tone of voice you want to use. Once those details are entered, the tool creates a complete blog post with structured content, images, and key post details already in place, giving you something you can review and refine before publishing.

This is a useful option for anyone who wants a quicker starting point for blog content, especially when outlining and first-draft writing tend to take the most time.

This feature is available when using Editor 2.0.

To Use:

Create a new blog post and choose Draft with AI . Fill in the requested details about your business, topic, audience, and tone, then generate the post and make any edits you want before publishing.

Duplicate Blog Layouts in One Click

Creating multiple layouts is now even easier thanks to a new duplication option. Instead of building each layout from scratch, you can duplicate an existing layout with one click and then adjust it to create a variation.

For example, you might duplicate a layout you already like and modify things like:

Spacing
Image placement
Sidebar content
Typography adjustments

This makes it much faster to experiment with new blog layouts or create variations for different types of posts without starting over.

This feature is available when using Editor 2.0.

To Use:

Open your blog layout settings, hover over an existing layout, and select Duplicate . You can then modify the copied layout to create a new variation for different types of posts.

More Control Over How You Display Additional Blog Posts

The All Posts widget now includes more options for how additional posts appear on your blog page. You can choose between several loading styles depending on how you want visitors to browse through your content.

Options now include:

Pagination controls for navigating between pages of posts
A Show More button that loads additional posts
The option to disable additional loading entirely

These settings give you more flexibility when designing your blog page and help you tailor how readers explore older posts.

To Use:

Add the All Posts widget to a page. In the widget settings, choose how additional posts load, including pagination , a Show More button, or no additional loading .

Create Anchors to Link Directly to Sections Inside Blog Posts

Another helpful improvement is the ability to create anchors within a blog post . Anchors allow you to jump to specific sections inside a page, and they’re commonly used in site navigation, single-page websites, and long-form content.

Instead of linking only to the top of a blog post, you can now link directly to an anchor within the article , allowing readers to jump straight to the section you want them to see.

This is especially useful for longer blog posts, tutorials, or guides where you want to reference a particular section. For example, you might link readers directly to:

A specific step in a tutorial
A section of a guide
A key part of a longer article

Using anchors inside blog posts makes it easier to guide readers through your content and share the exact section you want them to see.

Here are the CSS classes we’ve added:

.d-ext-mediaSlider-slidesContainer

.d-ext-mediaSlider-slide__contentContainer

.d-ext-mediaSlider-contentContainer__title

.d-ext-mediaSlider-contentContainer__description

.d-ext-mediaSlider-contentContainer__button

.d-ext-mediaSlider-slidesContainer__slide

.d-ext-mediaSlider-slidesContainer__slide--active

To Use:

Add anchors to sections within your blog post. When creating a link, select the blog post and choose the specific anchor you want to link to within that post.

More Flexibility for Your Blog

Together, these updates make the blog inside the Without Code editor more flexible and easier to manage. You can now create multiple layouts for different types of posts, duplicate layouts quickly when experimenting with designs, control how posts load on your blog page, and link directly to specific sections within your articles.

If you haven’t explored these new options yet, you can find them available now when working with blogs in the editor.

That's It (for the Moment...)

Thanks for reading all about what's new in the builder! As for what's next, we're busy working on some exciting large-scale builder features that will help you manage members, build more stylish stores, and integrate with more third-party platforms. Stay tuned!

New Editor Upgrades: Five Gifts You Can Unwrap Early

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 19:33:09 GMT

The holidays came early this year, and we’ve packed Santa’s bag with a bundle of brand-new features to make building your next website smoother, smarter, and a whole lot more fun. Whether you're adding the finishing touches to a client project or gearing up for a busy new year, these tools are designed to save time and unlock new creative possibilities inside the Wocode editor.

In true holiday spirit, each upgrade removes a bit of friction from the design process. Cleaner visuals, smarter text behavior, easier translations, more flexible language control. Everything here is aimed at helping you build with confidence and deliver more polished results in less time.

Let’s peek inside the gift bag and unwrap what’s new.

�� A Redesigned Sidebar Menu for a Cleaner, Smarter Workspace

A great workspace helps you move quickly and stay focused, and that’s exactly what the newly redesigned editor sidebar is built for. The updated layout keeps your most-used tools right at your fingertips, reduces visual clutter, and adapts to each site as you build.

As you add features like a store, blog, or memberships, the sidebar updates automatically so you only see what’s relevant for that particular site. This creates a more personalized editing experience and sets the stage for even more features coming soon.

Why you’ll love it

Your most common tools are easier to reach, so building feels faster and more intuitive.
Clear Widgets and Content entry points make it simple to add the elements you use most.
SEO gets a renewed spotlight, with all the powerful optimization tools grouped together and easier to access — because strong search performance starts right in the editor.
The sidebar personalizes itself based on the features your site actually uses (store, blog, membership, and more).
A cleaner, less crowded workspace that feels tailored to each project.

How to use it

Access your core tools – such as Widgets and Pages – in the sidebar just as you always have.
Use the More button to customize the sidebar with additional features like Blog, Store, or Membership, which appear only when they’re added to the site.

�� Background Removal — Clean, Polished Cutouts in One Click

One of the most powerful ways to modernize a layout is to strip away the clutter from a photo and spotlight the subject. Now you can do this directly in the image editor without Photoshop, external apps, or repeated exporting and re-uploading.

With the new Background Removal tool, any photo can instantly become a crisp, professional cutout. This is perfect for product hero shots, team members, portfolio pieces, and even messy client-submitted images that need a little cleanup.

Why you’ll love it

Create polished hero sections and banners without extra design tools.
Turn everyday snapshots into clean, modern visuals.
Swap backgrounds freely such as solid colors, gradients, patterns, or images while keeping the subject intact.
Great for catalogs, service showcases, highlights, and any layout where clarity matters.

How to use it

Great for catalogs, service showcases, highlights, and any layout where clarity matters.Click any image on your site to open its settings panel.
Look for the “Remove image background” option beneath the filename.
Click once and the editor isolates the subject and removes the backdrop.
Update the section behind the image to complete the new look.

�� Responsive Text Scaling — Typography That Adapts Automatically

Your content looks its best when typography feels balanced across every device. Until now, that typically meant manually adjusting text sizes per breakpoint. With Responsive Text Scaling , your text automatically adjusts based on screen width. Headlines stay bold and readable, body text stays clean and comfortable, and you spend far less time tweaking settings.

Why you’ll love it

Set your type styles once and they scale beautifully on phones, tablets, and large screens.
Better readability and accessibility without manual adjustments.
More consistent visual hierarchy across all device sizes.
Great for hero text, section titles, and any copy that needs to shine.

How to use it

Site-wide:

Head to Site Theme → Text and enable the scaling option to make your global type styles responsive.

Per widget:

Select a Text widget on your page and toggle the scaling setting for fine-grained control.

�� Translate Internal Collections — Go Global With Dynamic Pages

If your site uses Dynamic pages powered by internal collections like team members, recipes, events, business listings, job posts, or product catalogs, we’re delivering a major upgrade for multilingual sites.

You can now translate entire internal collections at once , or translate only the rows you’ve recently updated. Everything stays synced across the languages you offer, with your primary language acting as the source of truth.

Why you’ll love it

Manage one central database and push translations to every language automatically.
Keep multi-language Dynamic pages consistent and up to date.
Save huge amounts of time on recurring updates such as new items or changed descriptions.
Perfect for growing directories, catalogs, and any high-volume content.

How to use it

Make sure your site has multiple languages enabled in the editor.
Open any internal collection powering Dynamic pages.
Choose to translate the entire collection , or select specific rows to translate only what changed.
Review and optionally fine-tune translated values per language.

�� Change Your Default Language — Even After Adding Other Languages

Here’s a small but mighty power-up for multilingual sites. You can now change the site’s default language at any time , even after additional languages have already been added.

Your default language determines how content is structured, translated, and managed. Being able to switch it without rebuilding anything gives you the flexibility to adapt as your audience evolves.

Why you’ll love it

Easily shift your primary market (for example, English-first to Spanish-first).
Avoid rebuilding or duplicating multilingual sites just to correct a past setup choice.
Perfect for agencies adjusting a reused site to a new client’s language needs.
Keeps your content workflow clean and intuitive.

How to use it

Open your site’s language settings.
Choose which language you want to set as the new default.
Confirm the change and the editor updates the site structure around your new primary language.

A simple change, but one that removes a huge amount of friction for multilingual projects.

Wrapping It Up

From intelligent text behavior to effortless image cleanup to smarter multilingual control, these gifts are all about helping you build faster and design with more freedom no matter what your next project looks like.

They’re available right now in your Wocode editor.

And from all of us, happy holidays and happy creating.

That's It (for the Moment...)

Hosting Prices Are Changing on January 15, 2026

Tue, 18 Nov 2025 17:16:38 GMT

Hosting prices will be updated for all site hosting subscriptions as of January 15, 2026. This new pricing ensures we can continue to expand the Without Code platform and maintain high-quality support, while also accounting for rising costs in hosting and other core services.

Please refer to the pricing table below for a breakdown of our new prices:

Site Hosting

Current Members (VIP / Pro / Bundle)

$15 /mo billed annually (Total $180 /year)

$18 /mo billed monthly

New Customers (Non-Members)

$18 /mo billed annually (Total $216 /year)

$21 /mo billed monthly

Memberships

Membership fees for active subscriptions are unchanged.

Ecommerce

All ecommerce plan pricing will remain unchanged.

Reseller and Enterprise Plans

If you’re a high-volume builder on a Reseller or Enterprise plan, you will maintain the same discount percentage off of market rates. Reseller plan members receive a 10% discount, and Enterprise plan members receive 20% off of standard sites and 15% off of ecommerce sites.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. What are memberships and why is member pricing lower?

A. Without Code previously offered a membership (also known as “Pro” or “VIP”) that included additional features and perks. To simplify our plans and pricing, memberships were discontinued in 2024, and all member features were made available to all new customers. Customers who maintain an active paid membership subscription continue to receive lower site hosting prices.

Q. Can I become a member?

A. Memberships are no longer available, except for customers who held an active membership prior to 2024.

Q. What happens if I cancel my Without Code Membership?

A. Site hosting will renew at the higher, non-member rates of $21/mo or $216/year ($18/mo billed annually). No perks, benefits or builder features will be lost.

Q. Can you tell me what significant features you’ve added since your last price change in 2024?

A. Of course! Since January of 2024, we’ve added many powerful features to the Without Code platform.

Here are a few highlights:

Editor 2.0: An entirely new builder platform alternative with greater design control and full support for responsive layouts. Over 65% of new sites are built in Editor 2.0. Link

Membership: A native member platform that opens the door to exclusive site content and increased engagement. Link

Email Aliases: secondary addresses that keep customer inquiries organized without requiring separate inboxes. Link

Page Builder: A new tool that can help you build or mock up pages in your site quickly by generating page structures using pre-designed sections. Link

New Widgets and Templates: We’ve added 11 new widgets and 9 new templates to our libraries. Widgets Link . Templates Link .

Powerful AI Tools: The Without Code builder now leverages the power of AI, all across the editor. Link A . Link B . Link C .

New AI tools include:

AI page builder
AI sections
AI Text in the text Editor
Automatic page SEO
Generate metadata for all pages at once
Automatic Image alt text
Business profile generator
Automatic page recommendations

If you have any questions about our upcoming price changes, please don't hesitate to contact our support team.

Thank you again for building your websites on the Without Code platform. We sincerely appreciate your trust and continued support, and look forward to working hard for our customers and community in 2026.

That's It (for the Moment...)

Import Content Instantly from Any Site

Tue, 11 Nov 2025 18:25:20 GMT

One of the most common pain points that our customers have reported to us over the years has been the process of collecting copy and images from clients when starting up a new site build or a rebuild. Our new Import Content feature is a game changer that turns a former frustration into a one-click wonder that will put a smile on your face.

Tracking down copy, gathering images, and retyping basic details can slow even the most efficient build. Now, by entering any website URL, you can bring over text, images, and business information automatically. The system imports, organizes, and prepares everything so you can begin designing right away.

This has been one of the most requested tools from our users, and it’s easy to see why. It simplifies one of the most time-consuming steps of any project and keeps you focused on creating, not collecting.

Note: this feature is available only in Editor 2.0

AI Organization: Everything Finds Its Place

When you import content, it’s instantly organized by our AI assistant. The system separates text, images, and structural elements into clean, labeled sections, all arranged neatly in a sidebar beside your workspace.

Simple Drag and Drop from the Sidebar

Once your content is imported, adding it to your site is as easy as dragging and dropping from the AI-organized sidebar. Titles, paragraphs, images, and other elements can be dropped directly into your layout wherever they fit best.

This works just like our recent “Drag and drop text from a doc” feature, but now applies to entire websites. It’s fast, intuitive, and gives you a much smoother way to move real content into your design.

Business Profile Updates Automatically

In addition to importing visible content, the system also recognizes business information such as name, address, phone, and hours. That data is automatically synced with your Business Profile, so it’s instantly available across widgets like maps, contact sections, and footers.

You can still edit or override any details, but this automation saves another round of manual entry and shortens setup time even further.

Benefits

Import from any live website with a single URL.
AI organizes all content for a clean, usable overview.
Drag and drop text, images, and titles directly into your layout.
Business details update automatically , ready for widgets and contact areas.

Start faster , with less repetitive content work.

How to Use

In the Content menu, click the Import Content button.
Enter the URL of the site you want to pull content from (you can also import from a doc).
Imported content appears in the sidebar, ready for review and drag-and-drop placement.
Check your Business Profile, which is automatically updated with the imported site details.

A More Natural Way to Begin

This update makes setup faster, smarter, and less repetitive. For anyone rebuilding client sites, it’s a massive time-saver. You start with real content, already organized and ready to use, so you can focus on refining structure and style instead of copying and pasting.

That's It (for the Moment...)

Fill Your Entire Site with Copy from One Doc

Wed, 08 Oct 2025 15:15:00 GMT

Bringing text into a website has always been one of those repetitive steps that feels slow and cumbersome. Whether you’re setting up a new site or refreshing an existing one, copy often starts out in a text document. Historically, that meant a lot of switching back and forth, pasting sections one at a time.

With our new Drag ‘n’ Drop Text from a Doc feature, you can upload a .doc file and have all of your copy neatly organized in a sidebar inside the Wocode editor. From there, you simply drag and drop text into your site. It keeps your workflow smooth, saves time, and gives you complete control over where copy goes.

This feature is designed for anyone who prefers to prepare content in advance – whether that’s a full website draft, updates from a copywriter, or just a quick set of changes. Instead of juggling windows and tracking what’s been pasted where, you can focus on building a polished site with the right words in the right places.

Update Existing Pages Without Rewriting

If your site’s layout is already in place, making changes to text is faster than ever. Upload your document and drag and drop updated copy directly into specific spots on the page. Since you choose exactly where to place each piece, you can refresh what’s needed without touching anything else.

Start New Sites with All Your Copy Ready

When you’re building a brand-new site, the feature shines even more. If you’ve prepared your text in a .doc file, the sidebar lets you place all your content as you go – headings, paragraphs, intros, and more. It’s a clean, organized way to move from draft to designed site.

Let AI Organize Your Pages

When you upload a document, Wocode’s AI doesn’t just display the text – it analyzes the structure of your file. Headings labeled as page titles are automatically recognized and separated, so each page’s copy is grouped for you in the sidebar.

You’ll also see an option to import as “one” page or “several.” Choosing several not only breaks your document into multiple pages, but also organizes them into a handy dropdown you can access while working. This makes it easy to move through your site content page by page, with everything neatly separated and ready to place.

This makes site creation more efficient than ever: prepare one document, let the AI organize it, and then drag and drop each section into place. It’s a faster path from draft to fully built site.

Better Collaboration Between Teams

This workflow makes handoff between writers and builders simple. A writer provides a single document, and the builder drags the content into place. Designers can then focus on styling and layout, without having to worry about text transfer. It keeps everyone in their lane and makes projects move faster.

That's It (for the Moment...)

Give It a Try:

Prepare your site copy in a .doc file.
Open your site in the Wocode editor and upload the file.
Use the sidebar to view all of the text from your document.
Drag and drop text into the page wherever it belongs.

That’s it – no copy-pasting, no retyping, no switching between apps. Just a simpler way to get your words onto the page.

3 New AI Tools for Instant, Beautiful Page Layouts

Tue, 05 Aug 2025 17:16:11 GMT

Our AI Assistant now includes several powerful tools that give your page-building process a serious speed boost. From recommending the right pages to add to generating complete layouts and filling in professional copy, these features are designed to help you move faster, write less, and build smarter – across every page. Whether you're starting from scratch or refining an existing site, everything happens right inside your builder to keep projects moving without the usual bottlenecks.

Watch our overview video or read on to learn what's new.

Smart Page Recommendations Based on Your Site Type

When you go to add a new page, you’ll now see a “Page Recommendations” option – offering suggestions tailored to your business. These recommendations are based on both the details you’ve entered about your business (like your industry or services) and the existing pages already in your site layout.

Instead of starting from scratch or guessing what’s missing, you’ll get smart, relevant page ideas – like Services , Testimonials , or FAQs – that help you build a more complete, professional site.

Why it’s useful:

Quickly fill out a professional site structure
Avoid blank-page indecision
Get ideas for content you may have overlooked

How to use:

Click “Page Recommendations” in the Pages menu.

Instant Layouts with the AI Page Builder

Once you receive your page recommendations, you can click on any page recommendation to instantly generate a fully designed page – complete with images, text, and layout. There’s no need to enter a prompt up front. The AI Page Builder creates a page automatically, and you can customize or refine it afterward.

Each recommended page starts in a dedicated "Pages in Progress" folder within your Pages menu, so you can explore, review, and build at your own pace. Once you’ve generated a new page with the AI Page Builder, you can add the page to your live site or save it for later.

Need to make changes? The AI Page Builder gives you quick options to regenerate the content, the images, or both. You can even update the page goal or prompt to refine your results.

Use it to:

Generate full pages in seconds
Explore multiple design directions
Save time on mockups and production

This tool removes the friction of starting from scratch – letting you go from page idea to polished layout faster than ever.

How to use:

After receiving page recommendations, open the “Pages in Progress” folder and click a page to open AI Page Builder, or access additional options in the context menu (three dots).

��️ Fine-Tune and Expand Your Content with Powerful Editing Tools

The creative control is all yours. It's easy to fine-tune the content or expand the design using the tools available in the Page Builder.

You’ll find a wide variety of pre-built sections in the left-hand panel – perfect for quickly building out or reshaping your layout. Drop in new blocks to experiment with structure, test wireframe ideas, or create space for more content. Every section can be edited or regenerated using the AI Page Builder, allowing you to refine individual parts of the page or apply updates across the entire layout.

You’re free to work section by section or make page-wide updates at once – giving you flexibility without sacrificing speed.

�� Mix, Match, and Make It Yours

These tools are designed to be modular – and even more powerful when combined. You might use page recommendations to fill out your site map, let the AI Page Builder create an instant layout, and then dive in with custom edits and regenerated content section by section.

Or maybe you prefer to build your layout first, then call on the AI Assistant to populate each part with on-brand content and images. There’s no single “correct” order – just the right workflow for you.

All three of these tools are available right now inside your site builder — no extra setup required. You’ll find them accessible anytime you’re creating a new page or accessing the Pages menu.

That's It (for the Moment...)

Introducing Editor 2.0 – A Powerful, Advanced Alternative with Greater Design Control

Thu, 08 May 2025 16:43:35 GMT

Editor 2.0 is a major advancement for the Without Code builder, and we’re excited to announce that it’s now available for all Without Code users. This new version of the editor builds on everything users loved about Flex mode—taking that same responsive, layout-friendly approach and evolving it into a full editing experience.

Editor 2.0 is a fully separate editor that you can choose to use when starting a new site. It doesn’t replace the current editor (now referred to as the Classic Editor), but instead serves as an additional option for users who want more flexibility and control.

With Editor 2.0, you’ll have greater control over how elements are positioned and behave across all screen sizes, making it easier to build responsive websites that look and perform better on every device.

For a quick summary of what's new in Editor 2.0, watch our overview video .

The power of Flex mode, site-wide

We’ve always aimed to offer a simple, intuitive, and quick-feeling workspace to build sites. But some users have wanted more powerful advanced features and control. It can be challenging to create a workspace that is simple yet very technically advanced at the same time.

Flex mode was a solution that offered a focus on responsive design features, and has been a big hit with our users. Flex sections can be added into sites at will, giving the ability to create sites that are a mix of standard sections and Flex sections.

But what if you want an all-Flex site without needing to add new Flex sections for every bit of the design? This is why Editor 2.0 was created. Editor 2.0 is an all-Flex editor where you can utilize all of the advanced precision control that Flex offers, without messing around with sections or mixing two different editors.

Editor 2.0 introduces a more advanced editing experience inside the same builder you already know, with new layout tools, responsive flexibility, and precise control—without changing the look and feel of the platform. If you’ve ever wanted more design freedom while still working in a visual environment, Editor 2.0 is built to offer just that.

Going beyond Flex

Because Editor 2.0 is a dedicated purpose-built editor that is detached from the Classic Editor, it opens the door to capabilities that go far beyond what Flex mode alone could offer.

With Editor 2.0, we can introduce features that weren’t possible before, like the ability to create Mega Menus , use more than four columns in a row , and even design per breakpoint for finer responsive control.

You can also now set elements to fixed or pinned positions , create more complex layouts, and use advanced spacing and alignment options—all within a streamlined visual interface. These additions make Editor 2.0 not just more flexible, but also more capable, giving you the tools to design with precision and intention, no matter the complexity of your layout.

Speaking of advanced features, let’s highlight the exciting new features in Editor 2.0:

Features in Editor 2.0

Editor 2.0 introduces several key updates that make the building process more flexible and efficient. Here’s some we’d like to highlight:

�� Fully Flex-Based Layout

Editor 2.0 uses Flex throughout the entire site, not just in sections. This gives you full control over the placement, spacing, and alignment of elements. You can nest rows, stack items, distribute space evenly, and fine-tune layouts without relying on workarounds or pre-set grids.

�� Responsive by Default

Instead of managing breakpoints manually or duplicating content for different views, Editor 2.0 layouts respond automatically across screen sizes. You can still customize how things behave on desktop, tablet, and mobile—but most of the heavy lifting is already done for you.

�� More Than Four Columns

You’re no longer limited to a four-column layout. With Editor 2.0, you can create rows with five, six, or more columns—making it easier to design complex layouts, multi-item grids, or dense sections with multiple content types.

�� Fixed and Pinned Elements

Need a button that stays on screen as the user scrolls? Or a header that remains visible at all times? Editor 2.0 introduces the ability to fix or pin elements anywhere on the page. This is especially useful for call-to-action buttons, sticky navigation, or anchored visuals.

�� Design Per Breakpoint

For advanced control, you can customize layouts and styling on a per-breakpoint basis. That means you can adjust things like element order, visibility, or spacing specifically for mobile, tablet, or desktop—without affecting the rest of the design. It’s a powerful way to fine-tune the experience across devices.

�� Mega Menu

Editor 2.0 includes a built-in Mega Menu widget that makes it easy to create large, multi-column dropdown menus. You can add images, group links, and design the menu layout visually—no coding or custom structure required. This is a major improvement for sites that need robust navigation or a highly organized menu system.

�� Advanced Accordion

The updated Accordion widget gives you far more control over styling, spacing, and layout than the one in the Classic Editor. It’s perfect for FAQs, toggle content, or multi-section displays where you want a clean, interactive experience—and it looks polished right out of the box.

�� Sidebar Media Library

Add or replace images and background media directly on the canvas with a simple drag and drop. All of your media is available in a handy sidebar library, making it easier than ever to view, select, and apply images right where you're working.

Is Editor 2.0 right for you?

If you’ve connected with Flex mode, and want more of it––then Editor 2.0 is for you. If you like to customize your layouts, fine-tune how things look on mobile, or just want more responsive behavior without extra effort, this editor is likely a good fit.

That said, there are certainly many situations where the Classic Editor makes the most sense. Keep in mind, the original editor was also built to look great from device to device. Many sites don’t need advanced control or custom layouts. And if you prefer the familiarity you have with the original editor, or never really connected with Flex––no worries! The Classic Editor is not going anywhere.

Here are the CSS classes we’ve added:

.d-ext-mediaSlider-slidesContainer

.d-ext-mediaSlider-slide__contentContainer

.d-ext-mediaSlider-contentContainer__title

.d-ext-mediaSlider-contentContainer__description

.d-ext-mediaSlider-contentContainer__button

.d-ext-mediaSlider-slidesContainer__slide

.d-ext-mediaSlider-slidesContainer__slide--active

Getting started with Editor 2.0 today

To use Editor 2.0, just pick an Editor 2.0 template when starting a new site. Our template picker now includes a handy toggle to switch between Editor 2.0 templates and Classic Editor templates. Look for it at the top of the template picker.

Keep in mind that the editor you choose is locked in for that site, and you can’t switch back and forth. If you’d like to take a more hybrid approach where you blend elements of the original editor with more advanced features, choose a Classic Editor template to start, and add in Flex sections as needed.

Resources

As usual, we’ve put together a bunch of handy resources and documentation to help you learn Editor 2.0:

Overview Video: Watch here
Difference Between Editor 2.0, Flex, and Classic Editor: Read here
All Editor 2.0 Documentation: Browse here

That's It (for the Moment...)

Spring Feature Roundup 2025 – Site Builder Updates Crafted for Maximum Impact

Wed, 09 Apr 2025 18:37:41 GMT

We’re excited to share several new features that bring powerful improvements to your workflow, site performance, and client collaboration. From SEO tools, to visual accessibility enhancements, to better support for multilingual sites, these updates are designed to help you work more efficiently and deliver even greater value across every project.

Whether you’re refining site structure, customizing designs based on brand assets, or gathering feedback on Dynamic Pages, these enhancements give you more control and flexibility right where you need it.

Let’s take a look at what’s new!

Change your site’s default language anytime

Do you build or manage sites in multiple languages? We know that management of site language is very important to many Without Code users, and we have great news for you! You may now change the default site language to any language you’ve added to the site. Previously, the default language of a site had to be set at the time you enabled multi-language support—and once it was set, it couldn’t be changed afterward. This update provides greater freedom and flexibility for future updates.

To Use:

Click SEO & Settings in the sidebar menu, then select Site Languages. Use the dropdown to select the default language.

Note that you must select from languages that you’ve already added. So if you haven’t yet added languages to the site, you must do so first, before selecting a default.

Improve your site’s accessibility and SEO with the Color Contrast Ratio tool

Readability of text on a website is incredibly important, and color contrast is at the heart of the matter when it comes to text and the background it’s placed upon. Every text block on your site now includes a color contrast ratio tool that instantly tests the contrast ratio and gives a pass or fail indicator, plus a contrast ratio score.

Optimizing color contrast ratios on your site has several benefits:

Better accessibility – Increased readability for users with visual impairments or color vision deficiencies
Improved user experience – Better overall usability by minimizing eye strain and improving navigation clarity
A boost to SEO – A more accessible and user-friendly site can lead to higher search engine rankings, especially when proper color contrast ratios are used

To Use:

Open any Text widget on your site. Click on text color in the settings, and note the color contrast ratio results below the color options. Try new text colors to see instantly updated results, and improve your ratio score if needed.

Note: A color contrast ratio score cannot be provided when the image is placed on an image background. Also, if you don’t see the color contrast ratio tool, you may be on an old version of the text editor. Use the “Update text editor” button to update.

Extract a site-wide color theme from any logo

Have you ever chosen a site’s color scheme based solely on a client’s logo? You now have access to a tool that gives you the design power to customize an entire site’s theme based on a logo.

The all-new “Brand” tab in the Theme Colors color picker extracts the colors from the business logo and displays them as options for your site theme. Using the site-wide settings in the Site Theme menu, you can easily apply brand colors globally to your site.

To Use:

Click “Theme” in the sidebar menu, then select an existing color or click the add color button (plus sign). In the color picker, click the Brand tab. Here you will see the colors (up to eight) extracted from the logo. If you don’t yet have a logo uploaded, you can easily do so here if needed.

Audit internal links to improve SEO and site value

Internal linking is one of the most important SEO best practices, and now it’s easier than ever to monitor with the new Site Links Audit tool. This feature provides a centralized list of all internal links across your site, so you can quickly identify broken links, orphaned pages, and missed linking opportunities. It’s a powerful way to improve site structure, help search engines crawl your site more efficiently, and deliver more value to your clients.

With this tool, you can easily locate and update links that point to unpublished or missing pages, and ensure that important pages are well-connected throughout your site. Whether you're doing a full audit or just making quick updates, the Site Links Audit tool makes internal SEO maintenance faster, more transparent, and more effective.

Here are the CSS classes we’ve added:

.d-ext-mediaSlider-slidesContainer

.d-ext-mediaSlider-slide__contentContainer

.d-ext-mediaSlider-contentContainer__title

.d-ext-mediaSlider-contentContainer__description

.d-ext-mediaSlider-contentContainer__button

.d-ext-mediaSlider-slidesContainer__slide

.d-ext-mediaSlider-slidesContainer__slide--active

To Use:

Click the information button in the top menu (“i” inside circle), then select Site Dashboard. Click SEO in the sidebar menu. Open Internal Links or External Links to access the audit tool.

Leave comments directly on Dynamic Pages

Site Comments just got more powerful. You can now leave comments directly on Dynamic Pages, making it easier than ever to collaborate with clients or team members on pages connected to collections. Whether you’re reviewing layout changes, providing content feedback, or just noting something to revisit later, comments help streamline communication without leaving the builder.

Previously, comments were only available on static pages, so this update brings more flexibility to how and where feedback can happen. It’s a great way to speed up approvals, reduce back-and-forth, and keep your workflow organized—even when working with large content-based sites.

To Use:

From the top toolbar, switch to Comment mode. Select the add new comment option in the Comments menu in the right-hand sidebar, then click anywhere on the Dynamic Page to leave a note or reply to existing comments. Comments are visible only to logged-in collaborators and won’t appear on the live site.

That's It (for the Moment...)

6 New Updates for a Smoother Editor Experience

Mon, 02 Sep 2024 16:59:55 GMT

The sun is out, the weather’s warm, and we’re building stuff! In this article we’ll share six new builder features that can benefit you in creating icon consistency in your design, reducing stress when restoring site backups, building more powerful Media Sliders and much more. Read on to discover all the new builder features we’ve rolled out during the sunny season.

New Add Page Interface

For fans of clear and concise organization, we think you’ll love the new Add Page menu. In the old menu, more and more page types were added as they became available over time, and the choices became a bit overwhelming while the look was cluttered.

In the new Add Page menu, a quick-opening dropdown gives a concise set of choices, with category-based selections offering a secondary set of options when clicked. For example, if you want to start with a blank page, the Blank Page option will get you going with a blank canvas straight away; but if you want to see options for a pre-designed page, selecting Designed Page will open a new window with a variety of choices such as Portfolio, Contact Us and Landing Page.

And speaking of page options, the Add Page dropdown is also where you will find one of our most exciting new features: Page Builder. Page Builder is a tool that allows you to mock up pages as fast as you can imagine them. Read our in-depth article about page builder here .

To Use:

Open the Pages menu, then click Add Page. The Add Page menu shows a mix of options with category-based selections offering additional choices in a new window.

Explore Similarly-Styled Icons Using Collections

Have you noticed how vastly different icon styling can be, as you’re searching for a specific icon for your site? And to make matters worse, using mismatched icons across your site creates a styling nightmare; with inconsistent strokes and fills subconsciously souring the user experience on your site. Our latest Media Manager feature aims to help you avoid all that.

A very unassuming new option can be seen when you click on any icon in your Icon Manager: See Entire Collection. Just as advertised, this option opens the entire collection that the icon came from. And within that collection, you’ll find consistently styled icons across a variety of subjects.

Consider using a single icon collection across your entire site for the best possible consistency.

To Use:

Click on Content in the side menu, then select Media Manager. Click on the Icons tab at the top to open the Icon Manager. Select any icon, then locate the “See Entire Collection” button in the info panel on the right.

Preview & Restore Backup Versions of Your Site

If you’ve ever found the process of restoring backups to be a bit stressful, we’re here to help. We’ve added the option to preview a site backup before restoring it. By previewing, you can now restore with confidence!

This update gives a new level of insight and additional security for you and your subusers. Previously, it was only the date and the name you gave a backup that could be used to inform your selection. This often leads to guessing at which backup version to restore (and then realizing you chose the wrong one, after the fact).

When you preview a site backup, you’ll be able to review a fully functional version of that backup in a new browser tab. With this level of detail, you will have much more certainty in your restore decisions.

To Use:

Click on SEO & Settings in the side menu, then select Site Backup. Click on the preview link for any backup in order to view that version in a new tab.

6 New Divider Styles

Like so much in web design, divider styles can become dated in a hurry (just look at a site from 5 years ago). We’ve freshened up the Divider widget with 6 modern and stylish new styles, including dots, dashes, curves and more. These new styles will liven up your site and provide even more design versatility!

To Use:

Drop a Divider widget on your site. Open the Layout menu to view the new options.

Customizable CSS for Media Slider

If you’re CSS-savvy, this one’s for you. We’ve added standardized CSS classes to several different elements in the Media Slider widget, giving you a nearly infinite number of ways to customize the widget’s design and the elements it includes.

The additional classes follow the popular Block Element Modifier (BEM) front-end methodology, and give you and your team design freedom on a super-granular level. You can also be assured that any CSS customizations you make to Media Sliders in your sites will be maintained, even if we update this widget in the future – so you can customize with confidence.

Here are the CSS classes we’ve added:

.d-ext-mediaSlider-slidesContainer

.d-ext-mediaSlider-slide__contentContainer

.d-ext-mediaSlider-contentContainer__title

.d-ext-mediaSlider-contentContainer__description

.d-ext-mediaSlider-contentContainer__button

.d-ext-mediaSlider-slidesContainer__slide

.d-ext-mediaSlider-slidesContainer__slide--active

Here are the CSS classes we’ve added:

.d-ext-mediaSlider-slidesContainer

.d-ext-mediaSlider-slide__contentContainer

.d-ext-mediaSlider-contentContainer__title

.d-ext-mediaSlider-contentContainer__description

.d-ext-mediaSlider-contentContainer__button

.d-ext-mediaSlider-slidesContainer__slide

.d-ext-mediaSlider-slidesContainer__slide--active

To Use:

With Media Slider selected, open Dev Mode and enter the CSS classes you want to apply and customize. Also, remember that you can always preview your changes before making them live. See this quick demo as an example:

Better Scaling Behavior For Buttons

Buttons now scale proportionally, with the button height staying relative to the text height. Or put another way – if you’ve ever been frustrated with scaling buttons, it works much better now. Resizing buttons is now a seamless process (including width and height) and you can avoid correcting button sizing with custom CSS if that’s something you’ve ever had to do.

Note: this applies to newly added buttons only.

To Use:

Drop a new Button widget on your site, and resize as needed.

Moved "Add Site Language" Option to SEO & Settings

While this one is technically not a new feature-add, it’s worth making note of. If you routinely create sites with multiple languages, you’ll find the Add Language option in a new place. Instead of opening the Pages menu to add a new language, look in SEO & Settings. The Add Language option has its own place in the Site Languages area of your site settings.

To Use:

Open SEO & Settings, then click Site Languages. Locate the Add Language button.

That's It (for the Moment...)

Mock up Pages Effortlessly With the New Page Builder

brandon@wocode.com (WOCode Team - Brandon) — Mon, 26 Aug 2024 17:29:22 GMT

Page Builder is a new tool that can help you build or mock up pages in your site quickly. By generating page structures using pre-designed sections, you can get a feel for a page layout as fast as your mind can imagine it. And when you can generate pages quicker, you can finish full sites quicker.

In this article, we’ll look at several features of Page Builder that you can start taking advantage of today. Let’s jump in!

How Does Page Builder Work?

Page Builder shows you a page preview in the main window on the right, and a panel filled with pre-designed blocks on the left. The blocks on the left are broken into categories (such as Intro, Features, FAQ, etc.) that make it easy to build your page based on the information it needs. Any block on the left can be added – just give one a click.

For example, if you have an About page where you know you need team, testimonials and FAQ sections, open those categories on the left and select a few to place them on the page.

If you’ve used Sections, this interface may feel familiar. But take note that Page Builder includes features that go beyond what’s possible in the Sections menu.

To Use:

In the editor sidebar menu click Pages, then Add Page, then Page Builder. Click a category on the far left to see options within, and click any section to add it to your page layout. In the page layout, you will see Add Section buttons on the top and bottom of each section. Use these to add new sections above or below existing sections.

Reorder Sections to Try New Layouts

Once you’ve added sections to your page layout, you may want to reorder them. Reordering sections may change the flow & feel of a page, and could impact the way site visitors interact with your content. Try a few different orderings if you’re unsure!

To Use:

Click to select a section, then click the up or down arrow on the top edge to reorder it. You can also delete sections by clicking the trash can icon.

Save For Later

If you’ve used Page Builder to create a layout that you like but aren’t quite ready to use, save it for later! As long as you use the Save for Later button, you’ll never lose any page layouts you’ve worked on. You will find all the pages you’ve saved for later in the Pages menu, within the Pages in Progress dropdown.

To Use:

Click the Save for Later button in the top right of the Page Builder. To access previously saved pages, go to Pages > Pages in Progress. Use the context menu to access additional options such as Continue with Page Builder, Add to site as blank page, and duplicate .

"Used in Site"

At the top of the section categories in the Page Builder, you will see “Used in Site”. This handy category shows you every single section you’ve used already in your site. Re-using sections that exist elsewhere on the site create design consistency.

Note that the sections in the Used in Site category also include all sections from pages you’ve “saved for later” in the Pages in Progress dropdown.

To Use:

Open the uppermost category in the left panel inside Page Builder: “Used in Site”. This category appears after you’ve added your first section using Page Builder.

Duplicating Pages for Site Consistency

If you’d like to quickly mock up an entire site, consider duplicating pages. Duplicating can save loads of time when you need several pages that share the same layout such as product pages or individual team member pages.

To Use:

Open the Pages menu, then click the context menu (three dots) of any page you’ve built in Page Builder. Select Duplicate. You can duplicate pages that have been added to your site or pages in progress.

Spring Feature Roundup – 5 New Updates to Level-Up Your Site Designs

brandon@wocode.com (WOCode Team - Brandon) — Tue, 21 May 2024 21:13:30 GMT

Spring has sprung! And just as this is a great time for a bit of Spring cleaning, we thought it would be the perfect time to report on a roundup of features that have been newly added to the Without Code site editor.

Included in the updates are improvements to global styling, a great new feature for mobile sites, a Flex update and a cool new function for a classic widget. Read on to learn details, see how to use these features and view a short demonstration video.

Display an Alternate Image On Hover

Our first feature adds clever functionality to a core widget: the Image widget. You can now choose a secondary image to appear on hover. This simple effect can be extremely effective for showing an alternate product image, a different angle of the same photo subject, a color variation and much more.

On-hover image changes create a clean and non-intrusive way to add content variation that your customers will love!

To Use:

Place an Image widget on your site and select an image. Locate the “Alternate image on-hover” setting at the bottom of the widget option panel and select your alternate image. For best results, use an alternate image with the same aspect ratio (shape) as the main image.

Click to Call Icon

Click-to-call is a highly useful function that has been improving mobile sites since the earliest days when users first began visiting websites on mobile devices. And now that more people visit websites on mobile than any other device , this feature is more valuable than ever.

The click to call icon is now available in the Social Icons widget.

To Use:

Place the Social Icons widget on your site where you’d like the click to call icon to be seen. Be sure to enter the phone number at the bottom of the content panel.

Improved Corner Radius

Did you know you can adjust any corner radius separately (top left / top right / bottom left / bottom right)? While this has been possible for quite a while, we’ve added a dropdown that allows for a new radius style: percentage-based. Percentage-based radii are calculated differently from pixel-based radii, as they are calculated based on the entire object shape. Therefore, percentage-based radii will offer different radius shapes depending on the shape of the element.

Consider leveraging corner radius adjustments to create dramatic styling in your site, such as a maxed-out corner radius on just one corner of an image. Using this technique consistently on a site can create its own unique aesthetic across an entire site! Corner radius is available on most elements, including things you may not have thought of, like galleries, rows and columns.

To Use:

In the Design tab, locate the Corner Radius option. Click the gear icon to select all corners, individual corners or a combination of individual corners. To choose between pixel-based and percentage-based, click the “px” box next to the numerical value. This will display a dropdown, allowing you to select your method of choice.

Global Styling for On-Hover & Clicked Text Links

Do you utilize the “Theme” section for setting global styling across your site? This is a massively efficient way of making instant styling updates across the site all at once. Setting global styles also creates a highly consistent site experience for visitors.

We’ve added two new global style controls for text: Link on hover & Link clicked.

To Use:

Click “Theme” in the side menu. Click “Text” to open up all styling attributes (including Link on hover & Link clicked)

Convert Sections and Columns Into Image Sliders (Flex)

You can now add more than one background image in a Flex section in order to create an instant image slider. Image sliders as backgrounds are subtle and transition images automatically. Use this feature to expose your best media content and drive customer actions.

To Use:

In Flex mode, apply a background image to a section. Then click the “Create background slider” button and add the additional images for the slider.

AI Generated Sections: A Bold Move Into AI-Assisted Design

brandon@wocode.com (WOCode Team - Brandon) — Thu, 02 May 2024 15:57:36 GMT

AI tools are becoming more and more powerful, and the latest addition to the Without Code site builder brings us into an all new territory of AI-assisted design. AI Generated Sections take a few simple text prompts and turn them into fully-designed sections, complete with images, headlines and paragraph text.

Earlier AI implementations in the WOCode builder focused on generating text for meta tags, image alt text and general text through AI integration into the Text widget. AI Generated Sections now allow you to combine several functions to create beautiful, fully-completed sections for your site.

When you can generate high quality sections in just a few seconds, it’s easy to imagine how powerful this can be while building sites. Consider using AI generated sections to speed up your build times, create gorgeous wireframes, or add design versatility to your site using a beautiful layout option from the section results.

For a visual walkthrough of AI Generated Sections, view our video overview .

AI generated sections are one of many AI features available in the WOCode builder. Be sure to read “ Introducing AI Assistant: Leveraging the Power of AI in the Wocode Builder ” to learn about other AI Assistant integrations throughout the builder.

Getting Started with AI Generated Sections

To get started with AI generated sections, begin by adding a section as normal (see our Sections doc if you’re new to sections). Hover on the dividing line between two rows in the center of the screen and click the “Add Section” button.

Choose the “AI-Generated” option.

AI Section Assistant

The AI Section Assistant provides the input fields that the AI will use to generate section features. And as always with any AI tool, the better the prompts, the better the results.

Enter a description of the content that you would like the section to include. And be sure to include any important details within the description. For an example, see the placeholder copy in the text field:

e.g. About us section that captures the essence of the bakery's origins, the passion for baking, and the commitment to the local community

AI Business Profile

Before we move on to the AI generated section results, let’s briefly discuss your AI Business Profile. AI Assistant uses your AI Business Profile as a basis for much of the content it generates. If you’ve used AI Assistant elsewhere in the site editor, you’ve likely been prompted to set up your AI Business Profile. This is the case for page SEO, site SEO, and business text.

If you have not yet set up an AI Business Profile for your site, you will be prompted to set this up when using AI generated sections for the first time. Enter all of the required details about your business and click Save. You can update this information anytime using the links in various AI Assistant tools.

AI Generated Section Results

After submitting your prompts for the AI Section Assistant, you will see you results. In the center of the screen, in the large preview, you will see your first AI generated section. This section will use the prompt details to write a compelling headline, descriptive paragraph text, and images suited to your content.

In the side menu on the left, you will see a variety of layout options. Use these to choose a design style that fits your site. Each layout can be previewed with a click. As you preview various layouts, you will see that the AI generated text is customized in length to fit the design elements of each.

If you see a layout you like, but the text or images need refinement, you can use the “Regenerate” button above the preview. When you click Regenerate, you have the option to regenerate images only , or text and images .

If you don’t see a layout you like initially, click the “Show More Layouts” link in the side menu to see dozens more options.

Refining the Results

As you review the AI Generated Sections, view as many layouts as you like, and regenerate as needed in order to achieve the perfect results. If you’re still not seeing something you like, you can always go back to the AI Section Assistant and provide more or different details.

Once you’ve found a great option, click the Save Section button to add the section to your page. Once you’ve left AI Section Mode, you can edit all elements of the section, just as you would with any text or image throughout the site.

Other AI Assistant Options in the Builder

We hope you enjoy AI generated sections, and are able to take advantage of this exciting tool in order to reach the finish line quicker on your next project. And just a reminder… If you haven’t yet discovered our other AI tools, visit this companion article to learn more about the other AI Assistant implementations in the builder:

Text Editor
Page SEO
SEO Meta tags for all pages
Business Text (within the Content Library)
Multi-language site SEO
Image Alt Text

Blog Improvements for Better Management and Enhanced Visitor Experience

brandon@wocode.com (WOCode Team - Brandon) — Mon, 26 Feb 2024 16:00:03 GMT

Several new updates to Wocode’s built-in blogging system will enhance the experience for you, your clients, and site visitors. These changes will allow you to filter posts, make better use of tags, and sort blog content in more powerful ways.

These improvements affect both sides of the blog – the backend where you manage content and the frontend where site visitors interact and discover new content. And best of all – these changes are live on the platform now. Let’s jump in!

Enhanced Filtering With Multiple Tags

Tags are an excellent way to create blog post categories. And if you’re using tags now (or you’re ready to start) – then this feature is for you.

You can now filter blog posts using multiple tags. This means that you can combine categories as needed to display smarter, focused content for site visitors. This feature is available on frontend widgets All Posts and Recent Posts.

Use Case:

If you have a site dedicated to tourism in NYC, and have tagged blog posts with separate tags for “bars”, “restaurants” and “cafes”, these articles can be combined and displayed on a Dining page. Similarly, tags like “broadway”, “concerts” and “walking tours” can be combined and displayed on an Activities page.

Better Sorting Capabilities

All blog posts may now be sorted in ascending or descending order, using either the created date or the published date. This simple improvement will make locating and managing blog posts simpler for you and your clients.

To Use:

Click Blog in the side menu
Click the sort dropdown in the top right of the Manage Posts page.

Bulk Publish and Republish

For blogs with a large number of posts, bulk actions can be a big time saver. You can now select multiple posts to publish or republish in one click.

To Use:

Tick the checkboxes for any number of posts, then click the “Publish Selected” button.

Smarter Context-Based Searches

Posts may now be searched by descriptions (in addition to search by post title, author and tag) in both the site editor and the live site. Context-enhanced searches such as this result in more efficient blog management overall, and improve the experience of visitors to the site.

Search-by-description is available in:

Manage Posts page (site editor): finding posts faster results in better blog management
Search Posts widget (live site): improved searches help to better connect visitors with the content they’re interested in

We hope that these improvements will help to make blog management better not only for you and your client, but also enhance the experience for visitors on the live site. Keep an eye out for for more improvements on the way!

Several Improvements to Collections Make Them Behave More Like Excel

brandon@wocode.com (WOCode Team - Brandon) — Mon, 29 Jan 2024 19:15:10 GMT

We're excited to announce several improvements to Without Code Collections. As the capabilities of Collections grow – so does your ability to build powerful and effective Dynamic Pages. And with the latest round of updates, you will find that working in Collections will now have more in common with your favorite spreadsheet editor, with easier data portability, new export features, webhooks and more.

A Compendium of Collections Improvements

If you're new to this, think of Collections as the basis for generating Dynamic Pages and managing the content that appears in Connected Widgets . Dynamic Pages can be used to generate multiple site pages automatically – perfect for real estate listings , product pages or recipes .

Export Collection to CSV File

Do you need to duplicate your entire Collection in an outside platform or third-party app? You can now export an Internal Collection into a CSV file and use it outside of the Without Code editor as needed.

To export a CSV file, click Content in the side menu, select Collections, then open the context menu for the desired Internal Collection by clicking the three dots icon. Select Export to CSV. Note that this can only be done with Internal Collections.

Copy/Paste Cells, Rows & Columns

For those that are comfortable working in Excel, Google Sheets or Numbers, this update is for you. Navigating around an Internal Collection is now much more intuitive, with behavior and responsiveness more like your favorite spreadsheet editor. You can now select groups of cells and copy/paste in and out of Collections.

To select a group of cells in a Collection, simply click and drag. You can also select a single cell, then shift-click another cell to select all the cells in a row or column. With a group of cells selected, you're all set to copy & paste...

Copying & pasting opens many doors when working in Collections. If you'd like to move data from an outside source, like Excel, you can now paste data directly into a Collection. Similarly, you can move data from a Collection to an outside spreadsheet in the same manner. And lastly, if you need to move or duplicate data entirely within a Collection, now you can.

Publish or Republish Individual Collections

You may have noticed that there have been several recent improvements that allow you to save time by publishing single pages and blog posts, instead of republishing the entire site. The same is now true in Collections.

If you've updated a Collection and just want those changes to go live, you can publish individual Collections. This is great for cases when you have other work on the site staged but not ready to become public. To publish a single Collection, click Content in the side menu, select Collections, then open the context menu for the desired Internal Collection by clicking the three dots icon. Select Publish Collection.

Add Custom Headers in External Collections

You can now create custom headers for your External Collections. If the data you're working with requires additional headers to fetch data, this update is for you. To add a custom header, open an External Collection and click the "Add custom header" link at the bottom.

Utilize Webhooks for Advanced Integrations

Do you integrate with automation tools like Zapier? We've added Webhooks to Internal Collections to let you know whenever your Collection has been created, updated or deleted. And the same applies to Collection rows.

Take advantage of this new improvement to trigger actions for you or your client, such as sending an email based on a change, or syncing with your business's internal systems.

Planned Maintenance Dec 25, 2023

Wed, 20 Dec 2023 19:11:15 GMT

On December 25th from 8am to 8pm UTC (12am - 12pm PST) , the Without Code will be temporarily unavailable due to important planned maintenance. During this time, we will roll out the latest security patches and database encryption to prevent data breaches and keep your and your clients’ sensitive data protected.

We’re excited to offer you an even more secure platform this holiday season!

This planned outage does not impact published websites. We suggest clearing your browser cache before returning to our site. If you have any questions, please contact our support team .

Site Hosting (Standard)

Members

Annual

$12 /mo

billed annually

Old: $10/mo billed annually

Monthly

$16 /mo

billed monthly

Old: $13/mo billed monthly

New Customers

Annual

$15 /mo

billed annually

/ Non-Member Pricing

Monthly

$16 /mo

billed monthly

Site Hosting

New Pricing

Members

Annual

$12 /mo

billed annually

Previously $10/mo

Monthly

$16 /mo

billed monthly

Previously $13/mo

New Customers

Annual

$15 /mo

billed annually

/ Non-Member Pricing

Monthly

$16 /mo

billed monthly

Memberships

Unchanged if kept active

Ecommerce

All ecommerce plan pricing will remain unchanged

Memberships

Unchanged if kept active

Ecommerce

All ecommerce plan pricing will remain unchanged

Pricing & Membership Changes in 2024

Thu, 14 Dec 2023 17:32:28 GMT

New hosting prices are now in effect, as of January 15, 2024, that better reflect our industry, costs, and plans to expand the Without Code platform / support services for our customers. This change will apply to all new and existing hosting subscriptions, however a significant discount will be applied for our existing users.

What’s Changing?

1. Memberships are no longer required for new users

To reduce customer confusion at signup and when publishing a website, we are no longer offering memberships to new users. As a result, these users will see higher publish prices than our existing customers with active memberships.

Memberships are not common in site builder platforms, and this change will greatly simplify our messaging and ensure we are consistent with other companies in the website creation industry.

2. Existing members access discounted hosting prices

For users with an existing membership, we are offering significantly discounted hosting prices and smaller price increases compared to the new market rates. These benefits are available to users who have an active Without Code Membership (including former Pro and VIP plans).

Our system will now detect your membership level to display the correct pricing, so it’s important to keep your membership active if you wish to access this pricing. Please note that we cannot reactivate memberships once cancelled by the customer or due to a failed paym ent.

We know that a price increase means you need to alert clients and publish in-progress projects at current prices, so we will continue to offer our existing publish prices until January 15, 2024. All existing subscription prices will update to the appropriate rates automatically with no action is required on your end.

Please refer to the pricing table below for a breakdown of our new prices:

Site Hosting (Standard)

Members

Annual

$12 /mo

billed annually

Old: $10/mo billed annually

Monthly

$16 /mo

billed monthly

Old: $13/mo billed monthly

New Customers

Annual

$15 /mo

billed annually

/ Non-Member Pricing

Monthly

$16 /mo

billed monthly

Site Hosting

Current Members - VIP / Pro / Bundle

$12/mo billed annually ($144 / year)
$15/mo billed monthly

New Customers (Non-Members)

$15/mo billed annually ($180 / year)
$18/mo billed monthly

Memberships

Membership fees for active subscriptions are unchanged .

Ecommerce

All ecommerce plan pricing will remain unchanged .

Reseller and Enterprise Plans

FAQs

Q. What happens if I cancel my Without Code Membership?
A. Site hosting will renew at the higher, non-member rates of $18/mo or $180/year ($15/mo billed annually). No perks, benefits or builder features will be lost.

Q. Are “Pro” or “VIP” the same as a Without Code Membership?

A. Yes, Pro and VIP are older terminology for our current membership, and all are considered the same.

Q. Can I change plans? (Reseller/Enterprise)
A. Enterprise plans are no longer available, and those on an Enterprise plan have been grandfathered in. You can no longer change into an Enterprise plan. If you would like to get out of an Enterprise plan, you can move to a Reseller plan.

Q. I have a $1 site as an Enterprise member. Will I lose that? (Reseller/Enterprise)

A. No, the $1 sites will remain unchanged if you remain on the Enterprise plan.

If you have any questions about our upcoming price changes, please don't hesitate to contact our sales support team .

Thank you again for building your websites on the Without Code platform. We greatly appreciate your trust and ongoing support, and look forward to working extremely hard for our customers and community in 2024.

Site Hosting

New Pricing

Members

Annual

$12 /mo

billed annually

Previously $10/mo

Monthly

$16 /mo

billed monthly

Previously $13/mo

New Customers

Annual

$15 /mo

billed annually

/ Non-Member Pricing

Monthly

$16 /mo

billed monthly

Memberships

Unchanged if kept active

Ecommerce

All ecommerce plan pricing will remain unchanged

Memberships

Unchanged if kept active

Ecommerce

All ecommerce plan pricing will remain unchanged

Introducing AI Assistant: Leveraging the Power of AI in the Wocode Builder

brandon@wocode.com (WOCode Team - Brandon) — Mon, 11 Sep 2023 18:03:37 GMT

You probably don’t need to read a lengthy introduction on AI, where we tell you all the neat ways it can impact our lives and make tasks easier – I’m sure you’ve heard. AI has been the story of the decade in technology and beyond. The question to answer is how can AI help me in building websites ? As it turns out, AI can help you in lots of ways.

We’re excited to announce the new AI Assistant in the Wocode site builder. The purpose of the AI Assistant is to harness the power of AI in ways that will make building sites faster, simpler, funner and more useful for the end user

If you’ve experimented with AI, or you’ve begun to use AI in daily tasks such as writing, you’ll know that there’s often a need of bouncing around to generate & grab content in one place and then go paste it in another. The goal with Wocode’s AI Assistant is to integrate it in a way that’s completely seamless and easy to use for anyone. We’ve placed it right inside the builder so you won’t need to leave the platform or break your workflow when you want to leverage the power of AI.

AI Assistant is available on all sites created on or after September 12, 2023. To enable on older sites, use the toggle in your dashboard: Manage Project > Enable the AI Assistant toggle.

Look for the Sparkle! ✨

To make it quick & easy to locate AI Assistant, we’ve created an eye-catching icon to help you find AI Assistant anywhere in the builder. This icon will always be associated with an AI tool. Just look for the sparkle!

To kick off Wocode’s integration of AI within the site builder, we’ve added several new features in key areas where you can begin to see the benefits of AI immediately:

AI Assistant in the Text Editor

We’ve added an AI Assistant to the place where you spend the majority of time as you build out a new site – the Text widget. By utilizing the AI Assistant now included in the Text editor, you can generate content quicker than ever, while refining and improving the quality and tone of your text content.

To begin generating content, select an action from the AI Assistant menu. Options include:

New title
Title for this section
Paragraph

In the new window, describe in a few words what sort of text you need, then within a few seconds, the AI Assistant will generate content that you can further refine if needed.

The information you provide about the business or site purpose will better inform the AI Assistant, enabling it to provide better quality content. The content prompts will help guide you to providing the type of information that will lead to the most focused content.

And to help AI Assistant understand your business even further, the very first time you use AI Assistant on a new site, you’ll be asked for a few key details about the specific business behind the site. This is a one-off action that will automatically add the relevant business context to future prompts, in order to make the most useful suggestions possible.

Refining the results

Now that you have some AI-generated content, you can begin to see just how deep the usefulness is when you further refine the content. Do you need to make a paragraph longer? Shorter? This is all possible with Quick Edits.

To further refine generated content, choose from the following Quick Edits:

Improve text
Make longer
Make shorter
Fix grammar & spelling

Setting The Right Tone

For those of us that work with text copy on business sites, we realize that tone is hugely important. The style of the "voice" when copywriting has a big impact on the way that a business is perceived. Knowing this, tone is a key component to the writing style of AI Assistant. You can choose from:

Conversational
Humorous
Enthusiastic
Informative
Professional
Witty
Authoritative

Previewing and Proofing

When you are provided with a piece of content, you can choose to preview it on the canvas and see how it looks before making your final decision. You can also copy the text and share it with others for approval.

If you’re not quite happy with the generated content or if you’d like to look at a few options, use the “Try again” button to generate new versions.

AI Assistant in the Page SEO Section

The second place you’ll find AI Assistant is in the SEO area of your page settings. Leveraging AI when establishing the SEO for your website has the potential to improve search performance and even improve the ability of your business to find the right audience.

But before we dig into the details, we should remind ourselves of a basic building block of AI: AI systems are only as good as the data being fed into them.

This is especially true of the AI Assistant tools in the SEO settings. The way that the AI Assistant generates high quality tags, title and description is through a good understanding of your business. The way we *feed* the AI good data is through the content of the page and the information we feed the AI Assistant as we begin using it. So keep in mind that it’s generally best to work on your SEO once your pages have been filled with content.

To begin using AI Assistant for improved SEO, open the SEO settings for one of your pages (Page menu > Settings icon > SEO). Look for the purple Generate SEO tags button and give it a click. You will see a new window open that will ask you a few questions about your business. This information (along with the page content) will better inform the AI Assistant.

Once you’ve entered the information in your business profile, generate your tags. At this time, AI Assistant will write your tags. You can choose to apply the suggestions or try again. When the suggestions are applied, you will see that the SEO fields are automatically populated. At this point, you can save your SEO settings or refine the text manually if you like.

If you prefer to use AI Assistant to create a meta title and description separately, click the small sparkles icon in those fields.

AI Assistant in Business Text

The third place you’ll find AI Assistant is in the Business Text area of your site's Content Library. The goal in this first round of AI integrations within the builder is to add them where they can have the biggest impact on the process of building a site, as well as business info – which has the benefit of improving SEO and helping potential customers better understand your business.

To access Business Text for your site, go to Content > Connected Data (CMS) > Business Text.

You will find AI Assistant available for the following text descriptions:

About Us (this text can be used for Local Business Schema )
Company Overview
Business Services

As for for functionality, you'll find that the AI Assistant works similarly wherever you encounter it. Once you feel comfortable working with it, you will find it easy to use – wherever you are in the builder. The sections above (for the Text widget and SEO settings) cover the operation of AI Assistant, so we won't repeat those instructions here.

Update: New AI Features

This article is intended as an introduction to AI within the Without Code builder. The three features available at launch time have been covered in detail here. Please note that the following AI Assistant features have become available after this article was published. For full documentation on all AI Assistant features, see our documentation .

SEO meta tags for all pages in one click:

With just a single click, you can now use the power of AI Assistant to automatically generate powerful SEO meta tags for all pages on a site, making SEO easier than ever before.

Multi-language AI SEO for your entire site:

Adding SEO for multi language sites is now easier than ever using AI assistant. With just a single click you can now automatically generate SEO tags for every page on each site language.

AI Assistant for Image Alt Text:

Use the AI Assistant button in the Alt text field to analyze a photo's content and generate instant and accurate alt text. Image alt text (also called alt tags and alt descriptions) plays an important role in your website by improving accessibility, organic inbound traffic and user experience.

Benefits of AI in Web Design

Now that we’ve had a look at the details of how AI has been integrated into the Without Code builder, let’s look at a few of the benefits of AI in the world of web design in a more general sense, and briefly discuss where we’re headed in the future.

Make redundant processes more efficient

Many tasks in web design become redundant. AI can be used to take care of cumbersome tasks so that we can spend more time on creative endeavors.

Better understand how users interact with what we build

AI can collect feedback, analyze it and synthesize results, providing us with deeper insights than ever before; on how end users interact with our sites.

More effective accessibility

While website designs have gotten better at improving accessibility for users, many designs have a long way to go in providing inclusive sites. AI can be used to identify improvements such as automatic tooltips, sizing of icons, screen size adaption, etc.

This is only the beginning!

We hope you’re as excited as we are about accessing AI in the Without Code builder. We’re focused on developing integrated solutions that will help you build better websites, convert more clients, and maintain sites more efficiently. Keep an eye out for for exciting new integrations to come.

Labor Day Sale on Now! Save 20% On New Hosting & Bundles

brandon@wocode.com (WOCode Team - Brandon) — Mon, 28 Aug 2023 21:50:05 GMT

Save 20% on new Without Code website hosting and bundle purchases (each bundle includes a full access membership, one hosted site and one email inbox).

Labor Day sale pricing is available between Monday, Aug 28 and Monday, Sep 11 (Midnight PST). Enter the following coupon codes when selecting your membership / hosting:

Annual Website Hosting

2023LDHOSTING

Membership Bundle

2023LDBUNDLE

Sale pricing is offered on new hosting / membership purchases only and can not be applied to existing service renewals. Discounts apply to the first year of service. Subsequent renewals will occur at standard rates.

Important Airtable Changes Coming Feb 1, 2024: Action May Be Required

brandon@wocode.com (WOCode Team - Brandon) — Mon, 28 Aug 2023 17:36:28 GMT

If you use Airtable integrations in Without Code, it is important that you take action before February 1, 2024 in order to avoid interruptions in service.

Airtable has has announced that they are making a significant change to their authorization methods. API keys are being deprecated and they are transitioning from API key authorization to using Personal Access Tokens for authorization. Airtable states that this change will provide greater security and improved features.

This change affects Without Code users that utilize Airtable for Collections or widgets (see FAQ for detailed information on all Airtable integrations within Wocode). To ensure that your sites continue to work properly, it is crucial that your Airtable integrations are updated with Personal Access Tokens.

We’re happy to announce that all Airtable integrations within Wocode have been updated to accept Personal Access Tokens, so you can replace your soon-to-expire API tokens as soon as you like.

To Update Your Airtable With Personal Access Tokens:

Acquire your Personal Access Token from Airtable (see video below).
Access your collection or widget.
Replace the API key with your Personal Access Token.
If updating a collection, click Refresh Data and then Done. No further action is required for widgets.

Airtable API Change Timeline

It is imperative that you update your Airtable integrations by February 1st, 2024. API keys will be deprecated at this time, and will no longer function. The full timeline is as follows:

August 1, 2023: Personal Access Tokens must be used when creating a new Airtable collection within Wocode. Personal Access Tokens may be used in older, existing integrations.
February 1, 2024: API keys will be deprecated and no longer be accepted by Airtable. Airtable integrations using API keys will experience disruptions if they aren't updated.

FAQ

How do I know if I’m using Airtable for something?

You may be using Airtable on your Wocode site if you are using Dynamic Pages or certain widgets. The following features offer Airtable integrations:

Collections: Airtable is one option for managing data in collections. Other options include Google Sheets, internal collections and external collections. Access your collections by visiting: Content > Collections.
Business Directory widget
Search widget
Connected Data widgets: Many widgets allow you to connect them to collections. These widgets do not require Personal Access Tokens from Airtable, but it’s possible that the collection the widget connects to does.

If you don’t use collections for anything, and you don’t use the Business Directory or the Search widget, no action is needed.

How do I acquire my Personal Access Token from Airtable?

See the video above for detailed instructions.

What if I do nothing?

If you use Airtable integrations with a collection, or you’re using Airtable with your Business Directory or Search widgets, these will not work properly after February 1, 2024.

Boost Your SEO Performance With These New Builder Features

brandon@wocode.com (WOCode Team - Brandon) — Tue, 04 Jul 2023 16:58:05 GMT

There’s another round of improvements available right now in the Without Code builder. This time around, it’s all about SEO & Schema. With these new tools, you can ensure that you’re empowering your site for optimum performance in search results, and maybe even gain an edge on the competition!

Within the updates, you’ll find a handful of new SEO-focused features, as well as Schema tools that will help search engines understand your site better by being handed the exact context they’re looking for. We’ll start off with the SEO options, followed by the new Schema tools, and be sure to catch the Schema overview for a refresher on what it is and why you want to use it!

Alt Text Tags Now Available in the Tabs Widget

You’re probably familiar with alt tags for images. Alt tags are very important because they help to tell search engines what’s in the image, as well as the purpose of the image. Alt tags also act as an accessibility aid for site visitors that aren’t able to view the image.

Our Tabs widget now includes an Alt Text field, which allows you to enter information for each tab’s image. If you’re not using alt text on every single image on your site, you should consider making this a habit!

Multilingual Pages Now Included in Your Default Sitemap

The sitemap file for your site now includes your translated multilingual pages (if they exist on your site). This is yet another way for search engines to better understand your site and display more relevant results in searches.

And even more good news – this new feature is automatic. Multilingual pages are added behind the scenes, so there’s nothing you need to do to take advantage.

Several New No Index & No Follow Options

Last month we announced a new attribute for the Button widget: No Follow. This option disallows search engines from crawling the links on that page.

We’ve extended the ways you can use the no follow setting throughout your site. And in addition, we’ve added the No Index option anywhere you find a No Follow option. No Index tells a search engine that even though it can crawl the page, it cannot add the page into its search index.

There are some great opportunities to take advantage of these rules. For example, you may want to use No Index when you don't want a search engine to index your web page, but you do want it to follow the links on the page. And you may want to use both No Index and No Follow when you don't want search engines to index a page in search, and you don't want it to follow the links on that page either. This is useful for form-response pages or thank you pages, where you don’t want your thank you page indexed, nor do you want search engines following links to the great offer on that page (where the search engine could then index the content of that offer).

Here are the new opportunities for using No Index & No Follow in the Without Code builder:

➡️ Entire Site

You can now tell Google and other search engines not to crawl or index your entire site.

To do this: Go to SEO & Settings > SEO > Set entire site to no index and use the toggle to enable this feature.

➡️ Blog Posts

Individual blog posts can be set to No Index.

To do this: Locate the blog post, go to the settings for that post, and scroll to the Set post to no index toggle. Note that a republish is required when this setting is changed.

➡️ External Links

You will notice when you create a link on your site that there are several new options for the Website URL option. You may now choose to enable one or more additional options:

• No follow: This tells search engines to not pass any link authority from your page to the website that you are linking to

• Sponsored link: This tells search engines this link was paid for.

• User Generated Content This tells search engines this link’s authority and reliability can’t be vouched for.

➡️ Downloadable Files

You may now set a downloadable file on your site to No Index. An example use case for this feature would be when your client’s site contains files that may serve site visitors, but might not align with the site’s overall SEO optimization.

To do this: Go to Content > Media Manager > Files tab and select a file. Then enable the Set file to no index option.

What IS Schema Anyways?

You may have noticed times when Google displays a very complete listing in a search result, with much more information than a standard link to a website. In these cases, you will see the item, with relevant information related to the type of item.

In the example above, we see that Prairie Animal Clinic is displaying not just a link to its website, but Google is also displaying its address, hours, phone number, email address and more. When this type of search result is served, it is called a rich result, or rich snippets.

It’s Schema that allows Google and other search engines to better understand information on your website and display results like these when it’s appropriate. Schema is a language used to represent data, and the actual data is called structured data.

By providing search engines with the correct type of data, they can display rich results in searches for a variety of elements. And when your site content is displayed as rich results, it can give it a competitive advantage and better click-through rates.

Over the last couple of years, we’ve added the ability to enable schema for local businesses, as well as FAQ information. With our most recent schema updates, you can also benefit from rich results for blog posts and videos:

Schema Markup for Videos

You may now add three new video details that together provide Google with the structured data needed to display your video in rich results in relevant searches. To take advantage of this new feature, Open the Video widget, and scroll down to the Video Schema section in the Content tab. Enter the video’s name, description and upload date.

Schema Markup for Blog Posts

The Without Code builder now automatically generates the necessary schema for every new blog post you publish. To take advantage of this, simply ensure that you’re entering all of the important information about your blog post, such as post meta title and description. This information can be added by entering the settings (gear icon) for individual blog posts.

New Improvements for More Powerful Dynamic Pages and Collections

brandon@wocode.com (WOCode Team - Brandon) — Wed, 14 Jun 2023 20:35:35 GMT

We’re always working to find ways to make Dynamic Pages more powerful and flexible. Dynamic Pages allow you to easily generate multiple pages with the same structure and design, but with different content on each page. This is a great solution for pages like:

Product catalog pages
Real estate listings
Recipe pages
Team pages

And at the heart of Dynamic Pages are Collections. Collections allow you to organize all of the data that populates your Dynamic Page content. We’re excited to announce several improvements to Internal Collections that will make it easier to manage your Dynamic Page content.

Let’s dig in!

Link to Dynamic Pages

Link pickers now allow you to choose Dynamic pages for link destinations. This means that any content on your site can be linked to a Dynamic page – even navigation menu items. When choosing a Dynamic page layout as a link destination, you can further specify which Collection you’d like to connect to, using the Item dropdown.

This update helps to make Dynamic pages feel more thoroughly integrated into your site, even though they don’t count against your page count.

Show or Hide Collection Rows

You may now show or hide one or more Internal Collection rows with just one click. This gives you the ability to easily control the visibility of certain Dynamic pages on your site.

Previously, rows could only be deleted. By hiding a Collection row, you can choose to hide Dynamic pages temporarily – which is a useful thing. For example, if you’ve built a client site that displays real estate listings and one of the listings has gone under contract, you can hide that listing page to keep it from displaying on the site any longer. But if the property goes back on the market, you can simply set that Collection row’s visibility back to Show, enabling the page on the site again.

Duplicate, Rearrange and Drag & Drop

While the improvements above open up exciting opportunities for expanding what’s possible in your site, our next improvement is actually a full set of helpful updates that makes working with Internal Collections much easier, and just feel more natural.

You can now:

Duplicate entire Collections
Drag & drop columns to reorder them
Duplicate rows

In a world where we may use spreadsheet-style tables on multiple platforms such as Excel, Google Sheets and Airtable, we certainly appreciate features and behaviors that are common to all of these services. And with the latest improvements, we think you should feel more comfortable working in Collections than ever!

Feature Focus: Duplicating Collections

Even though we already mentioned duplicating entire Collections in the section above, it's worth taking a moment to illustrate just how powerful this improvement can actually be.

Keep in mind that a Collection can represent all of the content for an entire page. And by duplicating a collection, you can essentially generate a new page worth of content with just one click! For example, if you've built a client site for a school with different sport pages that display wins, losses and scores, you can generate content for entirely new sport pages by duplicating Collections. To do this, we can take an existing collection – let's say Football – and duplicate the Collection and simply change the name to Basketball. Repeat this process and change the name to Baseball. You get the idea.

By duplicating entire Collections, it's easy to generate full dynamic page content on the fly.

9 New Features in the Builder We Think You'll Love

brandon@wocode.com (WOCode Team - Brandon) — Tue, 06 Jun 2023 17:43:05 GMT

Our update log is the best place to catch announcements of all of our key updates such as new widgets, templates, or major changes in the builder. But sometimes, some of the most useful features are ones that simply result in one highly useful checkbox in a widget you use every day. Even the most unassuming new features can result in huge time savings or solve a problem you’ve been trying to figure out.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been busy adding small features with big potential for saving you time and making your site-building life a little easier. Let’s jump into the details on our latest builder updates!

1. Disable Automatic Image Optimization

Image optimization is extremely important on the web, and keeps our page load speeds zippy while ensuring that our image files sizes are kept in check. Image optimization prepares an image for optimal use on the web by resizing oversized image dimensions, and compressing images so that file sizes don’t slow down page load times.

Optimization is a common process and is available in virtually every photo editing software, including Photoshop and Lightroom. It’s also available in standalone apps and websites such as JPEGmini and TinyJPG. As for the Wocode builder, optimization is built in, and is automatically performed to ensure top site performance; while removing extra steps of optimizing images elsewhere before adding them to your site.

While automatic optimization is ideal for almost all circumstances, there are occasions when you may not want an image optimized automatically. For example, you may have an image of high importance on your site that you’d just prefer not to compress. And occasionally – even when you’re happy to let the Wocode optimizer do it’s thing, you may notice a visible alteration of the image such as artifacts or tonal change. In cases like this, you may choose to try other optimization options.

With the “Disable image optimization” option enabled, images will be left original and completely unaltered.

This feature has been highly requested by our user base, and we’re happy to announce that it is live in the builder now.

2. Greater Publishing Flexibility: "Set as Draft"

Historically, publishing your site meant publishing your entire site – including all of the pages throughout the site – at one time. In June of 2021, we added the ability to publish a single page, greatly improving the flexibility of publishing, even during various stages of the build process.

We’re happy to announce a way to be even more flexible and creative with publishing pages of your site – or in this case, not publishing pages. The new Set as draft feature allows a page to not be published even when performing a general publishing of the entire site. Additionally, “Set as draft” pages will not be seen in the site navigation, nor will they be searchable on your site.

When you’re ready for a draft page to go live, revisit the Page settings and click Add to next publish . It will go live next time the site is published.

Use this feature to take your time in building out a page on your site while you continue to make and publish small changes elsewhere on the site.

3. Google Tag Manager Integration

Google Tag Manager is a fantastic way to open the door to marketing for your website. The GTM platform is essential for businesses of all sizes, and allows for Conversion Tracking, Site Analytics, Remarketing, and more.

Even though there are dozens of unique benefits of GTM, the best part is that there is no coding involved – even when performing advanced tracking techniques. And even better yet, setting up GTM in your site is easier than ever with our new Google Tag Manager tool. Once you’ve set up your Container ID with Google, you will simply paste that in our tool, and your site will be linked with your GTM account.

To set up Google Tag Manager and acquire your Container ID, go here

To learn more about the benefits of GTM, go here

4. Upload Custom Sitemaps

A sitemap is a critical factor for any website. It tells search engines that your site is available for crawling, and allows for discovering and indexing all of the pages and resources on your site. Taking advantage of your sitemap, you can even highlight pages that might be hard to find or access otherwise, pages with dynamic or complex URLs, pages with rich media, or pages that are new or updated.

Conversely, not having a sitemap can lead to delays in the time it takes for search engines to discover and crawl your site, in turn impacting your ability to show up in search results.

Our latest SEO setting allows you to upload your own custom sitemap. Files supported include .robots, .text and .ads.

If you would like to use a custom sitemap generator, there are many available options. See this article from Semrush for a roundup of the top options.

5. More Powerful Bullet Lists

Have a look around the web, and you’ll see that bullet lists are evolving. Much like emojis are becoming commonplace in professional applications on the web, bullet lists are more and more often being made with icons beyond the classic bullet shape.

In keeping up with the times, we’ve added additional options for icons in bullet lists. Use the dropdown menu to access icons such as check signs, stars, arrows and more.

6. Flex Floating Bar Improvements for Easier and Faster Editing

We’ve made some simple updates to the floating bar within the Flex editor to make things a little easier and more intuitive:

Content and Design Buttons:
The Content and Design edit actions are now available as text buttons instead of icons, offering a clearer path to access the way you’d like to edit.

Prominent Widget Names:
When a widget is selected, its name is displayed more prominently in the floating bar, eliminating any confusion of what is selected and what you’re editing.

7. Hide "Back to Top" Button on Mobile

We’ve gotten your feedback on the back to top button, and we’re happy to oblige! While a back to top button is a very handy thing to have on a mobile site, there are certainly times when you may not want to display a back to top button. And it’s for just these times that our new mobile feature will come in handy. To hide the back to top button on mobile, enable the “Hide back-to-top button on mobile” option in the site layout settings.

8. New Follow Options for Buttons

Buttons are of course a great way to direct users to important pages or content. But what if they could do more? With three new attributes now available, you can take control of your button behavior in ways not possible until now. In addition to opening a button link in a new window, you can now:

Set as "no follow":
This option asks search engines to not associate your site with the page being linked or crawl the linked page from your site.

Set as sponsored:
This informs the search engines that the link is the result of an advertisement or paid placement.

Set as user Generated Content (UGC):
This tells the search engines that the link is created by a user and isn’t necessarily reliable. Example: a link someone posted in a comment.

9. TikTok, Whatsapp and Google My Business Added to Business Info Options

We’re happy to announce that we’ve added several new options in the Business Info section of your site. Added services are WhatsApp, TikTok and Google My Business.

Icons from all three new services will be available as you display your social media throughout your site. Additionally, these new services will be available to connect to data on connected widgets.

AddThis Has Terminated Its Services – Here’s What You Need to Know

brandon@wocode.com (WOCode Team - Brandon) — Wed, 03 May 2023 18:00:12 GMT

UPDATE: AddThis.com has terminated its services. See alternatives in the last paragraph below.

In a recent announcement, AddThis.com has announced that they will be terminating all of their services on May 31, 2023 . As many of you know, Without Code offers a widget that integrates AddThis services onto Without Code websites, titled AddThis Social Tools . And over the years, many Without Code users have installed the AddThis Social Tools widget on their sites.

Please be advised that the AddThis Social Tools widget will stop functioning when AddThis terminates its services later this month. We suggest removing the AddThis widget from your sites, as this will keep your sites clear of unnecessary HTML code. To do this: locate the widget on your site, and simply delete it.

If you choose to do nothing, no worries – your site will continue to function. The floating AddThis buttons will simply disappear.

For alternatives to AddThis, consider ShareThis and AddToAny . Both have embed code that can be used on your site today, and offer similar services. And if you’d like to see a Without Code widget for easy integration of either of these services, please let us know in the comments below!

Manage Your Content Like Never Before

Wed, 05 Apr 2023 17:05:03 GMT

We’re very excited to share the latest updates to the Without Code website builder! Our Content Library management system has several improvements that were designed to give you superior control over all of the important media within your website.

Designed to give you superior control over all of the important media within your website.

Key features allow you to add more file types than ever before, organize content quickly using folders, preview video and audio on the fly, and better manage business information. In this article, we’ll take a look at each new feature in detail and show you how you can better streamline your content management today!

All of the features detailed below can be found in the Content Library . Access it by clicking on the Content button in the side menu .

All of Your Media Assets in One Place

At the heart of the Content Library improvements is the new Media Manager. This area contains all of the media assets on your site, including images , video , audio and files of all types .

When you enter the Content Library , select Media Manager . In the Media Manager, you will find four tabs along the top: Images , Videos , Audio and Files . Use these tabs to switch between media types and explore a range of management options that vary per media type. Management options include uploading new content, creating folders, renaming files and previewing audio and video.

A Brand New Stock Video Library

One of the most exciting updates is the all-new stock video library. In the Video tab of the Media Manager, you will find a virtually endless number of videos available to add to your site.

You will find a virtually endless number of videos available to add to your site.

A rather handy search tool also allows you to search to find the perfect videos for the atmosphere of your website. To further explore the search results, use the dropdown menu to filter results by:

�� All videos

�� Free videos

�� Premium videos

�� Content already on your site

Captivating videos make fantastic backgrounds for site sections, and it's never been easier to find the perfect video content for your site!

Instantly Preview Video and Audio

With the theme of efficiency in mind, you can now preview video and audio files instantly in the new Media Manager. To preview an audio file, select the file and click play in the management pane on the right. Video files can be previewed in the same way. And for even quicker previews, hover over any video thumbnail for an instant motion preview.

And There's More!

We hope you love the changes to the Content section of your Without Code websites! These changes are live in the builder now, and can be accessed any time by clicking the Content button in the side menu. Keep reading to discover even more improvements to the Content Library.

��️

Improved CMS

It is now easier and more intuitive to navigate through your site's CMS sections. The Connected Data section allows for management of business info, text and images. Access this menu at Content > Connected Data (CMS) .

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Support For All File Types

You may now upload and manage files of all types. When you open the Files tab of the Media Manager, you will find all of the uploaded files on your site. This area includes all of the files you’ve uploaded in the past, and of course all of the files you may add in the future. Almost any file type is supported, including PDF , DOCX , XLS , ZIP and more . And be sure to use folders as needed to further organize your files!

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Seamless Audio Integration

The Audio manager not only allows easy upload and preview of audio files, but also integrates seamlessly with the Audio widget. Any audio in the Media Manager can be accessed from the Audio widget by clicking the "Select Audio" button.

Using Emojis in Website Design 🥳

brandon@wocode.com (WOCode Team - Brandon) — Tue, 06 Dec 2022 19:39:43 GMT

Have you ever considered using emojis in website design? For many of us, the answer has been no, never . Certainly they’re too casual for proper design, right? Maybe not.

Emojis do a certain job better than words can: they convey emotion and non-verbal cues. This effortless ability can represent a true value in situations where copywriters can often struggle to properly convey tone and intent with written text.

Making the Case For Emojis ��

In an era where digital communication is becoming increasingly dominant, businesses (and their websites) simply cannot afford miscommunications.

Vik Verma, CEO of unified communications platform company 8x8 Vik Verma explains in an interview with Forbes how emojis have become useful in professional settings:

“Plain and simple, emojis help employees communicate more effectively with each other. They can indicate tone that might otherwise be misconstrued and can boost credibility. What’s really important is getting your message across as clearly as possible, and if emojis can help with that, then go right ahead."

Are Emojis Right for Your Site? ��

If emojis are commonplace and even used professionally in business communications, are they right in website design? It depends.

Emojis can certainly be viewed as informal. If the personality of your brand is NOT informal, use of emojis may not send the right message to site visitors. However, for sites where playfulness, whimsey or culture-rich branding is in play, emojis can be fair game.

And as you’ll find later in this article, emojis can also be useful in more fundamental ways such as SEO, meta tags, and drawing the focus of shoppers.

Let’s look at some use cases for emojis in website design…

Examples

✨ Headlines

Adding an emoji to a headline can convey a gesture that is instantly recognized as friendly, familiar and human.

�� Page Navigation

Combining emojis with site navigation can reinforce the purpose and direction of a nav item. Consider using emojis in your site nav to highlight certain levels of navigation in multi-level page structures or to add clarity to pages that may feel vague in the context of your site structure.

�� Bullet Points

It seems so obvious when you see it in practice! Using emojis in place of bullets help visitors clearly understand the purpose of a list item at a glance. Try it in tables as well!

�� Page Titles

Browsing the web with multiple tabs open is simply a way of life these days. Draw attention to your tab effortlessly with an emoji that relates to your site’s subject.

�� Page Meta Tags

Search results are typically a sea of words. Adding emojis to page meta tags can transform a bland string of metadata into an eye-catching search result that stands out from the rest of the search results.

How to Use Emojis in WOCode ��

Mac

Press Command + Control + Space , then select your emoji.

Windows

Press Windows logo key + . (period) , then select your emoji.

Online Resources

Visit an online library such as emoji.muan.co , then select your emoji.

Notes

In this article, we referenced adding emojis to text editors in the WOCode builder. But keep in mind that emojis can be added to most any place text can be entered – such as page titles or page meta fields.
The size of an emoji is determined by the font size used in the text editor.

Hosting Prices are Changing on May 1

website@sitemodify.com (Website Editor) — Wed, 20 Apr 2022 16:38:33 GMT

Beginning May 1, our hosting prices will change for all new and existing subscriptions.

Site Hosting – Monthly: $13 / month
Site Hosting – Annual: $120 / year ($10 per month, billed annually)

Ecommerce – Monthly: $24 / month
Ecommerce – Annual: $240 / year (approx. $20 per month, billed annually)
Ecommerce Pro – Monthly: $40 / month
Ecommerce Pro – Annual: $420 / year ($35 per month, billed annually)
Ecommerce Unlimited – Monthly: $80 / month
Ecommerce Unlimited – Annual: $800 / year ($66.67 per month, billed annually)

Membership Fees (Pro/Bundle) – Unchanged

Note - Prices are subject to change.

Will costs for my existing sites change?

Yes, this increase applies to both new and existing sites. We’re proud to have grandfathered in existing subscriptions for over 4 years, but this increase is essential for our business.

When will the prices change?

Our price increase goes into effect on May 1, 2022. Any sites purchased prior to that date will be at our current rate. We know that a price increase means you need to alert clients and publish in-progress projects at current prices, so we wanted to give you as much notice as possible before the change came into effect.

Why are you implementing the price change?

This increase will enable us to continue investing heavily in our platform, products and support services, as well as stay ahead of rising costs (our operating costs increased +30% in 2022).

Do I have to do anything to accept this change?

Existing subscribers will receive a notification on the new dashboard prompting them to accept the upcoming price change. The new price will be applied to the next scheduled renewal payment.

What does this mean for Enterprise pricing?

Our Enterprise plan is being replaced by the Reseller membership level, which includes 5 hosted sites along with a membership and 10% off additional sites. This new plan will be $600/year and more details will be available on our Pricing page shortly. The Without Code team will connect directly with existing Enterprise members to discuss their memberships.

A huge thank you to our members for their continued support, and please reach out to our team if you have any questions!

Steve Harris
Team WOCode

Dashboard Migration Notice & Shutdown Plan

website@sitemodify.com (Website Editor) — Thu, 07 Apr 2022 16:40:14 GMT

Starting April 15, 2022 , we will begin phasing out our old (legacy) dashboard. On this date, all new websites and existing website hosting subscriptions can only be published using the new dashboard . Users will no longer be able to create new sites or purchase hosting subscriptions at the old dashboard (app.wocode.com) after this date.

On May 15, 2022, we will be fully disabling the legacy dashboard. This means all websites that have not been migrated to the new dashboard can only be accessed once migrated. Users will be presented with a migration option when logging in, and sites will be inaccessible until the migration is complete.

For background information on this new dashboard, click here .

Migration Details

None of your websites will be deleted at any point. This change affects only your ability to purchase subscriptions and edit your websites; migrating sites to the new dashboard will ensure you see no disruption, and you can continue to migrate sites after the shutdown date.
You should immediately begin migrating all existing websites from the legacy dashboard to the new dashboard. For instructions on migrating websites, click here .
If you have not migrated sites from the legacy dashboard to the new dashboard as of May 1, you will not be able to edit these websites until they are migrated. We will begin manually migrating any sites that remain after this date over a period of time.
All new websites must be published on the new dashboard.
In order to publish websites, we now require that you are an active Without Code member (free user and trial memberships can not publish sites). For this reason, we've introduced our new bundle membership which includes hosting for one site and your membership in one discounted price.
For those that currently build customer sites on their account, create free memberships for customers, and transfer final websites out so they can manage their own billing, this will affect your process. You now have two options:
Alert customers to the fact that they must purchase a membership.
Begin publishing websites from your own account and bill customers for hosting.

We’re very excited to move forward with our new and improved dashboard and billing system. This new platform solves many technical and process issues that our members have raised in the past. It will also gives our team the ability to expand Without Code and add new products that will significantly boost the value of your membership.

Please don't hesitate to contact us with any questions or assistance with your site migration. Thank you so much for your support and stay tuned for more exciting updates!

Steve Harris
Team WOCode

5 Reasons Why Designers Love Without Code

Wed, 06 Apr 2022 11:41:08 GMT

Curious what makes our members tick and how we can add value to their processes, we asked some members why they chose Without Code. Read on to find out the most common answers!

Unique Widgets and Visual Effects

We care deeply about creating cool stuff, not pumping out cookie cutter sites. Without the limitations that other website builders have – shareholders and big company rules – we don’t have any restrictions on what we’re “allowed” to release. Our focus is on creating unique tools that can only be found at Without Code along with visual effects that help your websites stand out from the crowd.

What our customers say

I’ve bounced around a bit with builders, but the thing that kept me on Wocode is the ability to pull off so many things that my clients are asking for – categorized galleries, fullscreen sliders, animations and more.

I love that the WOC team gives me so many ways to make my site feel alive and interactive. In addition to the animations and triggered transitions that are baked into the builder, the massive widget library opens the door to waaaay more cool effects like animated headlines, buttons with hover effects, gradient backgrounds and more.

Widgets widgets widgets!!! The widgets extend the core functionality of the builder so beautifully.

It seems that there’s a widget for everything I can think of, and the WOC team adds new ones all the time.

For me, the thing that’s different about Without Code is a focus on great looking visual effects

The Perfect Blend of Customization and Simplicity

There are a lot of web builder options that tout “ease of use,” but come with a lot of restriction on customization. Others can deliver extreme flexibility, but they are challenging to learn (and may require coding knowledge). We know how important both features are for many designers – we love hearing that this marriage between customization and a simple UI allows our members to create productively.

What our customers say

It's easy to use, easy to design, easy to integrate and easy to onsell

Adam Woodleigh

Learning Without Code was not only easy, but also fun. As a designer, and since my first job in the first stages of the internet in 1995, I struggled to understand coding, but I learned to work within the limits of what you could do in design, working alongside programmers. I only wish something like Without Code was available back then. Today we build sites with ease for our clients, as designers, not having to be programmers.

Barking Pixel Design Co.

Very happy with how quick you can learn in WOC. I have been using it a few years now and am currently building a huge website, but it’s a really enjoyable process!

Michelle

Soooooo much easier than the company that sounds like six without the S.

Peter Thompson

Without Code is easy to use and there are great tutorial video's available.

Marc Vermeulen

Speed of Build

When they switch to Without Code, a lot of members remark on how fast they are able to build their site and push it live. With the intuitive drag and drop system combined with extensive documentation and video training we aim to significantly improve your productivity.

What our customers say

I can build a site in just hours instead of days. One site went from brief to live within a day. The only delay was waiting for the client to approve.

Michael

I can build a site twice as fast in Without Code than on Wix.

Anonymous

(I can build sites) very quickly. The background functions that WOC take care of are fantastic, like the built in SSL and 301 redirects.

Michelle

Superior Customer Service

Although we’re small, we’ve invested a lot in our support offerings – both in number of agents, as well as resources. Our approach to support has always been offering real solutions as real people; we want to help you succeed, not close tickets.

What our customers say

Without Code customer service is brilliant! I can honestly say that I would have gone elsewhere to build my sites if I didn't have the all-round support from the Without Code customer service team.

Adam Woodleigh

The support team is amazing. Very quick to respond and most importantly, very patient!

Michelle

I have used customer service and it has been very painless. Especially since I am on the other side of the world. My concerns and questions are always answered as promptly as possible.

Michael

Constant Updates and Improvements

Small but nimble, our team works fast. We’re constantly updating and improving our tools, while ongoing testing maintains functionality and security. We want to give our members peace of mind with tools that work, secure sites, and constant improvements. Each person on our team plays an important role and there is no passing the buck – this ensures things are done properly.

What our customers say

I use Without Code because it’s very cool have new widget almost every month.

Peter Bravo de los Rios

The inclusion and constant updates of widgets add even more options to help customizing existing and new websites.

Michael

The constant improvements and updates are a massive value add. Sometimes I can’t even keep up with all the new stuff.

Michael

We love our members and we're so grateful for your support! Not yet a member? Try out the builder free for 30 days !

Find out about new releases and features!

New widgets are released all the time! If you'd like to stay informed on the latest effects, be sure to sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter where we share the latest widgets, templates, tips, tricks and updates from our no-code design community at Without Code.

5 Effects Only Available at Without Code

Thu, 03 Feb 2022 01:17:25 GMT

Our mission is to help you make great first impressions. High quality visual effects make websites stand out from the crowd and contribute to designs that clients love. These are a few of our favorite visual widgets that members have found especially useful and unique for their websites. Consider trying one of these widgets for your next project.

Want to see these effects in all their glory? Check out our guided demo to see these widgets in action .

Gallery Connect

This is the most powerful gallery widget in our arsenal. Over the years we’ve built many galleries that have focused on specific features, but Gallery Connect combines all these features into one ultimate gallery.

As the flagship of our Connect series of widgets, this widget utilizes Google Sheets in a clever way to manage content. All changes can be made in the Google Sheet; images, videos, titles, and descriptions can all be added and updated right in a live spreadsheet making gallery edits easy. Updates made in the Google Sheet are instant, and do not require access to the site builder or widget option panel. This gallery is the perfect solution for anyone making frequent updates or allowing customers to make changes, as Google Sheets are simple to use – no messing around with the widget options panel.

A few of the most popular features include:

Categories: classify your media by category (e.g., people, nature, architecture, etc.).
Sorting: galleries can be sorted by the end user using category filter buttons.
Mixed media: mix images and video content.
Full screen slideshows: clicking on a gallery thumbnail opens a full screen version of the image in a slideshow.
Multiple display modes: sort images in a uniform grid, or in a beautiful masonry style layout that mixes multiple image shapes while respecting their original aspect ratios.

SuperHero Slider

This all-time customer favorite is ideal for displaying large hero images and slideshows. Originally built for MuseThemes, this innovative slider allowed members to display a full screen image regardless of device, which was previously impossible without setting a persistent background image.

This widget has been adapted to allow you to display a full screen image anywhere on the page while allowing you to scroll away from it; this is an ideal solution for adding dramatic hero images to any page.

Our Without Code adaptation of this widget includes customer-requested updates to make it even more useful:

Supports multiple images and can be used as a full screen slideshow.
A title, subtitle and linked button can be included.
A setting for header offset for easy use with headers on your site.

Infiniscroll Slider

This slider gives you the ability to showcase images or products in a very powerful and unique way. By using single ultra-wide panoramic images or alternatively, multiple images automatically stitched together, the widget creates the continuous scrolling effect with a looped reel of content – infinite scrolling, if you will.

This unique functionality was previously only available with custom CSS and members looking for this unique effect were struggling to create this without the coding knowledge required. With this simple, but robust widget, all users have to do is enter their desired images and the widget will do the rest!

Row Scroll Gallery

Looking for a way to draw attention to your images? Row Scroll is your solution. The Row Scroll Gallery includes an extremely unique and dramatic collection of animated galleries. With 8 gallery modes each offering a very specific animation style, you can find the perfect effect for your site. 8 galleries for the price of 1!

This highly interactive and engaging gallery puts site users in the driver’s seat, encouraging them to interact with the content. As your user scrolls the page, the animation will match the speed and direction of scroll; if the user scrolls back up, the animations work in reverse.

Try this gallery out the next time you need a show-stopper effect on a page.

FX Button Hover

Sometimes big impact comes from a simple change. The FX Button Hover transforms ordinary buttons into dazzling animated buttons, which add some interactivity and excitement to your site in an instant.

This widget is part of our FX series and is built with simplicity in mind, focusing on one dedicated effect. But while the widget has a simple mandate, it’s built with multiple options. 14 different hover animation styles ensure you can find one that’s the perfect match for your site’s brand and style.

You can add other simple, but striking effects to your site with any of our FX widgets:

FX Frost: a blurred, frosted glass effect
FX Confetti: a falling confetti effect
FX Ken Burns: a slow and gentle zoom effect slideshow widget (“Ken Burns” style)
FX Gradients: animated gradient background
FX Bokeh: soft, out of focus circles moving gently

Bonus: Floating Gallery

We couldn’t leave our new Floating Gallery off this list – this gallery creates an elegant and immersive full page image gallery or portfolio display. Just as the name would suggest, this widget allows you to display thumbnail images that appear to float on the page. As a user moves their cursor, the gallery will react by gently moving the images in harmony with the cursor.

The real power of this gallery is that it’s entirely self-contained; instead of creating your gallery and then having to build individual pages for each item, this gallery automatically generates individual item detail pages. Clicking on any of the gallery images will open a new focus page with everything you need: a full-size image, title, description, and a linkable button.

Add this effect to photo galleries or design portfolios; users will love the soft, gentle movement and you will love how quickly you can create a beautiful, functional gallery.

We hope this list has given you some great design inspiration. Want to try these effects out on a site of your own? All of these widgets are available only on the Without Code website builder. Try out the builder free for 30 days !

Want to Know When New Widgets Are Available?

A Look Back and a Look Ahead - 2021 Year in Review

website@sitemodify.com (Website Editor) — Wed, 19 Jan 2022 16:32:27 GMT

Now that we’re nicely settled into 2022, we’re taking stock of 2021 and planning the upcoming months. First, a major thank-you to our entire community for all of your support – we are so grateful to be a part of your business process and don’t take that responsibility lightly.

2021 was a year of behind-the-scenes work rebuilding our foundation to ensure we offer the best experience to members and have the necessary base to build Without Code into what we always imagined it will be. With this structure now firmly in place we will spend this year focused on new developments including highly requested features, widgets, templates and resources.

Read on for a review at what 2021 brought, updates on some major projects, and a look at what’s to come in 2022.

New Dashboard and Billing System Update

A few months ago, we launched our new and improved dashboard. This massive development project had been in the works since early 2021 and entailed a complete rebuild/redesign of our core platform including our billing system.

We undertook this challenge to improve your experience and address customer requests and issues that had come in over the years. This rebuild was also an essential part of our future planning, as it enables us to expand and add value to your membership.

If you haven’t yet transitioned to this new dashboard, a few of the benefits that you can expect:

Dramatically faster
A project-centric approach to make it easier to organize and search sites/services
Publish (bug free) directly from your dashboard
Plans are now easy to upgrade and downgrade
Ability to enable Flex mode
Simplified billing through Stripe

There have been some questions circling the community, so we want to address those here along with the status of the dashboard. First, we’re continuing to run both the new dashboard and the old dashboard to ensure this transition is as seamless as possible. This means you can use the old dashboard to manage your existing sites and the new one to create new sites.

Second, we just released our complete migration tool which means that you can now migrate all sites over. We’ll continue to run both dashboards in tandem for a while to ensure everyone is comfortable but will eventually close the old one altogether – at that point you will need to migrate all sites to the new one. There have been fears expressed over migrating sites (which we totally understand; these sites are critical to your business, and you’re concerned over losing work/upsetting clients) but rest assured, there is ZERO risk to migrating sites. We are not moving your site anywhere, it's simply a database entry update.

We’re very excited about the new dashboard and billing system! This is going to improve your experience, remove some of the bugs you’ve dealt with in the past, and most notably, this was an essential step in our plans for expanding Without Code. Read more about the new dashboard here .

Flex Update

After months of beta testing Flex, we released this new mode at the very end of 2021. Flex is now available on new sites on our new dashboard* at no additional cost and allows you to design responsive sections and pages, a feature not previously possible in Without Code.

Essentially, Flex gives you design freedom with no compromises. The fluid layouts adjust by breakpoint, so you have complete control over how your site looks regardless of which device site visitors are using and the ability to design freeform means you can drag and drop anywhere you want for complete customization. As Without Code has always operated within a rows/columns structure, this mode is a welcome addition for many designers craving some freedom.

Read our Flex documentation to find out how to enable and use this new mode. We’re very excited to see what you whip up with this new capability!

*If you want to try Flex on an old site, email our support team and they can enable this for you.

New Widgets, Features, and Resources

Comparison Blog Posts

We published four comparison posts for the following major platforms: WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, and Webflow. In previous year’s surveys, you helped us identify the other platforms you were using besides Without Code, and you also told us that you struggle to argue against using other platforms with your clients. We created these posts to help you sell customers on Without Code; we hope these give you some great arguments!

Live Chat

Currently available on the new dashboard, we launched live chat at the tail end of 2021 to help you with any technical issues immediately. This highly requested feature is one we’ll be expanding in 2022 with more hours and agents so we can help you get solutions to any Without Code issue immediately.

Media Drive

We released Media Drive in early 2021 as a lightning-fast media hosting and file storage service integrated right into your dashboard. Media Drive offers hosting for videos and photos that allows galleries and widgets to run faster than ever. In addition to media streaming, it offers a great solution for storage of media, files, or custom code that can be easily added to your websites.

Media Drive is free to all members with up to 50MB of storage and you can purchase 1GB for $49/year. If you haven’t started using Media Drive yet, find out how to take advantage now !

New Widgets

FX Series: Released on an accelerated pace over the course of several months, the new FX series takes an all-new approach to widgets. These streamlined widgets offer a single, dedicated effect intended to add visual appeal and interest to your site.
FX – Ken Burns
FX – Gradients
FX – Bokeh
FX – Frost
FX – Button Hover
FX – Button Line Hover
FX – Confetti
Mega Menu: A highly requested widget and our first release of 2021, Mega Menu was a huge build (it took 6 months to develop, test, and polish). This immensely powerful navigation widget is capable of large-scale menus for sites with categories, product catalogs or large page counts.
Directory Gallery
Cinematic Slider
Floating Gallery
MemberSpace Widget
Row Scroll Gallery
Video Scroll Motion
Media Gallery
Custom Social Icons

New Templates

Poke Restaurant
Renovation & Construction
Prairie Animal Clinic
Online Education
Nutritionist
Dental Clinic
Bakery
Home Fitness
Legal Firm

And..

19 new sections
12 new popups

Upcoming Projects and Plans

Business Directory

This has been in production for many months and we’re looking forward to releasing this heavy hitter. This widget displays a large directory of listings (businesses, services, homes, etc.) with a detached sidebar that includes a multi-level filter, categories, tags, search, and sort.

FX Series Part 2

Our first series of FX widgets were very popular, and we’ve gotten requests for more. We’re coming back with another rapid-release round of FX widgets that include text effects, new background patterns, and highlighter effects.

Business Resources

These resources include guides, tips, and free downloadable handouts to tackle some of your most time consuming (and perhaps your most irritating) business tasks. We’ve gotten lots of comments from members on the things that hold up their productivity; using this feedback we’ve already created several resources and plan to do many more.

Head to our blog to check our existing resources:

Integrated Third Party Apps

We’re excited to integrate powerful new services this year and are exploring partnerships with a variety of third-party providers. The plan is to roll out an app store filled with a variety of leading edge tools to address your feature requests, such as membership sites, accessibility, privacy / GDPR compliance and more. Stay tuned for the app store, launching in Q2 2022!

As always, thank you for supporting Without Code – we're excited for 2022.

Mackenzie Petursson
Team WOCode

Collecting Content – Get rid of this pain point!

website@sitemodify.com (Website Editor) — Mon, 03 Jan 2022 23:09:42 GMT

Collecting content from clients has proved to be a major pain point for the Without Code community. So much so, that in our recent customer survey, this was the number one answer for client interactions that you dread the most. And it’s no wonder; content collection can be one of the biggest bottle necks holding up your design process, as it typically lands in the lap of the client to provide, but its important to how you will build the site and absolutely integral to finishing the website.

Download the Free Content Collection Form!

Before you dive into the details – be sure to grab our free Content Collection Form. This resource combines all of the vital elements found in this article into a single checklist that you can put into use today. Add your company logo to this white label checklist to make it your own!

Assets included in this resource:

Word Doc – update wording to make it fit your business
PDF – this checklist is fillable and ready for your company logo
Canva – customize in Canva for enhanced design & sharing options

Tell us where you'd like us to send your Content Collection Form! Submitting this form will also add you to our mailing list, where you will stay up to date on product announcements, news and special offers.

Educate Your Clients

One of the reasons customers might be dragging their feet on providing content is that they don’t understand the web design process and/or don’t know exactly what they should provide. This is especially relevant if this is a brand-new website instead of a website redesign.

Ensure that you are walking them through your process and why it is important to have the basic structure of their content in mind when creating the design (and why plunking text in at the end isn’t the ideal procedure). Although this information should all be laid out in the design proposal, get them to consider the following areas in the context of the content:

Goals: What are the primary objectives of the website?
Target Audience: Who is this site for and what are their demographics? Why would a user visit your site and what should they take away?
Text and images: What text and images will meet the above goals and will speak to the described audience? As well, what exists already and what needs to be created?

Educating your customer on the importance of content and the breadth of your process will make them feel more empowered to create quality content, as well as give them a look into how much work is going into their website. It can also help weed out clients you may not want to work with. If you provide some background along with some assistance and they still won’t budge, this may be a red flag.

Include this in the Proposal and Contract

By adding a section clearly stating that content is the customer’s responsibility, you may be able to bypass the content collection headache. Make sure that you state any and all sections that must be provided by the customer and consider including some negative repercussions.

You can charge a fee if content is not delivered on the agreed upon date; add this to your invoice and reference the proposal/contract. If a client is aware that they are being charged for their tardiness, it may inspire them to put pen to paper a bit more quickly.

Alternatively, you could simply state that if content is not delivered on the agreed upon date, you will proceed with the design as previously discussed and the delivery date will not change. So, they will be receiving your finalized website design by a certain date and your payment is due at that time, however, it is up to them to ensure the content is included. If you decide to go this route, ensure you have set due dates for each individual piece of content and the client has signed off on these. As well, send plenty of reminders and follow the rest of the schedule to a T, providing preview links to show clients why this content is needed.

Add a Process

Make it easy on your clients to provide content by creating a content collection process; this could be a form, fillable PDF, or word doc. By listing all of the possible pages, sections, features and providing them the space to write, you can make the process easier on both of you. Your customer can simply fill in the blanks and you will have the content clearly defined.

Consider including a few different sections for content collection to ensure that you have a clear picture of what they want from the website, as well as all the content you need.

Logos, Images, Text: Ask for finalized logos, images, and text in the format you require.

Tip: emphasize the importance of quality images. As a designer, you know that this can make or break a site so passing this tip on to your customers can ensure you get appropriate photos.

Company Info: Get all of the basic information you need – contact info, all business names, social media profiles, etc. – that you might need for various areas throughout the website
Audience: Ask some audience-specific questions to help guide your design.
Design: Get specific examples and links to designs they like (or don’t like).
Text Content: Get customers to commit to specific pages by requiring text for each of them, as well as any other requests (e.g. images). List page-specific questions to provide some additional text or context if needed.
Features: Requested features are likely included in the proposal/contract but asking customers to commit to them in your questionnaire can help guide your design.

Create Your Questionnaire, or Download Ours for Free!

Form

A form is a great way to guide your customer, as you can create a logical flow through the various questions you need answered and provide space for them to upload images and text. If this seems like the best option for you, consider an online form; this will give clients a space to write answers and the option to make certain questions "required" ensures that clients provide items that you need to move forward. Our favorite online form builder is Typeform ; it's extremely easy to use and gives you a polished form that you can send to clients. Once you create your Typeform account, simply paste in the relevant questions from the questionnaire, publish, and send this link along to your customers!

OR...

Fillable

A fillable PDF or word doc may be a more polished and professional approach than a form, however, and may lead to a more satisfying customer onboarding process. This option also gives customer a bit more flexibility in what they can choose to provide.

We've saved you some of the legwork by designing and populating a free content collection questionnaire package that you can download now and start sending to clients immediately! This free resource includes a Word doc, fillable PDF and Canva template. All three can be customized to fit the exact needs of your own client collection process.

Pre and Post Launch Checklist

website@sitemodify.com (Website Editor) — Mon, 03 Jan 2022 23:08:54 GMT

Building a site is a major project and you’re working with a lot of components – client content, images, logos, and then the entire design of the website. To ensure you don’t miss any critical elements, we’ve put together the ultimate checklist to review prior to and immediately post launch. Checking each of these items ensures that you deliver your sites tested, optimized, and ready for visitors from day one.

Download the Free Pre and Post Launch Checklist

Before you dive into the details – be sure to grab our free Pre and Post Launch Checklist. This resource combines all of the vital components found in this article into a comprehensive checklist that you can start handing off to clients today. Add your company logo to this white label checklist to make it your own!

Assets included in this resource:

Word Doc – update wording to make it fit your business
PDF – this template is fillable and ready for your company logo
Canva – customize in Canva for enhanced design & sharing options

Tell us where you'd like us to send your Pre and Post Launch Resources! Submitting this form will also add you to our mailing list, where you will stay up to date on product announcements, news and special offers.

Entire Site Review

First up on the checklist is a full-site review; this guarantees consistent branding throughout and ensures your site matches the rest of the company branding.

Start with fonts, logos, and colors – they should all match the company branding guidelines and should remain consistent throughout. You can define your site-wide font with the Global Text option .

Use this opportunity to review all text for typos and grammatical errors. This can be easy to gloss over when you’ve been looking at the site content for hours so don’t hesitate to get a second set of eyes on this.

Finally, check for hidden sections, pages, and images by showing hidden elements . Ensure that you’ve hidden only relevant items.

Images and Icons

This section of the checklist is all about images and icons, including those that can easily be forgotten but are so important for SEO and usability.

Confirm that you’ve entered and are happy with the favicon, social networks image, and home screen icon. These can all be edited within your Site Icons section .

Remove and rename relevant images to make your site more organized and improve SEO. Delete unused images from your library and rename all images on your site with descriptive file names. Not only will search engines appreciate the clarity but cleaning up your images will make future changes to the site much easier.

Finally, test how logos appear upon scroll and mobile to ensure there is no distortion or pixilation.

Review Buttons, Links, and CTAs

Test every single button and link on your site to ensure there are no incorrect or broken links. Not only will incorrect/broken links make the user experience more challenging (you want to make it easy for customers to navigate your site, contact you, select your services, etc.), but it’s also important for SEO. Broken links signify to search engines that you aren’t taking care of your site and you may see a decline in search rankings as a result. In addition, check each page to ensure important Call-to-Actions are above the fold. Don’t force site visitors to search for their next step.

As well, test the logo in your header and if it doesn’t yet, link this to your homepage – users expect to return home when clicking this particular logo.

Contact Info

Checking contact info in all locations – contact page, footer, within any content – is critical. You want to ensure that site visitors can reach the company. As discussed above, any incorrect or broken links will result in a more challenging user experience and a decline in SEO.

Confirm that phone numbers, addresses, and email addresses are accurate and make sure that any linked information works properly – this includes any click to email and click to call links. As well, check the footer and any widgets; this is especially important if you started with a template, as stock contact information may have been forgotten.

Test all contact forms – both the send and receive functions – to ensure that the email delivers and both parties receive appropriate information. This information would include a relevant subject line to ensure the email doesn’t get buried and an informative “Thank You” message for the user.

Finally, as social media is an integral part of contacting a company, test all social media icons and links to ensure they’re correct.

SEO Settings

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the theme that ties most of the items on this checklist together, so don’t neglect the areas of SEO improvement available within the editor.

SEO allows you to positively affect your site’s organic search ranking; by making your site relevant and trustworthy, you provide search engines the information they need. Read our SEO Basics for a look at areas where you can impact this.

When going through your SEO settings checklist, start with the SEO settings : these should be set for the entire site, as well as for each page and include site/page titles, description, and keywords. Within your page SEO settings, confirm that you have set “No index” for the pages that you don’t want to be seen by search engines. This could include any unfinished or irrelevant pages that you’re concerned could affect your SEO.

Check all URLs to ensure they are SEO-friendly (i.e. short and informative with plenty of keywords for search engines to see) and check H1 tags. These tags give users and search engines a clear idea of what is on the page, but ensure you only use one/page as multiples may result in a decrease in ranking.

SEO doesn’t apply to just text so confirm you’ve addressed the items relating to image SEO. Ensure you have an open graph image for your social networks to make it easy for users to share your site. As well, check that each image includes alt text; this makes your site more accessible for users and it also gives search engines more information which can help your ranking.

Don’t forget to address your blog’s SEO. Within the settings of each blog post check that you have entered the post metadata – title, description, and alt text for the image.

A few additional items that can help your SEO and preserve existing rankings are URL redirects , a custom 404 page , and schema. Schema can only be used for certain widgets – Local Business , Accordion and FAQ /Accordion – but can be very beneficial for your organic ranking so confirm that you have this set up if possible.

Legal Settings/Pages

Although it’s not the sexiest of topics, all websites need appropriate legal pages and tools, including a Terms of Conditions/Use page, a Privacy Policy page, and cookie compliance and notifications. The digital world is more focused on privacy and security than ever before and it’s critical that you address questions visitors might have (e.g. what user data is collected and why). Take advantage of the privacy policy template within your site settings and consider activating the cookie notification option and disabling tracking cookies. These additions can help users and search engines feel secure using your site.

The above items are not sufficient for many geographic areas, however, so ensure that you have read the data privacy and security requirements for the relevant region where the site or company operates and serves (e.g. GDPR and CCPA). In addition, ensure your site is ADA compliant for the best access possible.

A secure, responsible, and accessible site is what search engines want to show users so improving these legal areas can be extremely beneficial for search rankings.

Testing

If you’re at the testing phase, you’re getting so close to the end! You’ve checked all relevant settings, options, links, text, and images to ensure your site is easy to use, compliant, and SEO focused; now it’s time to test.

Test every page’s navigation, links, and widgets on all layouts – desktop, tablet, mobile – and all browsers. Try as many different devices and screen sizes/resolutions as you can get your hands on. This will ensure your site looks exactly as designed for as many users as possible (and you won’t get a surprise call from a client telling you that a widget isn’t working in Internet Explorer).

Test the site on your desired testing platform (e.g. BrowserStack, GT Metrix Speed). This will check your site’s performance and provide metrics that you can use to improve user experience and SEO.

Testing page speed is critical for site performance so in addition to the above testing, run a Google Test My Site test and a Google PageSpeed test to get a quick snapshot of how the site is performing and use the ratings to decide if any changes need to be made prior to launch. Read more about site speed .

Set up URL and Publish

You are now ready for launch! Publish your site by selecting your hosting plan and enter the custom domain settings, including the CNAME record, and two A records needed to point your root domain to “www.” Read more about setting up your custom domain .

After Publish

You’ve ticked all the relevant boxes of the checklist and pushed your site live. Congrats! You can view the publish status on your dashboard and view subscription details by clicking on the relevant project. Checking the following final items post-publish will ensure you haven’t missed any critical components.

Now that the site is live you can check the URL specific items: ensure the SSL certificate is approved (you will see an “Approved” status in the settings), confirm that any old URLs are redirecting to the new URL (if applicable), and check the DNS propagation to see if these new domain settings have been updated (this may take up to 48 hours).

If you haven’t yet created a sub-user account for your client, consider creating one now and setting the appropriate permissions so they can make edits to their site.

Monitoring your site’s performance over the next few days is a great way to see how your design is functioning with real users and real search engines. Set up Google Analytics and Google Search Console to track this performance and make changes as needed.

Finally, send your client a note letting them know their site is now live!

Launching a website is a major achievement so if you are in the process of launching, congratulations to you! Be sure to take advantage of our free pre and post launch checklist , which will help your launch go off without a hitch and cover your bases for any client questions that might come in post-launch.

Design Proposals – What to Include

website@sitemodify.com (Website Editor) — Mon, 03 Jan 2022 23:07:55 GMT

Writing a proposal for a web design project can seem like a daunting task. First of all, this is work you aren’t getting paid for and while you hope to land the project, this is precious time you could be spending on actual paid design work. And yet, a well-crafted proposal is key to your future success; if you can’t land new projects, you can’t grow. The proposal is more than just specifics for a project, it is also often your first introduction to a potential client, which can have ripple effects on your career.

The key is to strike a balance between delivering a finely customized plan that speaks to the client without making the process too arduous.

You need to craft a well-designed, concise, yet detailed overview that sells you, your company, and makes your potential client want to bring you in for a meeting, or even better, select you for the project. There are several areas to consider, from general tips to specific sections; knowing these before diving into a proposal can speed up the process and keep you on track.

As well, you can make this process more efficient by using a proposal template. This template forms the bare structure around which you can add the specific details and can make a big difference to your proposal writing.

Download the Free Proposal Template!

Before you dive into the details – be sure to grab our free Proposal Template. This template combines all of the vital elements found in this article into a comprehensive proposal that you can put into use today. Add your company logo to this white label template to make it your own!

Assets included in this resource:

Word Doc – update wording to make it fit your business
PDF – this template is fillable and ready for your company logo
Canva – customize in Canva for enhanced design & sharing options

Tell us where you'd like us to send your Proposal Template! Submitting this form will also add you to our mailing list, where you will stay up to date on product announcements, news and special offers.

What do you need to know before you start?

Before you even attempt to write a proposal, you need to know your potential client. This includes their company goals, their background, and the issues they are facing and only when you understand this can you offer up solutions. The more you know about the company or even better, the individual reading your proposal, the better you can tailor it to them.

Questions you should ask yourself:

How much does the recipient know about web design?
Does the person who will first lay eyes on this proposal know a lot about web or are they fairly unaware of the specifics? If the recipient is knowledgeable then you may be able to strip out some of the detail and focus on timeline and pricing, as they will understand the amount of work going in to each step of this project without being explicitly shown why. If the recipient is less knowledgeable, you may need to lay out technical concepts clearly so they can understand the associated timelines and prices attached.

How complex is this project?
A good rule of thumb for proposal creation is to match the complexity of the proposal to the complexity/budget of the project. If your potential client has a small project and associated small budget, you can keep the details to a minimum and just provide the most important components: the solutions, pricing, and timeline. If the project is complex, the associated budget probably follows, and you should provide more detail on why they should choose to work with you.

Questions you should ask your client:

What is your budget?
What is your launch schedule?
Do you have existing brand guidelines?
Does the site require any integrations?

What should you keep in mind as you craft your proposal?

There are two things to remember for web design proposal creation: first, the design of the proposal is critical, as your pitching your skills in this area, and second, you can’t out-design bad content. How the proposal looks and what it says are both extremely important.

Show off your skills by adding your branding (and possibly including the potential client’s branding as well) to the proposal and presenting the information in a concise, clean manner that makes it easy for the reader to find what they’re looking for.

Ensure that the meat of the proposal – your understanding of their needs, your solutions, and your pricing and timeline – is well thought-out and written in a tone that will appeal to the potential customer. Take a look through their existing website content, marketing materials, and any emails exchanged to pick out the preferred tone of the reader and the company as a whole.

TIP: even if the reader is technically-savvy, avoid overly-technical jargon unless necessary.

Lastly, ensure you get a second set of eyes to proofread your proposal, checking for grammar and spelling mistakes. Even though it happens to the best of us, nothing will make a business owner throw out a proposal quicker than a glaring error; it gives the impression that you don’t pay attention to detail and might bring these types of errors into their project.

What specific sections should your proposal have?

Every proposal should include the following:

Cover page. This should include your information, as well as the potential client’s details and some branding.

Problem and Solution. State the reason they need your help (the problem) clearly, outlining your understanding of the project and explain why you can solve this and how (the solution).

Approach and Timeline. Give a glimpse into your process and projected timeline. This will show off your capabilities, experience, and provide check-in and delivery points.

Pricing. As this is likely to be the first page visited, make this section easy to understand at a glance and comprehensive.

Call-to-Action. Let the potential client know the next steps and make it easy for them to follow up with you.

TIP: include your contact information in the footer of each page so the client can’t miss it.

A few optional sections to consider:

Confidentiality statement. This can be a simple statement included in the overview and is especially important if you include case studies or other sensitive information.

About Your Company. You can include your company history, values, specific skills, and even team bios if relevant.

References. If you’ve received glowing recommendations from customers, including these can give the potential client the confidence they need in you to move forward.

Case Studies. This is a great way to show off similar projects that you’ve completed and demonstrate proposed solutions.

How can a template make your proposal creation easier?

Using a polished proposal template gives you a leg up, as you don’t need to start with a blank page. Building on the basic structure, all you’ll need to do is simply fill in the specifics for the individual project and customize the overview to speak directly to the customer.

Our team is made up of freelancers and we’ve each found ourselves preparing multiple proposals throughout our careers so, we banded together to create a free proposal template that you can put into use right now. This valuable resource is pre-designed and contains a Word doc, fillable PDF and Canva template. By simply subbing in your logo, company and customer information, a customized overview, timeline and pricing details, you’ll have a comprehensive proposal ready for your customer in a fraction of the time it would have taken you to create from scratch.

Like anything else, the more you do it, the easier proposal creation gets. Although it’s a daunting process to begin, you’ll quickly learn what potential clients look at first and what areas you can highlight, so that you can create a polished proposal quickly for any project!

Contracts – What Are They and Do I Really Need Them?

website@sitemodify.com (Website Editor) — Mon, 03 Jan 2022 23:02:57 GMT

Contracts are a legal document that lay out the terms and conditions of your project and YES, you absolutely need one. This includes important details for the client to be aware of and it can also protect you in the event of a cancellation, refusal to pay, or debate about amount of money due.

A lot of people neglect to create contracts for various reasons – trust in their clients is one, but a sense of intimidation is another common one. These legal documents often include confusing legal jargon and obscure clauses that may not be applicable – it can be challenging to know what you should include for a web design project specifically.

But your contract doesn’t need to be complex or legally impressive. The goal of the contract is not to confuse and trap your client into an agreement; the goal Is to establish some operating principles before you invest hours into a project. Keeping the contract simple, comprehensive, and specific to web design is the best way to keep your client’s trust while making it clear what your expectations are and what your recourse is in the event of an unfortunate event (i.e., cancellation or lack of payment).

The act of creating a contract is also a great activity for defining policies and making decisions about how you want to handle specific issues that might crop up. Once you have this down in writing its pleasantly surprising how much more confident you can feel telling a client that, “Sure I can make those additional changes, but it will be at your cost, as defined in the contract.”

There are many fantastic contract templates available online, but they may address areas beyond the scope of a web design project. Hiring a lawyer is also an option and this may be beneficial if you’re dealing with high-cost/high-stakes projects, however, you can create a solid contract without this investment. Read on to find out what critical clauses should be included in your contract.

Download the Free Contract Template!

Before you dive into the details – be sure to grab our free Contract Template. This resource combines all of the details found in this article into a comprehensive contract template that you can start using today. Just enter pertinent details such as names and rates to make it your own!

Assets included in this resource:

Word Doc – update prompts for terms to make it fit your business
PDF – this template is fillable and ready for your company logo
Canva – customize in Canva for enhanced design & sharing options

Tell us where you'd like us to send your Contract Template! Submitting this form will also add you to our mailing list, where you will stay up to date on product announcements, news and special offers.

Statement of Work

Begin with a very clear statement of the work you will be providing, including reference of the scope of work, which would be included in your proposal. Make it very cut and dry what is and isn’t included in this project to eliminate any miscommunication.

Terms of Payment

The total cost due may be subject to some change once the project is underway – scope might creep, new features may be requested, etc. – but a clear pricing breakdown for each area of the project will prevent any surprises for your client. As well, include your deposit expectations; will you require 50% prior to start of the project? And when will the final balance be due?

This is also a great opportunity to bring up third-party company costs that your client might not be aware of. For example, a clause on their monthly or annual hosting costs is essential to remind them that there is an ongoing cost.

Protection Against Customer Changes

You might have a great relationship with your client and know a handshake is good enough – and hopefully it is! But clear terms on what will occur in the event of project scope changes, errors on their end, and impromptu cancellation, will protect you from lost money.

Referring to the timeline included in your proposal, remind your clients that there are deliverables required from them: content, logos, images, and, of course, ongoing reviews. This clause will protect you from a major delay in project, which will cost you money as you may not be able to engage with other clients while waiting. Errors and changes on the part of your customer should also be referenced to protect you; remind your client that this responsibility to ensure accuracy lies solely with them.

Finally, a cancellation clause is essential. Define your cancellation policy as it works for you, but our suggestion is that you require payment for all work performed up to the date of cancellation, as well as any expenses. The proposal timeline and your own records of work are essential in the event of a cancellation.

Other Clauses

Additional clauses will address specific questions your client might have and generally protect you.

Ownership, Usage, and Confidentiality

These clauses are largely in place to protect your client and show them that you’re invested in their well-being as well. Within these terms, you outline both parties ongoing rights over the website and your commitment to protecting proprietary information the client shares. If you would like to retain the right to feature the website in your own portfolio, this is a great place to make your customer aware.

Act of God

If the great Amazon Web Services server issue of 2021 showed us anything, it’s that you must include a clause regarding Acts of God. This states that there may be incidences that, however unlikely, may occur and are completely outside of your control and remove your liability in these events.

Hosting Details

Although not a clause necessary for every type of web design project, this clause is essential for Without Code sites. This gives some background on Amazon Web Services and explains that websites can’t be transferred outside of the platform. This will protect you if a client demands their website be exported to be used on another hosting platform.

Legacy Plan

This is an area so often neglected by contacts for all industries. You need to consider a legacy plan if you, as the web designer/manager of the site, are unreachable. Whether this be health related or simply an emergency, establishing a second contact who can help you access your website will eliminate a lot of fear. This clause also establishes legal permission for Without Code to transfer the website to the client if you are unable to communicate with us.

Although this clause is only needed in extremely unlikely scenarios, having this in place will give your client peace of mind and establish even more trust when they see that you’ve considered everything.

Signatures

This is a contract, a legal document, and not a proposal. As a result, signatures are required to make this legally binding. Pre-fill your contracts with your signature to make this process simple for clients and for you.

Although a very important document, contracts don't need to be intimidating. Our free contract template can help you get started on your own contract. Fill in your details, tweak the text for your own business and start sharing this with clients – both you and your clients will feel comforted knowing there are some policies in place.

A Complete Rebuild – Check out the new Without Code

website@sitemodify.com (Website Editor) — Thu, 07 Oct 2021 14:34:52 GMT

* Updated Dec 8, 2021

The dashboard is now live! This section has been updated with a few key details to get you up and running quickly on the new platform. Beyond this section, you'll learn about the reasons behind the update and some exciting features that are coming soon. Also be sure to check out the PAQ's (Potentially Asked Questions).

The dashboard is for new sites only – for now

During the early stages of the rollout, the dashboard will be available for new sites and unpublished sites that have been migrated from the legacy dashboard. Please have a look around and get comfortable with the new layout!

Migrate unpublished sites now, published sites soon

You may now migrate unpublished sites from the legacy dashboard to the new dashboard, as long as they've never been published. Just click the Migrate Sites button in the header of the new dashboard. We're currently finishing up the full site migration tool that will allow you to transfer all sites and subscriptions.

Navigate easily between dashboards

When you click the login button here at wocode.com , you will be given an option to go to the new dashboard or the old dashboard. Your existing sites will be available on the old dashboard, and new sites should be created on the new dashboard. Once you're in the dashboard (new or old) you may easily navigate between them by clicking the link at the top of the page, above the header.

We will update this article as we roll out changes, so stay tuned!

After over three years in business, we’ve learned a great deal about the needs and priorities of the web designers using our platform. We know they have their hands full managing clients and working on deadlines. Our job is to provide them with a reliable platform that enables them to build (and bill) sites as fast as possible.

While our team has made many strategic improvements to the underlying framework behind Without Code, we began to realize that it was time for the big rebuild – a complete redesign of our dashboard, including site management and billing systems.

This project was necessary to not only fix issues that impacted our current customers, but to enable us to expand our platform and add new products that boost the value of our membership. A phrase thrown around in the software development world is that you “shouldn’t hang lights on a dead Christmas tree.” While our tree certainly wasn’t dead, we knew it was time to get started and in early 2021 we quietly started on our rebuild.

Here’s a look into some of the new features and changes available in the new Without Code.

Part I of this post outlines the key features and improvements we’ve made to the platform, and the reasons why we focused on these areas.

Part II explains our plans to restructure Without Code’s membership approach to embark on a new phase of growth and better support for our users. This includes some potential questions that you may have (PAQs?).

In a hurry? Here’s a quick summary:

Our new platform is on a separate site and domain, so we can run both versions at once.
The new version is way faster and has better organization tools (search, filter, etc.).
We’re using “Projects” to contain sites, email, and other products.
Our billing is completely rebuilt on Stripe. Invoices will always contain your project name and product purchased.
Publishes will now be made from the dashboard instead of within the site builder.
Republishes can still be done from within the builder.
The WOC Free plan is being replaced by a 14-day trial (no card required). Only paid members can build sites on Without Code
The WOC Pro plan will change to $10 / month (billed annual). Existing users are grandfathered in.
We are now offering a bundle that includes membership, a hosted site and an email account for $195 per year.
Publish prices for paid members will remain at $99 / year and $11 / month.
The new platform will roll out in early November 2021.

Part I: Without Code – Version 3.0

It’s faster – “Dramatically” faster (as our dev team puts it)

Without getting too technical, our new dashboard utilizes modern app design techniques to provide a more dynamic system. In plain English, things load super-fast and offer us the ability to integrate custom functionality easily.

Our highest volume users will feel this the most. Our current dashboard can slow down dramatically for users with 100s of sites. The new dashboard handles this volume and above with ease.

New Organization – Find what you need fast

The new dashboard takes a “project-centric” approach, which groups sites and other services into projects. Projects can include a website but will also contain additional services we have planned for release, such as cookie compliance, SEO, and other custom site plugins. This will allow you to see every product and service related to a specific client on a single page.

Project names are the basis for our invoices, and you’ll never receive an invoice that doesn’t clearly state which client and product it’s for.

We’ve also built in an app-wide search feature, that can find sites, invoices, subscriptions, and everything else you might need to track down. And as usual, projects can be sorted, filtered, and quickly identified directly on the dashboard.

Brand New Billing – Powered by Stripe

Stripe is the leader in ecommerce billing, hands down. And we’ve worked through what feels like 1000s of pages of Stripe documentation to integrate their latest billing and subscription management tools into the app.

As mentioned above, invoices will come directly from Stripe, and clearly state the project name and product purchased (e.g. Project: Steve’s Bakery – Annual Website Hosting – Site ID 123456)

Our new billing also takes advantage of Stripe’s hosted billing management pages, meaning you can update cards and manage subscriptions directly in their billing portal. Why would we rebuild something that a billion-dollar company has already done?

Lastly, subscriptions can now be upgraded / downgraded to other plans (such as ecommerce) without any support intervention. Payments will be automatically prorated, and you’ll only need to pay the difference between the old and new plans.

Simple (bug-free) Publishing – Direct from the dashboard

Browsers have changed significantly since we launched in 2018, and one of the biggest headaches for our users was an error you’ve likely encountered before (“you do not have permission to purchase this site”). This error was due to a cookie issue present in our publish flow, and that issue will only get worse as browsers continue to evolve.

To improve our publish flow and redesign our billing, the new platform will require you to publish sites directly from the dashboard – not from the builder itself. This is how almost all site creation platforms work currently, and we think it greatly simplifies the payment flow for our users.

…And not to worry, you can absolutely continue to republish your site from directly in the builder.

Part II

Membership Plan Restructuring

In business one of the most widely accepted principles is the 80/20 rule, which states that 80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers.

In our case, this applies most dramatically to the number of sites published by each membership category. Over 90% of our published sites are created by Pro and Enterprise members.

On the flip side, when we look at our support volume, we see the opposite – our free customers tend to require a much higher volume of support from our team, yet still result in the lowest number of published sites. We need to address this to ensure our support resources are directed to our paid members, resulting in faster responses and new support opportunities such as live chat.

Free Plan No Longer Offered

Going forward, our free plan will be replaced with a 14-day free trial. Each trial allows the user to access the builder and platform for 30 days (unrestricted with no card required). They will not be able to publish a site until a membership is purchased.

Think of your membership fee as the “software cost” – once it’s purchased, you’re given full access to the builder / platform / training and only need to purchase hosting when required. Other site builders bundle this price into every single site purchased, resulting in a higher overall cost.

Membership Only Plan - $10 / month

Our Pro plan will become our Membership Only plan, and the price will be $10 per month, billed annually at $120 per year.

If you have already purchased a Pro plan at a discounted or grandfathered rate, we will honor your original price through this restructuring.

Enterprise memberships are still being offered and they will be priced custom to the volume of sites a user needs to purchase.

New Membership + Hosting & Email Bundle

A new option is being offered, which allows you to purchase a Without Code membership, a hosted site and an email inbox at a single package price ($195) per year.

Additional hosted sites will remain priced at their current level, of $11 per month or $99 per year.

When compared to costs for other website creation tools (Squarespace, Webflow, etc.) our prices are significantly lower – and remember you’re only required to purchase your membership once per year to gain access to our low publish prices.

A Completely New Dashboard and Domain

In order to transition our users to the new platform and not disrupt your workflow, we need to run both our new and old dashboards at the same time. The only way to accomplish this is by truly setting these up as completely unique sites, and letting users pick which dashboard to access.

As our users settle into the new dashboard and we’ve had a chance to clean up any remaining issues or improvements, we’ll begin to restrict functionality on the old dashboard and move all user activity to the new.

Our plan is to roll out the new billing in early November 2021.

Potentially Asked Questions

How can I access the new dashboard?

When you click the login button here at wocode.com, you will be given an option to go to the new dashboard or the old dashboard. Your existing sites will be available on the old dashboard, and new sites should be created on the new dashboard. Once you're in the dashboard (new or old) you may easily navigate between them by clicking the link at the top of the page, above the header.

Can I still build / publish sites on the old dashboard?

Yes, for a few weeks after our launch. We would like to release the new dashboard to our Pro / Enterprise users initially and take a few weeks to work out any kinks or make essential improvements.

Once we’re 100%, we’ll restrict publishes on the old dashboard and everything will be done on the new version.

I have lots of sites published in my account. Can I move these to the new dashboard?

We're currently working on a site migration tool that will allow you to move published sites to the new dashboard. Published sites may continue to be accessed on the old dashboard, and never-before-published sites can be migrated from the legacy dashboard to the new dashboard now (use the Migrate Sites button in the new dashboard). Ideally, new sites should be built in the new dashboard.

Can’t you just automatically move all our sites to the new dashboard?

Dare to dream! Unfortunately, at this time our volume of sites / subscriptions is too large to move them in one bulk transfer. Looking on the bright side, this is a good opportunity to do some fall cleanup and start with a clean and beautifully organized new dashboard.

I’m a free member with a published site – what will happen to my site / account?

Free members who have an actively published site will be unaffected. The site can continue to be edited on the old dashboard and will stay published if it’s paid.

In order to build / publish new sites, you will need to purchase a Without Code Membership and can take advantage of the new dashboard for your builds.

I’m a Pro member. Is my membership price going to change?

No, we plan to grandfather in all existing Pro subscriptions and your current rate will remain intact. When you access the new dashboard, the system will recognize you as a Pro member and give you access to all of your existing features.

Are publish / hosting prices changing?

Not at this time. Our publish prices will remain at $99 per year or $11 per month.

We’ve signed a two-year price lock with our hosting vendor as of January 2022, however, and our new internal cost is going up by approx.18%. With that said, we will need to explore a small hosting price increase in 2022.

I’m an existing WOC Pro Member – can I still purchase the new Membership + Hosting bundle?

Absolutely – however we will need to cancel your current Pro subscription and have you sign-up fresh using the bundle purchase option. The bundle is a unique membership class that needs to be purchased directly from our pricing page to activate the hosted site.

If I purchase a Membership / Hosting bundle, do I have to launch my site the same day?

Nope! Your hosting is activated during your bundle purchase; however, the site can be published anytime during the year and will remain active for 12 months from the purchase date.

Please note, however, that a membership is required to access the builder and platform, so if your membership is cancelled or the renewal fails during this period you may be restricted from further editing the site (the hosting will stay active).

Any further questions? Feel free to email our team at support@wocode.com or post a note below and we’ll be sure to respond.

Thanks for sticking with us through this long read, and we hope you're excited about our new platform!

Steve & Team WOCode

Comparison – Webflow vs Without Code

website@sitemodify.com (Website Editor) — Wed, 07 Jul 2021 16:04:56 GMT

Both Webflow and Without Code have emerged as top options for web designers. Small businesses and agencies that focus on site builds for clients will find that both of these platforms are much more suited to higher volume work than builders like Squarespace and Wix, which are geared more toward those that need a single personal site and are brand new to building websites.

Taking a deeper look into these two builders, we can leave many of the similarities behind and begin to see how the core values of two different businesses strongly affect the user experience. Without Code's name says it all – the core value of the business is focused on providing a variety of tools to a community of visual designers that prefer not to use code. Users of Adobe Muse are probably already familiar with the Without Code team, as they are the team behind MuseThemes – a very popular provider of widgets, themes and training that began in 2011.

Webflow was founded in 2013, and places its emphasis on web standards and best practices. While Webflow and Without Code both utilize web-based visual editors, Webflow takes the approach of presenting users with traditional web development building blocks such as divs and classes. Users with development knowledge or background will be more comfortable in that environment than those without.

In this article we'll look at several builder-to-builder comparisons in a number of categories, and provide a clear focus on which site builder will be right for you. Begin with the comparison overview for a summarized view, and read on for additional details in each category.

Comparison Overview

Webflow

Without Code

Site Editor

Webflow uses a visual drag-and-drop editor. However, a class and CSS attributes must be applied to each element placed (or an existing class can be applied instead).

Without Code uses a visual drag-and-drop editor. Classes, CSS and all other attributes are applied automatically, behind the scenes.

Templates

100+ free and premium templates available. Premium templates are purchased individually, with prices ranging from $24 - $159+ each.

100+ templates are available for free.

Widgets

No support for widgets natively. Only core components such as text, buttons and images can be dragged and dropped onto a page. Third party widgets may utilize an HTML embed component.

Widgets are the building block of the Without Code builder. More than 100 widgets are available, and all can be dragged and dropped from the sidebar widget menu.

Pricing

Pricing plans are separated into Site Plans, Ecommerce plans, Workspace plans, and add-on plans. Site Plans range from free (restricted features) to $39/month, and Ecommerce Plans range from $29 to $212/month. An average site with CMS users and ecommerce would be $29/month.

Simple pricing built around one Standard plan at $15/month, which includes all features and ecommerce. Optional higher-tier ecommerce plans are offered for large stores.

Multilanguage Sites

Multilanguage sites are not available in any standard plan, but are available via paid add-on plans.

Multilanguage functionality is built into the builder natively, with automatic site translation available for 55+ languages via Google Translate.

Access to Site Code

Access to site code is not possible aside from the HTML in the <head> and the Embed widget.

Access to site code is available in Development Mode.

Bandwidth Restrictions

Bandwidth restrictions vary based on site plan. The Starter, Basic, CMS and Business plans allow 1gb, 10gb, 50gb, and 100gb bandwidth, respectively.

Without Code has no restrictions on bandwidth.

SEO

SEO tools are available for all sites, with more powerful conversion tools available as paid add-ons.

Extensive SEO tools are available for all sites.

Site Backups

Both automatic and manual site backups are available.

SSL

Simple one-click SSL certification is available on all sites.

Site Editor

Webflow

Webflow uses a web-based editor with drag-and-drop methodology for placing elements onto a page. With a strong commitment to web standards and best practices, Webflow's editor is geared toward revealing page elements to be exactly what they are – from divs, to classes, to CSS. As you place an element onto a page, you assign a class and CSS properties.

Actions in the editor are typically more manual, meaning that if your intention is to style some text or an image, you will do this by making individual adjustments to the CSS. Many settings you make (such as CSS settings) are 1:1 with how the site code is generated.

Without Code

Without Code also uses a web-based drag-and-drop editor. The visual nature of the allows the designer to get an immediate sense for the look of a site as it comes together because what you see in the editor represents what you see on the published site.

All the components of a website – such as headlines, text, images, videos, etc. – are accessed from a sidebar menu as widgets. These widgets are dropped into place and updated via a widget option panel. Elements on a page can be moved, copied and re-arranged. This style of editor is very easy to learn and will be familiar to anyone that has used a newsletter builder, PowerPoint, Keynote, or other drag-and-drop editors.

Summary: The differences in the editor may be the most vital component in the comparison between these two builders, as these each will likely appeal to different types of designers.

For those seeking to build a site in a highly visual way, Without Code is the clear choice. Elements can be placed and adjusted quickly, and any element you see in the editor will always represent the way that element will look on the finished site. Things like classes and CSS are handled by the builder behind the scenes. This is an important thing to point out, as this is a clear difference from Webflow. Each time you add an element in Webflow, you must address the class and CSS of that element. Having this handled behind the scenes by Without Code allows designers to work very quickly, and stay completely in a visual design world. It should be noted that you can indeed access classes and CSS in the Without Code builder if you like, but it is certainly not a necessity (we'll discuss Without Code's Developer Mode in the Access to Code section below).

If you have a web development background or have an intermediate to advanced understanding of HTML, then you may appreciate Webflow's dedication to making things like CSS a manual process, rather than something that's automatically handled. If you're not sure what a div is, or what classes do, then Webflow will have a pretty steep learning curve.

Put simply, visual designers that want to work quickly will find Without Code a delight to work in. But if you're interested in working in a hybrid designer/developer environment, Webflow may be just what you're after.

Templates

Webflow

Webflow has hundreds of free and premium templates, with template access available to all account plan levels. Premium templates range in price from $24 to $159+.

Without Code

Without Code has 100+ templates, all free.

Summary: Both platforms offer 100+ templates. However, only Webflow charges per template for premium selections. For those that build sites routinely, Without Code will offer a more cost-effective route with unlimited access to all templates.

Widgets

Webflow

Webflow does not offer support for drag-and-drop widgets. While core elements such as text, buttons and forms can be added to a page by dragging and dropping, third party widgets such as galleries, Facebook feeds, or feature integrations are a whole other matter.

Before a widget can be used in Webflow, it must be configured outside of Webflow's editor. This is usually done on a configuration interface of the widget creator's website. To use a widget, you would visit the site of a widget maker – such as Elfsight or Udesly – then configure the widget options and copy the resulting HTML code. The resulting HTML code is pasted into the Embed element in the Webflow editor.

When widgets are used in Webflow, they will not be rendered in the editor. To see your widget, you will need to publish the site.

Without Code

Widgets are an essential part of the Without Code experience. As you build a site, you do so by placing widgets into your page layout. Widgets consist of everything from basic building blocks like text and images to video galleries and third-party integrations. All widget settings are adjusted in a widget settings panel within the site editor.

Summary: Without Code has a huge workflow advantage when it comes to adding and adjusting widgets.

While both site editors are built upon the drag-and-drop concept, only Without Code maintains the process universally. The ability to stay in a singular workflow creates a huge advantage when building sites. The process of adding a widget is always the same, whether it be text or a Calendly integration.

In contrast, adding widgets in Webflow is a bit scattered and complicated. Each time you want to add a widget, you will need to consider whether the functionality can be achieved using a basic Webflow element (like text or a button), or whether you will need to use a third party service for something like a slider or social feed. These two routes require different setups, with the latter requiring you to configure your widget on a third party website.

It's also important to emphasize that when using Webflow's Embed element required for using third party widgets, you will not see the widget rendered in the site editor (as you would with standard Webflow elements, such as images). This means that in order to see things like galleries and sliders, you will need to wait to see the rendered element when the site is published. And when changes are needed in the widget settings, you will need to return to the third party site, make the changes, copy the code again, paste the code into the Webflow element, and republish the site.

Pricing

Webflow

Webflow has several types of plans, including Site Plans, Ecommerce Plans, Workspace Plans, and Add-ons .

Site Plans are geared toward those seeking basic personal sites that don't require a store or ecommerce. These plans range from free to $39/month. The free plan has restricted bandwidth and is limited to 2 pages. If you need a CMS or client access, you will need to go with the CMS Plan at $23/month.

Ecommerce Plans are available for $29, $74, and $212/month depending on the number of ecommerce items you need.

Agencies or those working with multiple clients should look at the Workspace Plans , which include staging sites and collaboration seats. When you sign up for Webflow, you get the Free-level Workspace Plan included by default. Scaling up to additional features is available with the Core and Growth plans, at $19 and $49/month, respectively. Note that these costs are in addition to the Site or Ecommerce plans listed above.

Add-ons are available if you want to include conversion optimization, analytics, and localization. These add-ons range from $9-$299/month and are in addition to the costs above.

Overall, the pricing structure is focused on your needs, and whether you're operating as an agency or just building a small site for yourself. A comparable site plan to the Without Code Standard plan would be the CMS Plan at $23/month . But this would not include ecommerce, analytics, or white label.

You can see Webflow pricing here .

* All pricing listed in this article represents the cost when paid annually.

Without Code

Without Code offers very simple pricing, with a single Standard plan that includes all available features for $15/month . This all-inclusive approach means there are no tiers to sort through unless you need a store with a larger product catalog. Users with bigger stores can choose from ecommerce-focused plans at $20 or $35/month, which support product catalogs beyond the 10-product store included in the Standard plan.

You can see Without Code pricing here .

* All pricing listed in this article represents the cost when paid annually.

Summary: Without Code is the cheaper option with much simpler, all-inclusive pricing.

If we take a look at an example of someone who has published a site with ecommerce, CMS access, analytics, multilingual layouts, and without traffic restrictions, that site would cost $15/month on Without Code . The same site would cost $47/month on Webflow ($29/Ecommerce Plan, plus their "Analyze" add-on at $9/month, and "Localization Essential" add-on at $9/month).

Multi-language Sites

Webflow

Multi-language sites are available at an additional cost via the "Localization" add-ons.

Without Code

Multilanguage functionality is built into the builder natively, with site translation done by selecting the preferred language from a selection of languages.

Summary: Only Without Code offers this function natively without the need for additional coding or scripts.

Access to Code

Webflow

Access to site code is not possible aside from the HTML in the <head> and the Embed widget.

Without Code

Full code access to view and edit the site code is available in Developer Mode.

Summary: Access to site code beyond the <head> area is only possible in Without Code.

Bandwidth Restrictions

Webflow

Bandwidth restrictions vary based on site plan. The Starter, Basic, CMS, and Business plans allow 1gb, 10gb, 50gb, and 100gb bandwidth, respectively.

Without Code

Bandwidth is unlimited on Without Code sites.

Summary: Bandwidth should not be a concern for users of either platform. However, Webflow users may need to upgrade their site plan based on monthly visits.

Conclusion

You may be wondering, what about SEO, security, site backups and SSL? Since we've focused on the differences between these two, we should also mention that there are several things in common. Both builders offer powerful SEO features and site backups; both builders offer one-click SSL certificates natively; and both builders use Amazon Web Services (AWS) for highly-secure hosting and solid reliability.

Additionally, both companies believe strongly in teaching users how to succeed on their platforms. Extensive video tutorials and documentation are available at webflow.com and wocode.com .

With so much in common, we can put a clearer focus on the things that set these builders apart and break things down into three categories: workflow, pricing, and target audience .

Workflow in Without Code is highly streamlined. As mentioned in the Site Editor and Widgets sections above, Without Code's builder is highly intuitive for visual designers. Widgets are used throughout the site build, being dragged from a side panel and dropped on the page exactly where you want them. Page layout is always what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG).

Webflow begins with the same drag-and-drop concept, though there is a very real friction point: only basic elements are available in the sidebar elements menu. When you need to place elements on your site that don't appear in the sidebar menu – like galleries, integrations and social embeds – you must copy/paste third party code in these cases. Configuration of widgets is done outside of Webflow, as are any changes made in the future. And to complicate matters further, you won't see your HTML widget rendered in the builder (you'll need to publish for that).

All in all, Without Code offers a builder that is simply quicker to use, with a workflow that won't require you to leave the builder.

Pricing clearly favors Without Code. While both companies offer similar structure with separate site and account plans, Without Code offers simpler choices. Every site costs the same amount ($15/month), regardless of traffic, number of editors, or page count. And that price happens to be less than any comparable site plan from Webflow.

Finally, taking a look at target audience , we find that both platforms are well suited for agencies and freelancers building client sites. However, it is important to point out that these two builders are built with different users in mind. Webflow keeps things like divs, classes and CSS in plain view, and forces you to address these throughout your site build. This is great for those that want to think about them. Put simply, Webflow is better suited to those with some web developer knowledge.

On the other hand, Without Code offers a very visual design experience. Things like CSS and classes are handled behind the scenes, allowing users to build sites without worrying about these things. Without Code's target audience is made up of pure designers that want to work in a visual environment. Ironically, for moments when a user actually does want to access the site code for changes, Without Code is the only builder of the two that offers code access via Developer Mode.

We hope this article has helped you understand the similarities and differences in these two builders. Both platforms have had solid growth and have established themselves as excellent options for designers. The final step is to decide which platform fits your desired workflow and experience level.

Tips for Building your Online Portfolio

website@sitemodify.com (Website Editor) — Thu, 03 Jun 2021 16:25:03 GMT

You’re in the business of web design so you know that your own website should be among your best designs. But you can’t stop there; adding an online portfolio to your site is so critical. This portfolio gives you the opportunity to showcase real examples, giving potential clients confidence in your skills. Compared to other methods (such as an About page listing your accolades or a skills bar), your online portfolio is the most effective way to answer the question potential clients are asking: can you design an attractive and effective website for me?

This portfolio will essentially become your resume, allowing you to show off your work and even establish yourself as an expert. We’ve rounded up a few of the most notable tips for creating a portfolio!

Choose Wisely

It may be tempting to add any and every project you’ve worked on but resist that urge and select only your strongest projects. It’s hard to cut projects that you worked hard on and showing off your early designs allows you to show your evolution as a designer, however, potential clients want to see your current style and your more recent achievements.

As well, provide a variety and showcase your more unique sites; this will show your range and give you more wide appeal.

Develop a Policy of Minimalism

The name of the game is simplicity. Don’t overwhelm your visitors with a library of images to sort through for each project or a huge block of text to provide context; people often have a short attention span and you want to make sure they will walk away with a sense of your skills, not just the fact that you’ve designed a lot of sites.

Keep the total portfolio trim and tidy, aiming for 10-20 projects total. Any more than this and you risk burying some of the stronger projects, while simultaneously overwhelming your potential client.

If 10 projects sounds daunting – maybe you’re just beginning your web design career or don’t have permission to post some of your projects – don’t fret. Focus on showcasing the projects you have in a beautiful way and as an alternative, you can choose to feature personal projects that weren’t designed for a client. Be up-front about that fact that these are not real-world examples but highlight the fact that these show your skills and could inspire a future project regardless of their original purpose.

Make Images your Focus

This is one of the most important tips! It doesn’t matter how beautiful your design is, if your images don’t look good, visitors are going to struggle to trust you with their website design. Ensure you are using high resolution images and are providing the best view for your potential client.

The nature of an online portfolio vs. a physical one mean you need to make it easy for visitors to get a sense of your project; consider providing an overall project image, as well as close up detail screenshots (but remember to keep it simple and avoid cluttering the page).

Write a Story

This is a balancing act. You want your project images to tell the story and speak for themselves but including pertinent text information can help boost your credibility and paint the context for potential customers.

Consider including a few components if applicable:

The clients and how you helped them
The process you used to reach the final design
Client testimonials
Results or measured success (e.g. if the new web design was intended to increase traffic, showcase the analytics to show this was successful)

Review and Update

Once you finalize your portfolio – images, text, and all – it’s time to go through it with a fine-toothed comb. Ensure your sentences are concise and well-structured, while making sure the entire portfolio appears cohesive as a single page. Consider getting a second set of eyes to get an outside opinion of how the portfolio looks.

Lastly, come back to your portfolio every few months to see if it could use any tweaking. Perhaps you’ve completed new projects that you would like to feature, or perhaps you would like to rotate in some other features that you’re also proud of.

There is no one right way to present your portfolio, but these tips can help you stay on track no matter what format you choose. The beauty of the online portfolio is that it can always be updated quickly so don’t be afraid to play around as you find the right style for you!

Comparison – Wix vs Without Code

website@sitemodify.com (Website Editor) — Thu, 01 Apr 2021 21:13:08 GMT

Wix and Without Code are great tools for those looking to build a website without the need of knowing how to write code. Their drag-and-drop visual editors are great for those that prefer to approach building a website as a pure designer, rather than as a developer. Both platforms offer dynamic pages, access to the site code, and client access.

As we take a deeper dive into pricing, features, and exactly who each platform will appeal to, we will find some serious differences. In this article we will not focus on similarities, but on what makes each builder unique. And more importantly, we can draw a clear and obvious conclusion of which platform offers superior features at a better price.

Begin with the comparison overview for a summarized view, and read on for additional details in each category.

Comparison Overview

Wix

Without Code

Site Editor

Two site editors are available. Wix ADI is an Artificial Intelligence builder that builds a site for you based on a series of questions. Wix editor is a drag-and-drop editor using a basic selection of widgets as building blocks.

Without Code uses a visual drag-and-drop editor that uses widgets as building blocks.

Pricing

Four pricing plans range from $17 to $159/month. The most comparable plan to Without Code's Standard plan is $29/month.

Simple pricing built around one Standard plan at $15/month, which includes all features and ecommerce. Optional higher-tier ecommerce plans are offered for large stores.

White Label Resources

No white label resources are available.

Extensive white label resources are available.

Client Access

Basic client access to websites via Contributor accounts.

Extensive access options are available for clients and team members.

Revenue Stream Control

Contributor accounts (clients) will see Wix pricing, which cannot be hidden from view.

Clients do not see pricing information.

Access to Site Code

Uses a semi-proprietary coding system called Wix Corvid, allowing users to modify most site code.

Full access to edit site code is available in Developer Mode.

Dynamic Pages

Dynamic page generation is available.

SEO

Extensive SEO tools are available.

Site Editor

Wix

Wix offers two editor options: Wix ADI and Wix Editor

Wix ADI uses artificial intelligence to build a site for you, after simply answering a few questions. This system uses unique algorithms and bots that generate relevant content from your Facebook page. Wix ADI is for those that want to build a basic site with minimal time, effort or commitment to learning a site editor (you can switch to the Wix Editor at a later time if you wish)
Wix Editor is the standard drag-and-drop editor of choice for those that want more control of their site build in a hands-on way. A sidebar menu allows users to add various content elements such as text, images and buttons. The elements available in the sidebar are fairly simple in nature, while more complex features are available by way of apps, which are available in the Wix App Market. Wix Apps are built by a variety of developers and range in price and functionality.

Limited custom code functionality is available using a proprietary coding platform called Wix Corvid (see additional information in the Coding Knowledge section).

Without Code

Without Code also uses a visual drag-and-drop editor. Similar to Wix, elements called widgets are dropped onto a page from a sidebar menu. Without Code offers a a larger library of elements, providing all site functionalities in the form of widgets (as opposed to a combination of widgets and apps in the Wix Editor). All widgets are included in a Without Code membership (Free or Pro) and are built by the Without Code development team, ensuring compatibility.

"Sections" are a unique feature exclusive to Without Code, allowing users to easily add pre-styled sections such as intros, team sections, contact forms and more. Sections offer a stylish way to put together a site very quickly, mixing and matching existing built-from-scratch content as desired.

Extensive custom code functionality is available in the Developer Mode (see additional information in the Coding Knowledge section).

Summary: Both platforms offer a code-free, drag-and-drop site editor experience. The Wix editor offers a bit more of a simplistic experience with fewer drag-and-drop elements, favoring those wanting to build basic sites. To extend functionality, Wix users can utilize proprietary Corvid coding and apps from the Wix App Market. Without Code offers a larger selection of drag-and-drop elements, and extended design options by way of Sections and a full featured Developer Mode for those that wish to use any HTML, Javascript or CSS.

Without Code gets the edge for those looking for a more powerful and professional editor that appeals to both beginner and advanced designers alike. The Wix ADI will appeal more to those hoping to build one-off sites with minimal time investment, but users of the Wix Editor should factor the costs of apps into the site's budget.

Pricing

Wix

Wix currently offers four pricing options with personal plans ranging from $17 to $159/month, and enterprise plans available with custom pricing. If you're looking for the Wix plan that's the best feature-match to Without Code, look at the Core plan for $29/month . You can see Wix pricing here .

* Note that a White Label editor is not available on any Wix plans.

* All pricing listed in this article represents the cost when paid annually.

Without Code

You can see Without Code pricing here .

* All pricing listed in this article represents the cost when paid annually.

Summary: Without Code is the cheaper option with much simpler, all-inclusive pricing.

If we take a look at an example of someone who has published a site with basic ecommerce and site collaborators, that site would cost $15/month on Without Code on the "Standard" Plan . The same site would cost $29/month on Wix on the "Core" plan .

White Label Resources

Wix

No white label resources. Wix branding is found on all tools and resources.

Without Code

Without Code was built from the ground-up with white label usage in mind. Agencies can use their own logo on the main user dashboard, and add subusers to sites – maintaining an entirely unbranded editor experience for clients. Additional white label resources are also available, such as documentation and video tutorials,

Summary: Without Code is the obvious choice for those building client sites (i.e. agencies).

Subuser / Client Access

Wix

Wix offers basic client access to websites via Contributor accounts. Contributor accounts will see Wix branding throughout the editor, as well as pricing.

Without Code

Without Code has extensive resources for subusers, team members and clients. Subusers accounts are created in the main dashboard, with full permissions control for every subuser. Team member accounts are similar to subusers but are intended to provide access for other members of your design team or agency.

Another tool worth mentioning is Site Comments. A robust commenting system allows designers and clients to leave comments by dropping pins throughout the actual site editor, providing confusion-free communication and instructions that remains entirely in the context of the site layout.

Summary: The extensive resources available on Without Code clearly reveal it as the choice for any designer or agency that builds sites for clients. And keep in mind that the subuser/client experience remains fully white label.

Revenue Stream Control

Wix

Contributor accounts (clients) will see Wix pricing, which cannot be hidden from view. Sites that are set up in the client's name will be billed by Wix.

Without Code

Clients will never see pricing. This means that markup is effortless; and you fully control pricing for your clients.

Summary: In addition to information in the White Label and Subuser / Client Access sections above, Without Code expands on the superior resources available to agencies who can charge any rate they wish for site builds and hosting.

Access to Site Code

Wix

Wix uses a proprietary system called Corvid to provide access to the platform’s APIs and permits users to create database collections and dynamic pages. It should be noted that sites generated via Wix ADI cannot be converted to Wix Corvid.

Without Code

Developer Mode in the Without Code builder offers full access to the site code, making it easy to edit any site element's JavaScript, HTML or CSS.

Summary: Both platforms offer access to edit code if you need it. For developers and those with coding knowledge, Without Code's Developer Mode should be more straightforward with less of an initial learning curve than Wix Corvid.

Conclusion

Wix and Without Code have a fair bit in common. Both editors utilize a drag-and-drop editor, allowing users to drop elements to build a page. Both platforms offer the ability to use connected data to generate hundreds of dynamic pages based on a single page layout. And both platforms offer access to site code for those that need it.

A deeper look into pricing and features begins to reveal some big differences. Without Code offers a much clearer pricing structure, with site hosting at $11/month. A site without Wix ads all over it will cost $13/month on the cheapest plan. But taking a look at the fine print, we will notice that the advertised monthly rate is actually $17/month unless you pay annually. And if you want more bandwidth, storage or "video hours," prices go up in increments all the way to $47/month. Interested in a business plan? There are four new plans for businesses ranging from $28/month to $750/month (yes, $750 per month). And lastly, keep in mind that many apps you might need on your Wix site will carry an additional cost.

So to remove the veil of pricing obscurity, the lowest ad-free website from Wix will cost you $17/month ($13/month paid annually) while the rate for a Without Code site will cost you $11/month ($8.25/month when paid annually). And to note – the $11/month Without Code site includes every feature available on the platform. Value clearly lands in Without Code's favor.

The features available on both platforms show a bit about just who these platforms are built for. The Wix freemium model and Wix ADI offer a way for people to get a site up at no cost, and with no design skills or effort invested in learning a site editor. The lack of white label features, limited client access, and fully visible pricing, it seems clear that Wix is a platform mostly intended to appeal to those with the simplest of web design needs – individuals seeking a basic, single, personal website.

Without Code offers a platform that will appeal to those making single sites. However, it is easy to see that where Without Code shines brightest is in its features that are tailored for agencies and individuals building sites for numerous clients. A fully white label environment provides the perfect landscape for building your own brand by displaying your own company logo on the user dashboard and maintaining the ability to set your own prices for hosting. Advanced permissions for client and team member access – along with site comments – creates an immersive and productive space for clients.

All in all, Without Code simply offers more for less. Both builders can be used to create a great looking site, but Without Code offers advanced features that will appeal to professional web designers – at a lower cost.

Without Code Member Update – Fall 2020

website@sitemodify.com (Website Editor) — Wed, 28 Oct 2020 15:39:13 GMT

As we enter the final months of 2020, let’s say goodbye to a strange and challenging year and look ahead at the exciting projects and priorities we have under development at Without Code. We’ve been listening closely to your product requests and feedback, and as always, I’m excited to share our roadmap with you below.

Major Development Projects - Update

2020 was a year of intense development for our team, focusing on several major initiatives, such as email hosting, a complete dashboard overhaul, and an upcoming improvement to our billing and subscription management system.

Unlike widgets, which can often be developed in a week or two, these major initiatives require heads-down focus for months at a time. While not always flashy from the outside, these internal projects are crucial for the smooth growth of our company and need to be tackled strategically as we add more users to the platform. For our small team, we have to choose our priorities carefully and I’m excited to say that we’ve nearly completed many of these “core” items and are ready to shift more focus back into building cool visual/functionality improvements into the builder and platform.

The Reviews are in…Email Hosting is a hit!

Now that we have a healthy volume of users taking advantage of our email hosting, we are receiving a ton of positive feedback about the functionality and reliability of the service. Many of our customers have migrated from G-Suite or Microsoft that cost $5+ per month for each user. These customers are reporting back to inform us that in addition to significant cost savings, management of emails and inboxes is easier than ever, and email is delivered fast, reliably, and with reduced spam/junk in their inbox.

We are exploring the idea of offering site hosting and a couple of inboxes packaged together in a single price. We would love your feedback on this idea – please feel free to send us a note to sales@wocode.com or submit a comment below!

Upcoming Widgets

As mentioned above our development team has been digging into a variety of powerful new widgets, including:

Mega Menu – a beautiful mega menu widget that will automatically pull in your navigation items.
Directory Listing Widget – add a directory to your site with search and filter controls. Perfect for product catalogs or staff directories.
MemberSpace – a widget to simplify integration of the powerful membership system, MemberSpace .
We’ve also negotiated a 10% lifetime discount for Without Code members. Just use code: without-code-4265 when signing up.
Parallax Scroll FX – a new set of scroll effects and interesting parallax effects.

Billing & Subscription Management Improvements

The last of our major internal initiatives for 2020 is to streamline and improve our billing system and subscription management tools.

If you have lots of websites built on Without Code you’ve no doubt experienced some challenges when trying to manage renewals and updating credit cards. Our team has been working on a ground-up rebuild of the system, and we expect to release version one in November 2020 with the following improvements:

User interface improvements to the subscription management page
Searching and sorting controls to easily find the website subscription you need
Easy identification of previous or expired subscriptions for a site
Simplified updating of credit cards and reactivation of expired subscriptions
Downloadable PDF invoices

See something missing? Be sure to let us know in the comments below.

Price Changes Complete

Based on your feedback to our proposed price changes, we reduced the percentage increase significantly from what was originally proposed and we will take a more gradual approach to any future increases.

Having not increased our prices for nearly three years left us far behind the market and rising internal costs required a larger increase than anticipated. Going forward we will be sure to announce any price changes with several months of notice and we will aim to make very small incremental changes as needed.

As always, thank you for supporting Without Code – we hope you are excited about all the projects and priorities listed above.

Steve Harris
Team WOCode

Comparison – Squarespace vs Without Code

website@sitemodify.com (Website Editor) — Thu, 22 Oct 2020 18:08:08 GMT

Squarespace and Without Code are both excellent site builders providing code-free web based editing. These popular platforms are both capable of creating great looking sites with little to no website building experience.

As we dive into unique features of the builders, we will see that these builders excel in their abilities to help users succeed. One focuses on a highly streamlined and simple site build experience, while the other provides powerful tools to help the user succeed with personal and client sites alike.

Let's begin with the comparison overview for a summarized view, and read on for additional details in each category.

Comparison Overview

Squarespace

Without Code

Site Editor

A simple and streamlined editor with limited features. Tools and options are hidden from initial view. Must start with a template.

Powerful editor with toolbar in a persistent side menu. Can begin with a template or a blank site.

Templates

100+ templates are available. Functionality differs from template to template. Version 7.1 templates are more customizable than Version 7.0.

100+ templates are available, with more added monthly. Editor 2.0 templates offer advanced functionality.

Plugins

50+ plugins are available, referred to as "Content Blocks".

More than 100 plugins are available, referred to as "widgets".

Pricing

Plans range from $16/month to $99/month. The most popular plan is $23/month.

Simple pricing built around one Standard plan at $15/month, which includes all features and ecommerce. Optional higher-tier ecommerce plans are offered for large stores.

Trial Periods

A 14-day trial is available, including most Business-level features.

A 14-day trial is available, including all Without Code features.

Coding Knowledge

No coding knowledge is required, although custom development may be needed to adjust padding or add certain functionalities. Access to site code is available on the Business Plan.

No coding knowledge is required. Access to site code is available if needed, in Developer Mode (available at no cost).

Multilingual Sites

Site translation for multilingual sites must be performed manually.

Site translation for multilingual sites is automatic via Google Translate, and available in 55+ languages.

Site Backups

Site backups are not automatic. The site is saved at the end of each editing session (or changes may be discarded). Site saves are published immediately.

Site backups are automatic, and can be made manually, with rollback versions as well.

White Label Resources

The Squarespace Dashboard/UI cannot be rebran ded for a white label editing environment.

Extensive white label resources are available.

SEO

Extensive SEO tools available.

Bandwidth Restrictions

No bandwidth restrictions are used, on any plan.

SSL

One-click SSL certification is available for free.

Security

Squarespace sites are considered highly secure.

Without Code sites are considered highly secure.

Site Editor

Squarespace

When you begin building a site in the Squarespace editor, you must start with a template. Each template has pre-determined style tweaks with set parameters. If you choose to build a site from scratch, you would need to remove all the elements within a template.

Like many of the templates, the editor presents a stylish, simple appearance. You will not see a toolbar full of icons along the side or top of the page. Instead, the editor lays elements out essentially as they appear on the published version of the site, with edit or delete options that appears when you hover over any element. Options to edit appear in a pop-up menu and usually contain Content, Design and Animations tabs.

Squarespace self-describes it's editor as "drag-and-drop", however this really is not true. When you wish to add an element, you first select the area where you would like to place the element, and then choose an element in the content block menu that appears.

Version 7.1 of the editor also added sections, which are pre-styled blocks containing a grouping of elements like text, images and buttons. Sections are available in a large number of categories like Galleries, Products and Calendars. Sections allow users to build a page by stacking new sections vertically.

If you've tried other web-based site builders, you may feel a bit underwhelmed with the lack of design control of basic elements. Even simple tasks such as changing the color of certain words in a headline or adjusting the padding around an image is not possible within the editor. Styling is handled almost entirely on a global level. If you wish to change a font in a form, you cannot do this by editing the form itself. Instead, you would change a global paragraph style and then apply that paragraph style to the form.

Without Code

Without Code uses a a true visual drag-and-drop web based editor. A narrow, persistent sidebar menu allows access to widgets, which represent all the elements of a website, such as headlines, text, images, videos, etc. Each widget has its own set of options, allowing for extensive content and styling options. Design options allow the user to fine-tune colors, spacing, and more. Elements on a page can be moved, copied and re-arranged.

Like Squarespace, Without Code also offers a large selection of pre-styled sections, allowing users to build great looking page layouts quickly.

The Without Code editor strikes a nice balance between offering a visual site-build experience while maintaining a high degree of control.

Summary: Without Code and Squarespace offer very different editors that will certainly appeal to different people.

Those that want to stick very closely to the styling of a template may be at home in the Squarespace editor. The restrictions and constrained nature of the editor actually prevent users from altering a site's look and feel without a pretty big effort.

While the minimalistic feel of the Squarespace editor presents a calm and streamlined workspace, it also generates the majority of complaints from users. Functions you may want to use routinely may be buried two layers deep within a menu, resulting in several clicks to access. Other users have complained that they spend too much time searching for features and functions that could simply be persistent as a button or icon within a toolbar.

Without Code represents a rather different perspective. While the editor still maintains a highly visual user interface, options and settings typically appear where you expect them to. Exploring widget options reveal a much deeper and more powerful set of controls, allowing users to edit and style elements immediately.

While global design styles are available in Without Code, those global styles can be overwritten whenever you enter a widget style editor. This removes several steps and limitations in comparison to styling in Squarespace.

In the big picture, Squarespace and Without Code are built to appeal to different audiences. Squarespace is best suited to those that are looking to build a single site or blog using a template. The flexibility and extensive options in the Without Code editor will appeal to those that want more finely-tuned site, as well as those building multiple sites for clients.

Templates

Squarespace

Templates are integrated at the core of the Squarespace experience. Each Squarespace template is coded uniquely, with a large degree of variability in functionality from template to template. For example, one template may allow the company logo to be in the left, center or right position within the header, while another template may only allow the logo to be centered. These functionality differences apply to many different attributes of a site – from menu styles, to nav menu layouts, to mobile-specific layouts. Put simply, your ability to customize site attributes will vary from template to template. Squarespace users should study their template comparison charts before jumping into a template.

As mentioned above, you must use a template in order to build a Squarespace site. Anytime you wish to make changes to your site, you are technically making changes to the template design. Templates have pre-determined style tweaks with set parameters. To modify templates further, users will need to modify their site’s code with Code Injection, Code Blocks, CSS Editing, or the Squarespace Developer Platform.

It should also be noted that there are version 7.1 and 7.0 templates. 7.0 templates have style rules and features built into each template. Many of these are unique to the template's family. Some 7.0 templates allow style changes from page to page, while others do not. 7.1 templates allow style changes from section to section, on all pages.

Without Code

Without Code's template library has more than 100 templates. Users may start with a full template, or start with a blank site and build from scratch. Functionality from template to template is the same, meaning that every element has the same options and customization ability on every template. Editor 2.0 is an advanced editor option with controls geared toward fine-tuned control of responsive elements, such as percentage-based sizing and placement. The Classic editor and Editor 2.0 are both persistently available to provide comfortable editing environments based on skill, site requirements, and experience.

Summary: The biggest difference in templates on these two platforms is the ability to modify them. Squarespace templates are much more rigid, with a very limited ability to fine tune things. And with the existence of 7.0 and 7.1 templates, it can become confusing to know what functionalities are possible on particular templates.

The ability to modify Without Code templates is extensive, and remains the same from template to template. Without Code users will find that the editor allows massive template customization when needed. Site functionalities are tied to the builder, rather than individual templates. This means that any template can theoretically be deconstructed and reconstructed into any other template because the editor allows for a much higher level of modification.

When it comes to quality and style, both builders offer high quality templates. Squarespace certainly has a specific style that's consistent as you browse from template to template; which is clean, modern and minimal. This commonality in Squarespace's template library can be problematic for those that want to build something different.

Squarespace templates tend to be fairly generically built when it comes to committing to an industry or intended purpose. While the library is divided into categories like Portfolio, Photography and Professional Services, the templates within categories often remain vague, rather than dedicating to an industry. Without Code templates are generally titled and geared toward specific industries, with obvious titles like Plumber, Accountant, and Spa.

Overall, Squarespace templates will tend to apply better to personal sites, blogs and small businesses. The highly structured nature of the sites will lean on personal taste, making Squarespace a better choice for single sites and individuals. The flexible customization options of Without Code templates allow site builders the ability to adapt a site over time, making Without Code a great choice for those doing client work.

Plugins

Squarespace

Squarespace refers to all of the elements you add to your site as "content blocks". Content blocks range from basic fundamentals such as text blocks and spacers, to integrations like OpenTable and Amazon.

Without Code

Without Code uses "widgets" as the building block of a site. Widgets are essential to a site's construction, and therefore has a large library of more than 100 widgets. While widgets make up the basics such as buttons and images, they also include many integrations like Calendly and Google Calendar.

Because widgets add power and flexibility to Without Code users, Without Code adds new widgets to their library very frequently (new widgets are generally added every few weeks).

Summary: Both platforms utilize plugins as the primary building blocks of a website; albeit with different ways of referring to them (widgets and content blocks). Without Code's strong commitment to plugins is very evident, with more than twice as many available plugins, and a quickly-growing library.

Options for each plugin tend to follow in-line with the flexibility of each platform's site editor; with Without Code widgets being vastly deeper in options than Squarespace.

Both platforms make third party code integrations easy with HTML embed plugins.

Pricing

Squarespace

Squarespace plans begin at $16/month for the Basic plan and range up to $99/month for an ecommerce-focused Business plan. These prices represent the cost when paid annually. Monthly prices are 28-36% higher.

You can see Squarespace pricing here .

Without Code

Without Code offers very simple pricing, with a single Standard plan that includes all available features for $15/month. This all-inclusive approach means there are no tiers to sort through unless you need a store with a larger product catalog. Users with bigger stores can choose from ecommerce-focused plans at $20 or $35/month, which support product catalogs beyond the 10-product store included in the Standard plan.

You can see Without Code pricing here .

* All pricing listed in this article represents the cost when paid annually.

Summary: Without Code is the cheaper option with much simpler, all-inclusive pricing.

If we take a look at an example of someone who has published a typical site with ecommerce, analytics, and code editor, that site would cost $15/month on Without Code for the "Standard" plan. The same site would cost $23/month on Webflow for the "Core" plan.

Coding Knowledge

Squarespace

Squarespace is a code-free web builder. However, as discussed in the sections above, your site may be missing certain functionalities due to the limited nature of the editor or you may be using a template that is lacking a feature present in another template. In these cases, you may need to use code to add or change a functionality. This is common with CSS changes like padding or positioning.

Another scenario where custom development may be needed is when a business site is built in Squarespace and needs modification. As businesses grow, the needs of the site often do as well. The Business plan ($26/month) and higher allow modification their your site's code with Code Injection, Code Blocks, CSS Editing, or the Squarespace Developer Platform.

Without Code

As the company name implies, the Without Code builder provides a code-free experience.

For those that require access to the site code, Developer Mode is available to all users. Developer Mode allows those with coding knowledge to modify CSS, Javascript, HTML, etc. as needed. For those that simply want to embed code for a form or a map, this can be done using HTML widgets.

Summary: Both platforms offer a code-free build environment, and both platforms offer access to the site code when needed (you'll need the Business Plan or higher with Squarespace).

Many options that are possible in Without Code like padding, margins and positioning are not available in the Squarespace editor. This may result in a higher likelihood that custom development may be needed in Squarespace than in Without Code.

Multi-language Sites

Squarespace

Multilanguage sites in Squarespace are translated manually.

Without Code

Without Code offers automatic site language translation in over 55 languages using Google Translate.

Summary: Both platforms support multilanguage sites, however sites must be manually translated in Squarespace.

Site Backups

Squarespace

Squarespace doesn’t offer automatic versioned backups or easy site-wide restoration, so users must rely on manual site duplication or partial exports that don’t capture all content or settings. This means recovering from mistakes or major changes can be difficult compared to builders with true backup and rollback tools.

Without Code

Site backups occur automatically at a set interval. Site backups can also be done manually at any time, within the site editor.

Summary: Site backups are a glaring weak point in Squarespace. Additionally, it is not possible to stage site updates without publishing them. For example, if you've decided to rebuild your site or perform a large layout update, you cannot work on the changes over time and roll out a large update all at once. Changes must be made incrementally after each editing session.

Without Code's site backup system is vastly superior, offering automatic backups in addition to the ability to create manual backups as needed.

White Label Resources

Squarespace

White labeling is not available in Squarespace as an unbranded client editor environment.

Without Code

White labeling is built into every aspect of the site builder, as well as resources such as documentation and video tutorials.

Summary: If white labeling is important to you, Without Code is the builder of choice.

Conclusion

The thing that becomes clear as we review the differences in this article is that Squarespace and Without Code have different target audiences. Squarespace is a great tool for those that want to build a single personal site, and prefer a simple, streamlined builder. While Without Code also offers an intuitive visual design experience, more powerful options and flexibility make it an ideal choice for those building multiple sites and doing client work.

If you're still on the fence, there are a few important details to consider.

Site Modification: if you expect to require additional functionality from what you see in a template, or if you think you may need to make changes to your site in the future, this will be more challenging in Squarespace. Limited access to certain functionalities mean that some things may require hiring a developer, even to achieve simple things such as logo positioning and padding.

Plugins: Widgets are an essential component for the builder, and the library grows monthly. If access to third party integrations is important to you, this should be a consideration.

White Labeling: Only Without Code offers white label resources. If you expect to build sites for clients, Without Code is the clear choice.

Site Backups: The lack of automatic site backups in Squarespace is a bit alarming. This is something that should be included as a professional site builder. And perhaps even more importantly, making large site changes or rebuilds presents a very large problem, as you are unable to stage changes as you progress through a rebuild.

Pricing: the bottom line is that Without Code's pricing is cheaper.

Introducing the New Text Editor

website@sitemodify.com (Website Editor) — Tue, 21 Jul 2020 17:39:02 GMT

Our text editor has received a major update! Many frequently-requested features have been added, including:

Letter spacing
Custom line height adjustment
Text shadows
Multiple header styles in a single text block
Saved colors

In this article, we'll take a closer look at each feature and how you can enhance your site with these improvements. Be sure to check out our video tutorial as well!

Custom Line Height Adjustment

Previously, the text editor had line height settings of single, half or double. Custom settings allow for finely-tuned line spacing to capture the perfect styling throughout your site.

To use: Click the Line Height icon, then select Custom. Adjust the custom slider as needed. You may also enter a specific value in the text box next to the slider.

Precise Letter Spacing

Letter spacing is essential for maintaining total control of text and headline styling throughout your site. Use this for fine tuning alignment of titles inside inner rows, making headlines better fit a space, or simply to improve the look of a font.

To use: Click the "more" icon (three horizontal dots) and select Letter Spacing. Options include auto, narrow, wide and custom – with a slider or manual value entry.

Multiple Header Styles Within a Single Text Block

You've always had the option of utilizing multiple fonts, sizes, colors and styles within a single text block, but now multiple header styles are possible within a single block of text as well. This feature enhancement is a time saver – allowing you to use any combination of header styles you like from H1-H6 to paragraph.

In addition to typography control, header tags are vital for proper SEO optimization as well.

To use: Highlight text and apply a header style. Note that line breaks are needed (press return to start a new line) when applying multiple header styles within a single text block.

Bonus: Fonts that have multiple weight options now offer access to font weights within the font selection dropdown. Look for the angle bracket to the right of a font name to view weight options.

Text Shadow

Text shadows are useful for making text stand out when placed on top of an image, or to add visual interest. Consider using text shadows on headline text placed on top of a site hero to ensure that the text has maximum readability.

To use: Click the "More" icon (three horizontal dots) and enable Text Shadow. Then select the shadow color and shadow position.

Save Custom Color Swatches

This simple but invaluable brand-new feature has been added to the Without Code builder site-wide, but applies very directly to the text editor so we're mentioning it here as well. All color choosers – including the one in the Text widget – now allow you to save colors.

Saved Colors allows you to save your favorite or most important brand-appropriate colors for your site forever. The Recent Colors option is still available as well, keeping track of colors as you use them by replacing older colors with new colors in a rotating palette.

To use: Select the Saved Colors tab and select a color. Click the plus button to save the color.

Comparison - WordPress vs Without Code

website@sitemodify.com (Website Editor) — Wed, 08 Jul 2020 17:50:13 GMT

WordPress and Without Code are both website creation tools that take very different approaches. Without Code is a cloud based site builder that uses a visual editor to create sites with no coding skills required. WordPress is an open source Content Management System (CMS) that must be installed on your server and connected to a database. Websites built on WordPress can be designed visually using a third party extension or plugin.

WordPress started its life as a simple blogging solution. As an open source platform that's free to use, developers have added extensive functionalities over the years, pushing it into a full fledged CMS. WordPress has a fairly steep learning curve, and requires you to set up a hosting service in order to publish your site.

Without Code was built from the ground up as a dedicated site builder that requires no coding knowledge. With extensive white label resources and the ability to add sub-users, Without Code is poised as a solution for design agencies that wish to provide access to clients in a completely rebranded environment.

In this article, we'll take a look at the key differences of these two website creation tools, and provide the information you'll need to choose the platform that will work best for you. Begin with the key feature comparison for a summarized view, and read on for additional details in each category.

WordPress - Quick Pros & Cons

Positives

As one of the largest open-source platforms in the world, WordPress can be used to design any type site you can dream of.
The extensive market of plugins and themes means you can purchase functionality without having to design it yourself.
WordPress sites can be hosted with any provider, so clients may be able to reuse their existing hosting.

Negatives

"With great power comes great responsibility" - WordPress sites need constant updates, patches and monitoring for security vulnerabilities. It is certainly not headache free.
Sites often end up much more expensive than anticipated due to the ongoing need for outside plugins to achieve functionality.
Heavy customization of sites will likely require a developer or designer with solid coding skills.
The platform is quite bloated. With so much functionality, sites typically load slowly and contain a ton of unnecessary code that should be manually removed in order to speed up load times and improve SEO.
WordPress must be installed on a server, so experience managing a server and database is a major asset.

Key Feature Comparison

WordPress

Without Code

Site Editor

Uses the Gutenberg editor, which uses blocks that are edited in abstract – meaning the editor will not represent the look of your published site. Users will need to switch between the editor and published site to preview changes.

Uses a visual drag-and-drop editor, where the editor view always resembles the published site.

Templates

Wordpress templates are 100% third party-made. More than 48k templates are available on the open marketplace from vendors such as themeforest.com. Templates range extensively in quality and price.

100+ templates are available from Without Code. All templates are built by the Without Code team, and remain consistent in quality. Designers can also create their own templates to use as a starting point.

Plugins

Plugins are available from third party developers only. Plugins range in quality and price, and should be updated routinely in order to ensure security.

Plugins are referred to as "widgets", and are the building blocks of every site. The widget library consists of 100+ widgets and are built by the Without Code team.

Coding Knowledge

WordPress includes a code-free editor. However, code may be required in order to use certain plugins or to make changes to template functionality.

Without Code is fully code-free, however designers can access the code if they need to.

Access to Multiple Sites

Access to multiple sites is possible with third party plugins at an extra cost.

Access to multiple sites is available natively, through the Without Code dashboard.

Multi
Language Sites

Multi-language sites are possible with third party plugins at an extra cost.

Multilanguage site translation is included natively, with automatic translation to 55 languages via Google Translate.

SEO

Extensive SEO tools are available through third party plugins at an extra cost.

Extensive SEO tools are available natively.

SSL

SSL certification is set up through the site host, independently from WordPress.

Simple one-click SSL certification is built in natively (free).

Security

Site security is a major concern for WordPress, as the platform is a popular target for hackers. The WordPress core, templates used, and all plugins should be updated and monitored routinely for vulnerabilities and security risks.

Without Code sites are highly secure with hosting on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Updates are made by the Without Code team, and pushed out automatically across all sites on the network.

Site Backups

Site backups are possible with third party plugins.

Site backups are automatic and can be done manually as well.

Bandwidth Restrictions

Bandwidth restrictions are dependent on the site host in use.

No bandwidth restrictions.

White Label Resources

White label resources are not available natively. Third party plugins may be used.

Extensive white label resources are available.

Site Editor

WordPress

WordPress now uses the Gutenberg editor , which is a block-based system for managing site content. Prior to Gutenberg, when faced with a function that the classic editor was incapable of, users had to bring in custom coding via inline HTML, a custom theme, or a plugin. While the current block-based editor reduces the frequency of custom coding, many plugins still require the use of a short code in order to embed the plugin into a page.

It is important to note that WordPress is not designed as a visual editor. Pages are edited in abstract, meaning that the editor will not offer a visual representation of a page. Users will need to frequently switch between the editor and the published site to preview changes. Any changes to things such as margins and padding require coding knowledge.

Without Code

Without Code uses a visual drag-and-drop editor. All the components of a website – such as headlines, text, images, videos, etc. are accessed from a sidebar menu as widgets. These widgets are dropped into place and updated via a widget option panel. Elements on a page can be moved, copied and re-arranged. What you see in the editor represents what you see on the published site. This style of editor is very easy to learn and will be familiar to anyone that's used a newsletter builder, design software, or other drag-and-drop cloud editors.

Summary: Without Code is the choice for those that want full visual control of a site, with no coding skills required.

Themes

WordPress

As an open-source platform, anyone is free to build and sell WordPress themes. At the time of writing, there are more than 48,000 WordPress themes on Themeforest.com . That's a lot of themes! While the number of available themes is massive, so is the variability of cost and reliability. As an open marketplace, themes are sold and supported by the third-party developers that create them (WordPress itself does not create any templates).

Most WordPress users begin with a theme. There are many free themes available, but the most popular and widely used themes are paid themes. Many of the most popular themes such as Divi and Elementor are highly versatile, allowing you to build most any type of site you like – from blogs to business sites to stores. However, it's important to remember that these themes offer a site structure where you control the content. Changes to the site structure will require custom coding if needed. Also, popular platforms like Divi and Elementor will carry their own costs, separate from hosting in most cases.

Without Code

Without Code's template library has approximately 100 templates. While this number is vastly less than the the 48k themes available on the open market for WordPress, keep in mind that every Without Code template is built in-house. This means that templates maintain a very high level of consistency in design quality and reliability. Without Code templates simply do not come with risk.

Without Code templates are not purchased separately. All templates are included in a Without Code Pro membership (Free memberships have access to a smaller selection of templates). Templates are fully editable, as they are built from the exact same widget elements that exist in the sidebar menu. As the name implies, Without Code templates require no coding to update or customize.

Summary: While WordPress has a vastly larger number of templates available, templates usually have an additional cost and require custom coding to make changes.

Plugins

WordPress

WordPress plugins are very similar to WordPress themes. There is a huge market of plugins available with nearly any functionality you can think of. In fact, the entire WordPress platform relies on plugins to give users the vast majority of functions needed to build and maintain a site; such as SEO tools, site language translations, site backups and more.

In the sheer volume of available plugins lies a big concern. There is no approval process for plugins that are available to WordPress users on the open market, and anyone is free to make plugins. When purchasing a plugin, it is important to consider the reviews, track record, security, and perceived reliability. Major site issues can occur when a plugin does not receive a vital security update, or if developer simply disappears. Plugins may open up vulnerabilities on your website, and leave you exposed to hackers or bots with malicious intent.

Without Code

Without Code uses "widgets" rather than "plugins". All widgets are built by our development team, and are native to the platform. They do not expose your site to security vulnerabilities, and are updated regularly to include new features.

Summary: While plugins/widgets are essential to both platforms, WordPress users will need to approach the selection of plugins with caution and scrutiny. Since the WordPress plugin market is third-party, most plug-ins carry separate costs. So it is important to factor additional cost into your budget, as well as the importance of updating plugins regularly in order to maintain site security.

Coding Knowledge

WordPress

Building a WordPress site is mostly a code-free experience. We use the term mostly because using one of the many thousands of templates does not require coding knowledge. However, if any changes are made to the structure, styling, or even padding on a template, coding will be required. The reality for most WordPress users is that a development budget is usually required when changes or modifications are needed on their sites, which is inevitable. When changes are needed, you can generally hire the template developer to make your required changes; or you can sometimes find custom code in forums to accomplish what you're after.

Without Code

As the company name implies, Without Code sites are entirely free from the need for coding whatsoever. The platform was built with this principle at its core, and is the clear choice for those that prefer to approach site builds as pure designers.

It's important to note that while Without Code does not require coding, it is still a favorite among those that do have coding knowledge. Without Code distinguishes itself from other visual editors in that users have access to the code throughout a site, using the Developer Mode. Developer mode allows those with coding knowledge to modify code as needed. For those that simply want to embed a form or a map, this can be done using HTML widgets.

Summary: For pure developers, the sky's the limit with WordPress. For those without coding knowledge (or those that prefer to design visually), Without Code is the clear choice.

Hosting

WordPress

WordPress sites must be set up with an external web host. You're free to choose your own host, and the pricing will vary from host to host. Some knowledge of FTP transfers, CPanel and PHP versioning can be handy here, as an understanding of your host's backend may be needed for site updates and theme/plugin updates.

Without Code

Hosting is included with any Without Code site. Publishing your site (and republishing) is done directly from the builder, with the click of the "Publish" button. Without Code uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) – an extremely robust service with more than 1 million active sites including Netflix.com , Facebook.com and LinkedIn.com .

Summary: While Wordpress users have the freedom of choice in web hosts, users should be prepared understand how to use backend tools (such as CPanel) when needed. For those seeking a hands-off approach to hosting and maintenance, Without Code's built-in hosting provides a reliable long term solution.

Access to Multiple Sites

WordPress

Multiple site access has been a bit of a sore spot among WordPress users. Sites are entirely separate, and require individual logins. Additionally, the themes and plugins used for each site will need to be monitored for updates and incompatibilities. These frustrations have led to the creation of services that aim at easing the process of managing multiple sites. Look at InfiniteWP , Jetpack and CMS Commander but keep in mind these services carry an additional monthly or yearly cost.

Without Code

Multiple sites can be accessed from one central location – the user dashboard.

Summary: Without Code offers simple, immediate access to all of your sites in one place, with one login. The user dashboard is also the place to set up access for sub-users or clients.

Multi-language Sites

Wordpress

Creating a multilanguage site requires use of a plugin, usually at an additional cost. Look at options such as translatepress , WPML , and polylang .

Without Code

Multilanguage functionality is built into the builder natively, with site translation done by selecting the preferred language from a selection of languages.

Summary : Both platforms support multi-language sites, however only Without Code offers this function natively; without the need for a plugin. All Without Code sites include multi-language capabilities.

SEO Tools

WordPress

Basic SEO setup (such as titles and meta descriptions) can be done directly in the site code if you're comfortable editing it. Advanced SEO capabilities require additional plugins to be installed; such as Yoast , SEMrush , or ahrefs .

Without Code

All the tools required for SEO optimization are built into the editor, such as meta tags, site-map generation and url redirects.

Summary: Both platforms have the ability to perform brilliantly in SEO rankings and page speed, but be prepared to factor in subscription costs for SEO plugins on the WordPress side.

SSL Certification

Wordpress

SSL certificates are handled entirely by the hosting service, and need to be set up manually by the user in most cases. The setup process will vary from host to host.

Without Code

SSL certificates are included (for free) with every site, and can be enabled via site settings in the editor.

Summary : Free SSL certificates and one-click enabling makes Without Code the clear winner in ease of SSL setup.

Security

WordPress

WordPress is perhaps the most high-profile open source CMS in existence. 60% of all CMS websites use WordPress, and 31% of the entire internet are WordPress sites, so it's safe to say that it's a frequent target of security exploits.

Hundreds of thousands of attacks on WordPress sites occur each year, by way of Malware, DDOS attacks, brute force attacks, cross-site scripting, SQL injection and more. The WordPress core and plugin developers work hard to update their systems to minimize and prevent attacks, but it is crucial that WordPress users frequently update the WordPress core and all plugins across all sites in order to best maintain security.

98% of WordPress site vulnerabilities are related to plugins - if you're working with WordPress, you need to stay on top of updates and look for security risks on a constant basis.

Without Code

Without Code developers are also concerned with security, and key updates are made to the platform frequently. Updates are automatic, meaning Without Code users do not need to manually update or check for updates. Any updates made by our team and instantly live across all sites on the network.

Summary: Vulnerability is a major concern with WordPress sites, as they are highly targeted by hackers. A dedicated security and update-check regime should be employed if creating a WordPress site. Without Code sites are updated automatically by our team and fixes are instantly live across all sites on the network.

Site Backups

WordPress

Site backups are performed via hosting tools such as Plesk, cPanel, Direct Admin, Ensim, vDeck or Ferozo. The complexity of backing up a WordPress site varies by the tool used, and the host. Plugins that simplify the backup process (as well as auto-saving) are available, usually at a cost.

Without Code

Site backups occur automatically at a set interval, as well as any time you publish a new version of your site. Site backups can also be done manually at any time, within the site editor. A list of site backups and the time they were saved is available in the editor, and you can restore back to an old backup with a single click.

Summary: Site backup is vastly simpler in Without Code, as it is entirely automatic; with the option of one-click manual backups.

Bandwidth Restrictions

WordPress

Bandwidth restrictions for WordPress sites are entirely dependent on the host. For sites with extensive bandwidth usage, service upgrades may be required. Due to the server and database requirements of WordPress, site and editor load speed may be compromised if high quality hosting is not purchased.

Without Code

Bandwidth is unlimited on Without Code sites. Your hosting can scale to any level of traffic without ever seeing a slowdown on the site.

Summary: Both platforms have no limitations on bandwidth. However, since WordPress sites require you to acquire your own hosting, keep in mind that different hosts will have different pricing and restrictions on bandwidth.

White Label Resources

WordPress

WordPress can be white labeled using plugins, usually at an additional cost.

Without Code

White labeling is built into every aspect of the site builder, as well as resources such as documentation and video tutorials.

Summary: Both platforms have the ability to white label, but only Without Code offers it natively.

Conclusion

The simplest way to contrast these two platforms may be to look at who might be drawn to one over the other.

WordPress is likely to appeal to pure developers, those who want to stick closely to templated site structures, and indirectly to businesses that ultimately seek a site-building firm in order to contract larger corporate site builds.

As an open-source website creation tool, WordPress is a developer's platform at its core. Pure developers will be able to utilize code for maintaining existing sites and building templates for resale.
Those that use templates like Divi and Ultra will do well creating blogs and small business sites, as long as they don't need to make changes to the structure of the site template.
Businesses that contract with large web design firms may end up with WordPress-based corporate sites. This phenomenon is evidenced by the fact that 43% of websites on the internet are WordPress sites. But this scenario generally results in a team of WordPress developers, rather than a single site designer building a site for their business.

WordPress carries a pretty steep learning curve, and is generally not the easiest thing for beginners. Even for those that choose to work with one of the many templates available, there almost always comes a time when a change is needed to the site structure. These changes typically require hiring a developer (or the template designer) to provide custom code – even for minor changes.

A couple other factors to consider before starting a WordPress site is cost and security. You may have noticed a theme in the article – WordPress relies on plugins for almost any function imaginable – from site backups to SEO tools. Most plugins come with an additional cost, additional logins, and additional maintenance. When you first begin building your site, you might not imagine that you'll need 8 different plugins in order to have the functionality you require. Those individual expenses can really add up, causing a WordPress site to become very expensive.

Security is an issue to be taken very seriously with WordPress sites. With such a massive percentage of sites on the web being WordPress sites, they form a solid target for hackers. While developers work hard to frequently update their templates and plugins with crucial security updates, that means you need to update your site's template and plugins frequently too. Failure to stay on top of template and plugin versioning can result in an attack or breach. Ultimately, WordPress sites should be attempted by those that are web-savvy and very hands-on with site maintenance.

Without Code takes an entirely different approach to almost every element of site building. Where we find potential weaknesses in WordPress – such as security concerns – we find that Without Code updates core security measures behind the scenes automatically. For nearly every function that requires a paid plugin to accomplish in WordPress, again we see these same functionalities built into the Without Code platform natively, such as SSL certification, language translation and automatic backups.

With more key features built into the platform natively, Without Code users will find that they need to spend no time at all reading plugin reviews, monitoring for security updates, or figuring out how to update an SSL certificate with their hosting service.

Without Code is most likely to appeal to visual designers, agencies building multiple sites for clients, and those that want fine-tuned control over the look and feel of their sites with very little maintenance.

Visual designers will appreciate the fact that what they see in the site editor is what they will see on the published site. Elements can be moved and styled with ease, entirely free of using any code.
Agencies will find that a fully white label experience allows them to build client sites in high volume while maintaining their agency brand throughout the process. Agencies can display their own logo directly in the builder and dashboard. Tools like site comments and subuser/client permissions allow designers to communicate clearly with clients within the context of the site editor, while maintaining full control of what a client can access and not access.
For those that seek total layout control of a template or scratch-built site, Without Code users can utilize fine-tuned adjustment of every element on a site. Unlike WordPress, designers maintain pixel-perfect tuning of text, images, buttons and more – without the need for code or hiring a developer.

Want to share your experience working with WordPress? Let us know in the comments below!

Without Code Member Update – Spring 2020

website@sitemodify.com (Website Editor) — Wed, 29 Apr 2020 16:07:41 GMT

Opening Thoughts

We all know that times are tough, so let’s look at something exciting and positive – all the new projects and plans we have under development at Without Code.

As web designers and developers, we are incredibly grateful that our work can be completed from home. We’ve doubled down on all this time in isolation, and the team has been working harder than ever to add new functionality, integrations and partnerships to our platform to ensure your business can survive, and even thrive, during times of uncertainty. I’m excited to share our plans with you below.

Special Offer Store – Available until May 31

Our ecommerce provider, Ecwid , has introduced a special offer store, aimed at helping businesses transition to online sales without a major upfront commitment. Between now and May 31, 2020, the Free Demo Store option in our builder has been replaced with the Special Offer Store, which gives you up to 500 products, no transaction fees and a variety of premium features (gift cards, order pickup, coupons, etc.). This store is completely free until Dec 31, 2020, at which time you will need to purchase a standard ecommerce subscription for it based on the number of products you have created (our ecommerce prices can be found here ).

Upcoming Projects & Plans

After two years in business, we have identified our primary customer base as freelancers or agencies who often package and resell services to clients at a markup (hosting, SEO, etc.). When our team sits down to design a new feature or explore a partnership, we always ask ourselves “ does this feature give our customers the ability to provide more value to their clients, resulting in more revenue for the designer ?”. Many of the upcoming projects below have been purposely designed to give you greater up-sell abilities for your end clients.

Please note that projects and priorities are subject to change.

Media Storage Solution – we have been developing a media hosting solution that is built in to your WOC account. This can be utilized to host and share files, such as videos or large photo galleries, which can then be integrated into widgets using a single feed URL. Our goal is to simplify the process of creating large galleries, reduce restrictions on file types allowed within your site, and give you a simple storage option similar to what you may have had at an independent host (just without the complexity of FTP). Pro and Enterprise users will receive a block of storage free for testing, with the option to purchase a higher amount.

Email Hosting – highly requested since we launched, our team has been working hard on integrating the ability to setup email accounts directly within WOC. Our plan is to allow users to purchase “blocks” of email accounts, each tied to a specific domain (up to 5, 10, 25, 50 emails, etc.). Each block is purchased as a single upfront annual payment to reduce billing and invoice complexity and can be enabled / disabled by the designer through a control panel. Email can be accessed via webmail or through traditional POP / IMAP setup, and includes storage up to 5GB. Pricing is not finalized; we plan to keep our prices very competitive allowing you room for markup.

GDPR / Cookie Consent Partnership – with GDPR compliance becoming a major focus for sites with EU customers, we have been discussing partnership opportunities with a variety of third-party providers that offer powerful cookie consent functionality and legally vetted privacy policies. I am excited to say we have found a great fit with a very reputable company, and they have agreed to pass along very generous pricing to customers of Without Code (a perfect upsell opportunity for your end customers). Our team will provide extensive training and simplified integration of their service to streamline your GDPR compliance.

New Widgets – widgets on our development roadmap include iframe integration, membership site functionality (via 3rd party plugin), stacking cards, flipping boxes, self-hosted videos, and more.

New Themes – we have a beautiful new membership site template (based on a physical trainer) to showcase membership functionality through a 3rd party provider. We also have a veterinary theme and recruitment agency site design on deck.

Opportunities Online – Recurring Billing

Many businesses are being forced to move their operations online, and this is an incredibly daunting task for business owners. As web designers, you are well-positioned to greatly simplify this process for struggling owners, and in return grow your client base and build customer loyalty. Life will return to normal eventually, and when it does many of those business will continue to operate online. I guarantee they will not forget how valuable your advice and services were during tough times.

If you haven’t already, this is also a great time to explore recurring revenue / subscription services within your business. Potential clients may not be able to afford a large upfront investment right now, however if that cost is spread out across a year as a monthly recurring service it is much more manageable for them.

The major benefit for your business is that it creates a reliable revenue source – if new business dries up you can lean on your recurring subscriptions to survive. Services such as hosting, site maintenance / updates, SEO, email hosting, etc. are all great opportunities for recurring services.

Intimidated by the idea of managing recurring billing? In a recent poll, our members recommended services like and.co , waveapps.com , dubsado.com , squareup.com or even PayPal subscriptions to automate and manage the billing process.

Happy Birthday Without Code!

This month marks the two-year anniversary of Without Code – a huge thank you to everyone that has supported us on this journey and followed us from our previous business, MuseThemes. I am excited to share that we are seeing consistent growth and steady renewals from our users, and we can’t wait to pour on the gas, expand our team and add powerful new features to the platform.

We hope you are as excited as we are about all of the projects and priorities above.

Stay safe out there!

— Steve Harris

Business Case Study - Shopify to Without Code

Wed, 29 Jan 2020 10:25:12 GMT

In early 2017 I was presented with the opportunity to partner with Rosemary Pahl, a very smart and successful woman who created an Estate Planning Workbook . Originally designed as a gift for her family and friends, she received so much interest in the workbook just through word of mouth that she decided to offer it for sale to the public (r ead more about how the Workbook was developed over 12 years here ).

Rosemary and I originally met many years ago when I was a teenager. At that time, I was offering computer support services on a freelance basis (I was still in high school) and she was one of my first clients. Fast forward almost two decades later, and we reconnected to discuss the idea of bringing her workbook online. We quickly came to a partnership agreement and hit the ground running.

Your Departing Details

The estate planning workbook was originally called The Doomsday Book; however, we were concerned the name sounded too negative for an already heavy subject. Our first order of business was to rebrand the workbook prior to designing an ecommerce website. After much debate and feedback, we officially decided on The Departing Details Workbook (or DDW for short).

We also purchased the domain EstateWorkbook.com – we felt this keyword focused domain name could result in higher search rankings, and it could be easily taken over and utilized by another company in the event of an acquisition.

Tip: Choose your domain very carefully. Despite popular advice, branded domains aren’t always the best option. The shorter the better, and if it can contain potential search terms for your business, bonus! Think about where the company might go in the future, and make sure the domain will still be applicable in the event of a major change.

Drag the slider above to see both versions of the Departing Details website!

Enter Shopify

The first version of the Departing Details website was built on Shopify.com . Our team had many years of Shopify experience (our MuseThemes business was built on Shopify) and we felt it offered the best functionality for both digital downloads and physical sales. Shopify has since become the world leader in ecommerce site creation.

When it came time to design the site, we mocked it up first in Photoshop and had our developer do most of the heavy lifting. This was the weak spot in Shopify's platform – it was very difficult to design a pixel-perfect site if you didn't have coding skills. Any update beyond simple text changes usually required our developer to get involved.

It was clear the time had come for a platform change, and (for obvious reasons) our preferred visual website creation tool was our own system, Without Code .

Tip: Websites should be easy to update. You need to be constantly iterating and testing new ideas – moving too slowly can kill an online business before it even starts. If you can’t make a simple update to your site in a few minutes, you might need to explore other platforms.

A Marriage Made in Heaven

We had a couple of options when it came to the site rebuild:

1. Create the entire site in Without Code using our built-in ecommerce (powered by Ecwid). This would mean cancelling our Shopify account, and losing easy access to our order history, download systems, etc. Not ideal.

2. Create a new site in Without Code, and simply embed the purchase buttons Shopify provides . This would allow us to retain the Shopify checkout and it’s download functionality, but power all the non-checkout pages through Without Code. We would have the best in design flexibility / quick updates, combined with our existing ecommerce system. Bingo!

We kicked off the redesign of the Departing Details site and the process was smooth sailing. It only took a few days to build the entire site in Without Code, and once the design was approved, we simply needed to embed our Shopify buy buttons and launch. Embedding the buttons only took a few minutes, and they blended seamlessly into our design.

Note: Our development team has been working on a powerful Shopify widget built into the Without Code editor, however for this project it seemed like overkill.

Check out the video below for a full breakdown of how we embedded the Shopify purchase buttons.

SEO Considerations

When you transition a website to a new platform, you need to be aware of the impact this will have on existing links and search rankings.

If the old page URL’s don’t match up with the new site you could experience reduced traffic, or worse, Google could penalize you for having broken links and drop your ranking. In order to reduce this impact we matched up our page URLs exactly between the old Shopify site and the new WOCode site. This is easily achieved using the flexible Page URL options in our builder – we were able to match up every single page so that Google would never see a missing page.

Next up we copied the page titles and meta descriptions over from our old site to the new. This isn’t necessarily essential, however we wanted to minimize the “shock” Google might feel when it indexed the new site. Once the new site has been live for a while, we’ll likely improve our page titles and descriptions since they are so essential for SEO.

Lastly, I’m dying to see the impact that transitioning to WOCode will have on our rankings. The Shopify site wasn’t a rockstar-performer for our ideal keywords, and I suspect we’ll see a big bump in rankings by moving platforms. Based on our own experience and customer testimonials, WOCode sites generally rank very well due to their load speeds and code optimization.

Check out the video below for an explanation of how we matched URLs and setup page redirects

Conclusion and Next Steps

We launched this new site during an interesting time. Departing Details was recently featured in the Costco magazine (10M+ readers) so we’ve had a surge in sales. While I was apprehensive to transition the site during a boom, I recognized it would also be nice to quickly validate that the checkout flow was working properly, and purchases could be made successfully.

Within a few hours of our relaunch, the site made a successful sale (and several since). Customers are now browsing a beautiful Without Code-powered website that we can update quickly and easily, without developer involvement. And Shopify is doing its job on the backend, processing our orders, delivering digital downloads and calculating shipping rates.

I see a long future ahead for our happy couple.

Thanks!

~ Steve Harris

P.S. Departing Details was designed to guide you through the process of gathering and organizing the details of your life, as well as motivating you to think about your legacy. It’s a compliment to your Will (not a replacement), and it should be completed by any adult, who is currently alive, and living on earth. This is a hard subject to face, but it’s much easier to do while you’re still young and healthy.

*The links to Shopify in this blog post are our affiliate links. We’re certainly not trying to discourage you from using our built-in ecommerce, however it’s important to use the right tool for the job. Shopify is a great platform and worth adding to your arsenal of web design tools.

4 Steps to Becoming a Freelance Web Designer

Tue, 28 Jan 2020 10:25:04 GMT

When freelance creatives describe their career to others, the number one response back is, “wow, how can I work from home?”

While any freelancer will remind you that ‘working from home’ does have its own set of difficulties, there is no denying that being a self-employed creative is an amazing career. As so many members of our community know, starting your own business is no cake walk, but the rewards are undeniable: freedom – being in control of the projects you take on, flexibility – the ability to tailor your work hours to your life, comfort – sweatpants becoming part of the expected dress code, and the list goes on.

So how do you get here?

Like most good things in life, it’s going to take some work, training and dedication – however the payoff is certainly worth the effort! To get you started, here’s a brief guide to becoming a freelance web designer.

Training

If you are an aspiring freelance web designer, first up – evaluate your current skills and develop the new skills you need. Website design is a creative field, and you’ll certainly have an advantage if you have a natural eye for color, layout and typography. However, like all skills, these can be learned and refined over time.

The best way to understand how a website is designed is to start analyzing the sites you browse daily. Pay close attention to the navigation system (links to other pages), typography (fonts) and images. Most websites are built using many common and repeatable techniques, and as a designer you’ll need to implement these elements on each site you build. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel – if Apple or Amazon is using something on their site, it’s probably well tested and performs perfectly. It’s highly unlikely you’ll design something better!

“If I have seen further than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” — Isaac Newton

Never coded before? No problem! Not knowing how to code will not prevent you from creating beautiful, customized websites and a successful business. Very few modern designers have both the design and development (code) skills to build a complete site. That’s like asking the architect to physically construct the building after designing it.

There are so many code-free resources available online and by focusing on learning how to use a no-code solution, you can avoid hiring outside developers, which means higher profits for you. Choosing and learning a platform is an important step, as it establishes the foundation on which you will build your business, impress clients, and eventually be able to manage multiple sites and make a living.

Pick your platform. Aka pick the software or tool that you are going to use to build your first website. There are so many to choose from so before you commit to a platform, watch some training and take advantage of free trials. Make sure that the primary platform you decide on is not too advanced for you, gives you enough customization to deliver a range of sites, and most importantly, includes a lot of training and resources. See if Without Code is the platform for you .

Train yourself. Once you have picked your primary platform, it’s time to get into the nitty gritty. Watch some tutorials and build some test sites until you feel reasonably comfortable. You certainly don’t need to know everything before you start your search for clients, but the more confident you are the easier the whole process will be. Get up to speed quickly on Without Code.

Explore website design concepts. Most popular websites have a similar layout and structure, including having a logo in the top left, navigation bar to the right and a grid layout below. Pay attention to the various website layouts you see daily while browsing the web. While it’s important for your design to be unique, it’s a risk to ignore established layout principles – they are tested, perform well and site visitors shouldn’t need instructions on using your website. The 12 do’s and don’ts of web design.

Never stop learning. Even after you have mastered your platform, don’t ever stop searching out more platforms and tools. You never know what resource might make your life easier and your business more successful. Start your training on Udemy.com or Lynda.com .

Brand

As you are building your company, it’s also important to consider your brand. This step weaves itself throughout the process of building your business because it will define your design style, website content, and even company name.

What are your goals? The overarching goals that drive you are important in your brand. Use these to define what kind of projects you highlight in your portfolio because what you put out there will come back around.

What are your core values? This includes your overarching mission, what is important to your customers and to you. Having clear core values can help you know when a project “fits,” and when to say no.

What makes you unique? Think of the characteristics that make you and your business stand apart. Maybe you can represent a unique niche: a specific industry or type of website (such as ecommerce).

Combined, these components create your brand personality. What drives you, what makes you tick, and what sets you apart is the essence of your business, but remember – be authentic!

Portfolio

You’ve made some brand personality decisions and gotten your hands dirty in your primary platform of choice: it’s time to show potential clients what you can do. Enter, a kickass portfolio.

Your portfolio is your opportunity to show off your personality, what kind of work you’ve done and what kind of projects you want to take on. As a web designer, your website is the first item in your portfolio; focus on designing a clean, appealing website structure first and then add in your projects.

Ok, so what do you do if you have never been paid for web design (as in, “duh, that’s why I’m reading this”)? Don’t fret! You can create imaginary projects, or concepts, to show off what you are capable of. Or you can redesign existing services (Facebook, Google, etc.) and add your own unique style. The key is to make these projects look real, so take them seriously and show them off in a professional manner. Include quality mock-ups to demonstrate the sites and include an extensive description to give potential clients context and confidence that you can deliver for them.

You can also ask friends or family if they have any opportunities for you to build websites for them or their businesses. Building a quality portfolio is important for future revenue, so consider offering a discounted rate for your services when you’re just getting started. Alternatively, offer to donate your time for free to good causes that may not be able to afford to hire a seasoned designer.

Focus on quality over quantity. Showing off two really impressive and well-thought-out website designs will get you way more recognition than an extensive library of ho-hum sites.

Marketing

This step may be the trickiest of them all, as you need to differentiate yourself from others, get some eyes on your brand-new website and build up a social media following. The portfolio is an important first step in marketing yourself – this gives you a place to send potential clients – but you can’t simply create it and assume it will start generating business. In order to get some traffic to your website and be considered for freelance projects, these options may help:

Check out freelancer websites AND full-time job postings. There are some useful freelancer websites that can be a great source for work – Upwork , Freelancer , Guru , PeoplePerHour . Each has their own structure and application process, but essentially you can apply/bid on a variety of projects for different companies. But don’t limit yourself to only freelance postings. Check out full-time job postings that include projects you could assist with; if it looks like a fit, email the company and offer up your services as a freelancer instead. Many companies will leap at this opportunity because you’re serving yourself up to fill this void immediately and if the project is pressing (and which project isn’t?), you may be a much better option than filtering through resumes and interviewing for the right candidate. As well, it removes the commitment of a full-time employee and in many cases, it can lead to a long-term contract through the company, which could be monetarily beneficial for them (and of course, for you).

Start blogging on your website. Blogs are a fantastic way to improve your site's SEO, which means more potential customers can find you. Google wants to serve up current information to customers, as well, a blog post is going to keep visitors on your site longer, which Google also looks for when ranking websites. So, start writing! Think about what potential customers might want to learn that will show off your knowledge in your field. Share what key components any About page should have, list some top web design trends, discuss the reasons every company should evaluate their website design each year. Your blog posts should be relevant to your work as a freelancer and should offer up significant information (i.e. not just plug your services) while suggesting that you are an expert in the field.

Create branded social media accounts for your company. These social media accounts can help you engage potential customers and drive people to your website. Post about individual projects, blog posts, and more general posts (such as a quote or repost), but remember to use only high-quality images, link back to your site and don’t be afraid to add your personality. Beginning as a brand-new account can be demoralizing (building a following is generally a slow process and has only gotten harder as social media algorithms have changed) so ensure you engage with other accounts daily, post frequently, and consider advertising on the various platforms.

Building a new business from scratch is no easy feat, but if you develop your web design skills and present a beautiful portfolio (combined with some marketing and a strong social media presence), potential clients will start to take notice. One happy client will lead to another and before you know it, you will find yourself busy at home, working in your sweatpants!

Deprecation of Instagram API Platform

Mon, 27 Jan 2020 09:41:58 GMT

Instagram announced this week that for security and privacy reasons they are deprecating their API that’s used for third- party widgets. This change affects widgets that pull in Instagram galleries, including your own business profile, and means that many third-party developers won’t be able to offer these widgets any longer. Although we will look for alternative options, you may notice any Instagram widgets on Without Code and Muse sites go down over the coming days and weeks as a result of this change.

Read the full announcement from Instagram here: Instagram Developer

Read the Instagram deprecation timeline here: Instagram API Platform Deprecation

2019 Customer Survey - Results and Action Plan

Sun, 26 Jan 2020 09:41:55 GMT

This is my favorite time of year, but it's not due to the holidays and presents. It's because for the last 5+ years we have sent out our annual customer survey in December and received tons of feedback to help guide and grow our businesses. After reviewing hundreds of responses from our 2019 survey, I'm excited to share some of the key takeaways and action items that our team will focus on as we enter a new decade.

Thank you to those who responded – your feedback is greatly appreciated! And your positivity and praise are incredibly motivating for our team. We're excited to dig into your requests!

p.s. If you did not fill in the survey, you can still do so here: https://withoutcode.typeform.com/to/izE8Kx

Why are we sharing the results?

I like to share the results of our survey for a couple of reasons:

It demonstrates that we are listening. So many businesses ignore the true needs of their users and focus on items that won't make a real impact. You spend all day building sites on Without Code, so you definitely know best what's great, and what's not. The items listed below are the takeaways we saw listed most frequently.
It builds community. Our users share many similar traits, and it's nice to know that there are other designers who have identical needs and face similar challenges. It also helps us to identify who our true market is and helps tailor our marketing efforts to that customer profile.
It helps our customers grow. I try to treat all of our customers like investors in a business – you've invested time and money in our platform and deserve to know how we are doing and the direction we are headed. Proper planning is fundamental to any business, and the more information we share, the better you can plan your future growth.

With that said let's dig into the results! I will cover the multiple-choice sections first and summarize the short answer responses below. As usual I'll sprinkle some of my favorite customer comments throughout the post - here's my favorite:

Section 1 – Customer Demographics

What we asked: We wanted to know whether our customers consider themselves freelancers or work for large agencies. Also, whether they built sites for themselves vs. clients, and how many they build per year.

The results:

60%+ of our market is freelance designers, who primarily work alone.
25% own a business that employs a team of 5 or less people.
They mainly build sites for clients (instead of a company they work for).
75% build between 2 – 10 sites per year. 15% of users build 10+ sites per year.

Our takeaways:

Freelancers and small business owners are more price sensitive than large businesses. We need to be careful to stay competitive and ensure high value at a very reasonable price.
Our product road map should focus on tools and services that allow a single person to do as much as possible themselves (since they work alone).
We need to develop tools and services that make it easier for designers and agencies to grow their businesses, not just develop websites (billing, CRM, white label training, etc.)
Our development and technical support teams should be a highly valuable resource for these designers – how can we foster / streamline this relationship?

Section 2 – Pro Member Benefits

What we asked: We wanted to know what the most relevant benefits for our paid Pro members are, and how likely they are to renew their memberships. Also, if they have a published a site yet and if not, what can we do to help.

The results:

84% of our Pro members intend on renewing their memberships, and 14% are undecided.
2% of Pros said they would not renew; however, the most common reason was retirement or transition out of the web design space. Understandable!
The most popular suggestion for encouraging Pro renewals was a price reduction.
The most valuable features to our Pro designers are the sub-user CMS, the large volume of Pro templates, a faster level of technical support and the ability to brand the platform with their logo.
80% said they have published a site on the platform. The remaining 20% are evenly split between the answers "I'm still building my site" and "the hosting cost is too high."

Our takeaways:

Pro / Enterprise members are incredibly important to our business, and we need to grow this segment by adding additional services and tools into these membership tiers.
Our marketing efforts should focus on informing designers of these popular Pro features and how they can add value to your business.
We need to publish information and comparisons explaining the benefits of our hosting / platform vs. other options on the web. Users frequently compare our hosting to low-cost bargain service providers even though our speed, reliability and infrastructure are far superior and lead to better performing sites.
We could explore pricing incentives for new Pro members, such as a reduced cost on the first site hosted or a discount on the Pro membership cost based on the number of sites hosted.

Section 3 – Customer Acquisition and Competitive Advantages

What we asked: We were interested in how you found Without Code originally, what our advantages are over other website builders and which other platforms you're using. Lastly what we could do to encourage you to increase the volume of sites built on the platform.

The results:

85% of our users initially heard of us through our original business, MuseThemes. The remainder came via referral from a designer / friend or found us through Google Search.
Users overwhelmingly voted that our biggest advantage is the reduced time it takes to build a website (speed of builder), and the ease of use / low learning curve.
The remainder of votes split between powerful widgets and functionality, a large template / section library and the reliability and simplicity of our built-in hosting.
Users voted our biggest weakness as hosting portability (lack of export) and lack of domain / email hosting built directly into the platform.
The main alternative platform used outside of Without Code was no surprise – Adobe Muse – followed next by WordPress and Wix.
Users would be most encouraged to move all of their sites to our platform if we offered an "all-in-one" solution for website creation, hosting, email, domains, etc.

Our takeaways:

Muse designers are gradually transitioning away from Muse and to alternative platforms. This process could take several years – which is why we did not abandon Muse immediately like all other template / widget vendors.
Without Code will benefit from this Muse transition for a long time; however, it’s important for us to establish an alternative source of customer acquisition outside of MuseThemes. We have lots of ideas here.
Lack of site export continues to be a hot topic; however, it's definitely misunderstood and would benefit from more explanation from our team about the technical challenges and limitations designers would face with site portability.
A clear opportunity for our company (and major benefit to our customers) is to integrate third party services such as a domains, emails and other key tools into the platform, creating a one stop shop for designers.

Section 4 – Product and Feature Requests

What we asked: What features / templates / widgets do you need most? How can we make your life easier? How can we help YOU make more money and grow your business?

The results:

The most popular feature requests include:

A more refined typography menu that includes options for line-height and layout formatting. Coming soon!
Improved color management system, with the ability to save colors and create reusable palettes. Coming soon!
Email / domain integration. A top priority for us in 2020.
Tools or integrations with services focused on ADA compliance, GDPR, SEO, mass emailing, etc. A top priority for us in 2020.
Additional training on ecommerce, dynamic pages, SEO and GDPR compliance. A top priority for us in 2020.
White label billing (for designers who want their clients to pay). Planned exploration in 2020.
Self-hosted video / widgets. Planned exploration in 2020.
Membership site functionality (individual logins and secure areas). Complicated, but planned exploration in 2020
A variety of smaller functionality-focused widgets or style-specific improvements such as hover transitions / effects, parallax improvements, 100% rows, live chat, etc. Most of these are already in development for 2020.

The list above certainly isn't all-inclusive (there are 100's of requests), but it does represent the items most frequently mentioned. This is a small sample of the items we intend to focus on in the upcoming year.

Our takeaways:

There is no shortage of opportunities to improve the platform, and we will continue to prioritize feature requests based on the volume of requests received.
TONS of the feature requests we received are already available in the platform; users just couldn't find them. We need to figure out a way to ensure users are regularly informed of new and existing features (webinars, tutorials, blog posts, etc.).
We often discard functionality that we feel may be too complex or difficult for users to set up. Perhaps we should reevaluate this approach, as users indicated powerful functionality is more important than set up simplicity. We'll provide detailed instructions as usual!

Final Thoughts:

I could write forever about the goals we have planned and functionality I want to see in the platform, but I think I'd better stop here – if you made it this far, I'm very impressed!

Some of the key messages we often remind ourselves of are, "How can we make our users more successful? Grow their businesses? Build better websites?" I believe as long as we stay true to this core mentality, we can grow along with our customers and build great businesses together.

The website builder market is incredibly competitive, and we're very appreciative that you chose Without Code to build your business on. Our team will continue to monitor incoming requests closely and if there is something missing in the platform that you need, please do send us a note – it just might exist already.

Happy holidays from the whole team at Without Code and be sure to rest up over the holidays...we've got a big year (decade) ahead!

Cheers,

Steve Harris

Introducing Site Comments

Fri, 24 Jan 2020 09:41:41 GMT

Our Site Comments system is a fantastic way to communicate with clients or members of your team, all within the context of your website editor. This system is so effective and simple to use that it may just revolutionize the way you approach communication in your web design business.

This feature is available for all Pro and Enterprise members of Without Code.

A Game-Changer in Communication

You have clients, and perhaps even team members that are involved in the building process or the ongoing maintenance of a website. Of course we all have our favorite method of communication – email, phone calls, texts. Keeping track of revision requests and messages across all possible communication methods can be challenging.

Our Site Comments system is integrated right into the Without Code website editor, available at any time, and for anyone with permissions to use it (you control user permissions). This means that communications are more direct than ever, and always in proper context – no more texts describing a mysterious button somewhere "near the bottom" of the home page that needs to be re-linked. Comments are placed directly on elements in your site, making them easy to find.

How Does it Work?

Site comments are placed right on top of your Without Code site, and can be attached to any element on any page. Comments can be reviewed by anyone you've set up as a CMS User – clients, team members, etc. User permissions allow simple control of who can add and review comments. Any time a comment is added or resolved, an unbranded email is automatically sent to the CMS Users who have been granted permission to receive email communications.

When Site Commenting is enabled for a site (you can enable it on any site you like), a small menu will appear, pinned to the righthand side of the editor. This menu allows users to easily add new comments, review all comments in the comment log, and hide all comments in the editor.

Individual comments allow for as many replies as needed between users. When comments are ready to be resolved, doing so is easy with the resolve button. Resolved issues are archived automatically, making it easy to track progress within your project.

All in One Place

The Site Comments feature places communication between you, your client, and your team in one convenient location: the website that's being built. You won’t need to use emails, phone calls, or screenshots to share ideas, provide feedback, and communicate changes.

Members of your design team will appreciate being able to communicate quickly and clearly. If there are elements that need to be changed or tested, they can do so on the spot and in real time while they review and leave comments. This change could be the catalyst for improving efficiency in site designs and builds.

Clients will also get the satisfaction of seeing issues resolved as solutions are implemented. This progression can build their confidence in your abilities to communicate and resolve issues quickly. And best of all, clients will watch their actual websites being built and improved upon – not some mockup or prototype, but the actual site itself.

Getting Started

Site Comments are live in the Without Code website builder right now – all you need to do is turn them on! Here are the three simple steps to enable Site Comments for your site and users:

Enable Site Comments for your site within your dashboard.
Add the Site Comments permission for each CMS User or Team Member within the user permissions tab.
Click "Add Comment" in the small menu now visible on the righthand side of the editor within the site builder.

For detailed documentation on using site comments, view the tutorial video below, and be sure to visit our Site Comments Docs page .

Member Update - Summer 2019

Thu, 23 Jan 2020 09:41:31 GMT

With summer in full swing and the one-year anniversary of Without Code behind us, let’s take some time to look at what we’ve been working hard on behind the scenes and share our plans for the future.

Please note that plans and priorities are subject to change.

Opening Thoughts

Our entire team was very excited to celebrate the first birthday of WOC for a variety of reasons.

The first year is typically the most difficult in any new venture – you’re designing new processes, ensuring your product fits the markets needs and working at an incredible pace to show new customers that you mean business. Building trust in the first year is essential, and while it was both fun and very challenging at times, we believe that a great foundation has been built for Without Code to further expand on. Now it’s time to pour on the gas – aggressively improve our platform, invest in new products and ensure we’re delivering the highest level of service in the industry.

Next, as a recurring revenue business it’s essential to our growth that our customers are renewing their memberships and sticking around for the long term. Now that many of our customers have had a chance to renew their sites and memberships, I’m proud to say that we’re seeing renewal rates of 85%+. This is far above industry averages, and well above renewal rates in our prior business (MuseThemes.com). This is a great indicator that our customers and partners are finding success with our product and building their future businesses around it – and for that, we sincerely thank you!

As of this writing we’re powering over 21,000 websites built by nearly 8,000 designers.

Without Code A-Z Complete Training

Our team has completed recording and production of a new 34-part training series covering the major components of our website builder. This up-to-date training explores our latest client dashboard and includes recent major updates, such as the new blogging system.

Special thanks to our long-time tutorial guru, Ashton Bingham, for producing this series. You can explore the full series here, and don’t forget to leave a comment below with any requests, feedback or (hopefully) positive comments: https://www.wocode.com/complete-training

Site Update Log

A quick reminder to our users to frequently check our Site Update Log, as it contains many builder improvements and new widgets that may not have hit your inboxes yet. We update the site and builder frequently; however, we try not to overwhelm users with constant emails. The Update Log is the first place we post these new updates the moment they are live: https://www.wocode.com/updates

Blog Conversions

The old-to-new blog conversion system is now functional, and internally we can move customers with less than 20 blog posts to the new blogging system. This is currently a manual process, and a member of the Without Code team will need to complete the conversion for you. This feature is eventually slated for public release so that you can convert your own blogs, however, it’s still in the final stages of testing and we’re treading lightly.

If your site is using the old blogging system and has 20 or fewer blog posts, please complete the form linked below and we will process the transfer as soon as possible.

Request Blog Conversion

Please note that depending on volume, it may take us a few days to work through the queue.

Billing Reminders

In order to avoid catching users by surprise, we’ve implemented upcoming billing notification emails for annual memberships and site subscriptions. These reminders will be sent out seven days prior to your renewal; they include info on which subscription is renewing and how to cancel your renewal if required.

Please note that upcoming billing notifications will not be sent for monthly site subscriptions, however, you will still be notified of successful payments or failed renewals.

Upcoming Projects and Priorities

Site Comments

Our upcoming Site Comments feature streamlines communication between designers and their clients, allowing you to gather feedback quickly from your customers. Site commenting enables your clients to add notes directly to the site during the design process, and you as the designer can respond and resolve comments without leaving the builder.

For more information about Site Comments, check out this preview video:

https://youtu.be/4QexOnDDDtM

To activate Site Comments, you must first add your client to the site as a CMS user and ensure the new “comments” permission is enabled. Once completed, your clients can log-in, click on any element within the site and place a comment. Both the designer and client will receive emails from our system (unbranded of course) informing them when comments have been placed.

This feature is available for Pro and Enterprise accounts only, and we expect to push it live in our builder by the end of July 2019. We will provide an unbranded training video that you can use to teach your clients this new process.

Transfer Sites Between Accounts

Most of our Pro and Enterprise members are freelancers or design agencies building a high volume of sites for their clients. Many of them prefer to transfer ownership of those sites to their clients after completing the project, rather than paying for hosting themselves and collecting an ongoing payment from their clients.

To simplify this process, we are launching a Site Transfer tool for Pro and Enterprise members in our WOCode Dashboard. Site transfers will allow you to move a site to an alternate WOC account without any need to contact our support team. The site transfer process looks like this:

Select a site from your dashboard, and choose “Transfer Site”
Enter the email and username of the account it’s being transferred to
The new owner will receive an email confirmation, prompting them to accept ownership and complete the transfer.

Please note that site transfers are irreversible, and the original creator will lose access to the site unless they are assigned as a CMS user by the new owner. Be sure to enter your transfer details accurately! This feature is only available for Pro and Enterprise accounts.

Gallery Connect

One of our most popular Adobe Muse widgets is being converted to Without Code!

Gallery Connect enables you to integrate stunning image galleries into your site, while managing those galleries through a simple third-party spreadsheet. Users can choose to host images directly on their site (we’ll show you how to find the link to each image) or use an outside image hosting service. To preview our original Adobe Muse version of Gallery Connect, click here .

This widget has been highly requested by users in our support portal.

New Themes & Widgets

We have a variety of beautiful new template creations coming your way, including a minimalist portfolio site, school / academics facility, physical fitness center and plumber or contractor business. We have also replaced the primary "empty" template that many users start with to create their sites (pictured above), and will be adding a simple “coming soon” page design that you can use as a placeholder while you build your client sites behind the scenes.

Based on your requests we are also working on converting our Neptuno theme (originally built for Adobe Muse) to a Without Code version. Lastly, we’ve got a variety of functionality boosting widgets currently in development, including an animated number counters, parallax scrolling, and many more.

Thanks again for being a member and supporter of Without Code!

Cheers,

Steve Harris

Customer Feature – Julius Kwame, Nomad Advertising Limited

Wed, 22 Jan 2020 09:41:27 GMT

Without Code Pro member, Julius Kwame, is a Creative Partner and Art Director at Nomad Advertising . He gave us some background into his company, told us about his web design experience and shared his favorite client sites.

Tell us about your business and how you started as a web designer

Nomad Advertising Limited is a digital communications agency with a mission to nurture brands through advertising, branding, communication consultancy and design. We pride ourselves as the IDEAL Agency. IDEAL is the acronym of our values which are: Innovative, Dependable, Ethical, Accountable and Leaders.

Our vision is to create thriving brands. We have presence in Kampala, Uganda and Kigali, Rwanda.

We are called Nomad because we share the nomad’s philosophy of never settling. We are always looking for better and more innovative ways of delivering our brand promise.

Equipped with many years of graphic design for print, we used to outsource the website design component of our business to individuals or even web design firms that had the patience for coding. However, we suffered great frustration as designers who had to settle for poorly executed website projects. The projects often took longer, costed more than anticipated and looked very different from what was presented to the client during the pitch. This was because the web-developers either lacked attention to detail or were simply unable to reproduce the design given to them.

Adobe Muse answered some of the challenges and it was easier to attain the desired look and feel. However, the problem we faced was the necessity to design the website thrice for computer, tablet and mobile interfaces. This made projects tedious, costly and extremely technical when changes were requested.

Stonepath Tours – built in Without Code

What are your favorite resources/tools that you use the most in your business?

The website data import makes it easy to manage client’s data and resources. The Without Code blog also adds value to the client’s sites; this is something we lacked in Adobe Muse.

Naizi Nasser – built in Without Code

Tell us about your experience and your transition from Adobe Muse to Without Code

When I first saw the announcement from Adobe about the discontinuation of Adobe Muse, I was disappointed with the decision as I had invested a lot of time and resources in building my website business around Adobe’s platform.

However, along with this announcement came the information that something was being worked on by the team over at MuseThemes. Originally, I was skeptical about Without Code, but I believed it was the best option going forward since I had been a member of MuseThemes since 2014. I knew I could rely on the team there.

I decided to go ahead and purchase a one-year subscription for Without Code using the discount code provided by MuseThemes. My initial plan was to try out the platform and transition over a period of a year. I started off by trying to recreate a couple of sites I had designed in Adobe Muse onto the Without Code Platform and quickly realized how powerful the platform was. The learning curve was so simple and moving from muse, I realized that it was simpler and faster to work with. Therefore, I went full throttle and put in a lot of time in learning the ins and outs of Without Code over the next few weeks.

Inema Art Center – built in Without Code

What is your favorite feature of Without Code?

There are a lot of things about Without Code that I love. Most of all, the hastle-free hosting with an included SSL certificate and website stats. Additionally, there is the ability to have a simple and reliable CMS that is helpful for my clients when they need to do simple edits on their sites.

For me as a designer, I would say the option to import assets from other sites is something that I have found useful and like a lot.

"The learning curve was so simple and moving from muse, I realized that it was much faster to work with."

The Bistro Kigali – built in Without Code

What is some advice you would give a designer new to web design and Without Code?

Practice, practice and practice. In my experience, the more I use the platform the better and faster I become at website design.

Foodie Grooves – built in Without Code

– Julius Kwame, Nomad Advertising Ltd .

Member Update – March 2019

Tue, 21 Jan 2020 09:41:18 GMT

It’s hard to believe Without Code is almost one year old – and what a year it’s been! In the last 12 months our team has learned so much about your needs and the challenges modern designers face. With that said, it’s time to update you, our partners and customers, on the state of our business and share our plans for the future.

Please note that plans and priorities are subject to change.

Opening Thoughts

Platform longevity and stability is a major decision factor for designers building client sites, and I’m happy to report our business is in great shape! Our customer base is growing at a very healthy rate, and existing members are publishing more and more sites on the platform each day. As we continue to grow, we will expand our team accordingly, adding more support, development and design resources that will increase the value of your membership significantly.

As of this writing we're powering over 15,000 sites and approaching our first year of renewals for sites published in April 2018. Successful renewals are crucial for a business like ours to grow, and we’re laser focused on expanding the platform to ensure we’re your website creation tool of choice for many years to come.

As always, we love to hear your feedback. If there’s something we’re doing exceptionally well – or could be doing much better – please don’t hesitate to send a note to info@wocode.com .

Enterprise Membership

Our Enterprise membership is now open for applications – click here to apply!

You’re probably wondering why we’re taking applications instead of direct signups. We decided to approach Enterprise in this way because this is a resource-intensive membership tier that we need to roll out carefully.

In order to offer a high level of support, we need to limit the plan to a smaller group of customers at first. Pro members who are very comfortable on the platform and have published multiple sites already will be given first priority, and as we assess the staffing requirements to support this tier, we’ll open up more slots.

If you are interested in Enterprise, please don’t hesitate to apply – we’ll be sure to keep all applications on file and notify customers as soon as more spots are available.

Release Communication

For the past year we’ve sent users a weekly email updating them on what’s new in the platform. While we don’t plan on slowing down our release process, we are going to throttle back on the number of emails we’re sending announcing new updates. Users are frequently reporting they can’t keep up with this high volume of releases, and they are finding themselves searching back through old emails to see what’s been added.

Going forward we’re going to release new platform features and widgets as soon as they are ready, rather than trickling them out week by week (typically on Wednesdays). We’ll shift our focus to maintaining a detailed Update Log page on the site, which users can check on periodically to see what’s new.

We’ll also send bigger “round up” emails that detail all the new products and platform improvements in one comprehensive update. Truthfully, we spend a ton of time and resources sending emails weekly, and we think that effort is better spent building out the platform and adding new products.

If you don’t hear from us for a couple weeks, it certainly doesn't mean there’s nothing new to report. We’re probably just building something big and very cool that needs a little more TLC.

Check on our Update Log anytime to see what’s new – this will always be updated immediately when we add a new feature.

Free vs. Pro Membership Changes

In order to add more value to our Pro membership offering, we’re going to be making the following changes:

Templates – the bulk of our Free templates will now move into the Pro membership tier. Free members will have access to a smaller limited selection of themes designed to encourage platform exploration.
Widgets – going forward several of our new widgets will be restricted to the Pro membership tier. These include the MuseThemes “Connect” series widgets, which are powered by Google Sheets, and our upcoming search widget.
3rd Party Discounts – we’ve been exploring adding additional services to Without Code through various 3rd parties and outside partnerships. This includes an entirely new business we’ve been working on (see below). These discounts will be made available to Pro or higher-level accounts.

ThemePhotos . com

As template designers, we’ve always struggled to find stock photography. Finding one photo is easy but finding a complete set of 20+ consistent photos (enough to build a full website) is incredibly difficult. Back in late 2014 we bought the domain ThemePhotos . com to “scratch our own itch” as they say, yet we never managed to kick this new business off.

Over the past six months we began building ThemePhotos behind the scenes, and we’re proud to announce that the site and business will launch in the next few weeks. Our initial launch will include 12 professionally shot and produced packs of photos, each geared towards a specific business type or industry. Each pack is offered at $59.99 (for a minimum of 20 super high-resolution photos) or through an unlimited access membership priced at $199 per year.

Discounts will be available for existing MuseThemes and Without Code Pro / Enterprise members. We have an aggressive release calendar planned, and several shoots currently in progress – this library is going to grow fast! We're also interested in purchasing photo sets from outside photographers, so if you or someone you know would like details on submitting content please drop us a line! ( info@themephotos.com ).

Stay tuned for our official launch announcement.

Billing Update – Site IDs on Receipts

We’ve updated our billing system to include Site ID numbers on new subscription receipts. This makes it easier to reference which site is associated with that receipt.

This addition was not backwards compatible and unfortunately is not available for existing subscriptions. However, any site purchased going forward will now reference both the Subscription ID and the Site ID on each payment receipt.

Upcoming Projects and Releases

Here’s a quick look at our plans and priorities for the next few months. To see what we’ve released in the last few months, check out our release log here .

Tutorials – April is going to be “Education Month” with us placing a major focus on building extensive tutorial resources, launching a new getting started webinar, and preparing general business resources for designers (contract templates, quote forms, etc.).
New Widgets / Themes – a slick batch of new widgets and themes is on deck. These include Document Viewer, Count-Up, Parallax Effects, Preloaders and Disable Right Click (released today).
Site Search – a heavy hitter, our new Site Search widget is powered by Google Sheets. We took this approach so that users had superior control over their search results.
Blog Update – another heavy hitter, the new blog system is available for new blogs, and we're working on a system to transition old blogs to the new system.

Thanks again for being a member and supporter of Without Code!

Cheers,

Steve Harris

Customer Feature - Lucy Ledger Art & Design Studio

Sun, 19 Jan 2020 09:40:58 GMT

Without Code Pro member, Lucy Ledger, runs an art and design studio specializing in web and paper-based creative work. She shared some of her history and her experience building on Without Code for her studio website and client businesses.

Tell us about your business and how you started as a web designer

I set up my own Art & Design studio in 2010 from my spare room, nearly nine years later and it’s been quite a journey! This year has been special for me as I made the move from a small studio into a large artists space and now have two staff. We primarily focus on building a brand image though artwork licensing and publishing greeting cards. We also work with small to medium sized businesses creating branding and websites focusing on a beautiful aesthetic coupled with excellent user experience. My work in web design goes back nearly 18 years, in 2002 I was tasked with creating a high school’s first ever website and they sent me on a course to learn Dreamweaver and basic code! I’m grateful for this start because although my strength definitely does not lie with coding, I think it’s essential for any web designer to learn about the fundamentals of what goes into building a website; it really enhances your skill and understanding.

Lucy Ledger - Our site is my current fave as we really had fun in exploring what Without Code could really do. We’ve had so much great feedback on it already and it functions like a dream on all devices!

What are your favorite resources/tools that you use the most in your business?

I love my 27 inch mac and double screen set up. I use a graphics tablet so much I can’t use a mouse anymore! I have 18 years experience using Creative Suite and have used all the software over the years. For branding and vector work I enjoy working in illustrator, and InDesign is a great tool for publishing, but my absolute first love is Photoshop! It enables me to design with the freedom of an artist – it’s wonderful software and even after 18 years I’m still discovering new skills and techniques.

Amaryllis Fraser - Built in Without Code

Tell us about your experience at Without Code, and your transition from Adobe Muse to Without Code?

When I first discovered Muse it was so exciting! I had been using a combination of Dreamweaver and coding previously, but Muse opened up this wonderful idea that web design could be created like art on a canvas and without restriction. I soon after discovered MuseThemes and a wonderful community of designers and this made offering web design as a service much more appealing and enjoyable for me. However, when the years went on, the glitches and the amount of time that had to go into building was not working for me anymore and I lost my enjoyment – it had become more of a chore. I ended up being completely frustrated with sites that never presented well unless there were upwards of 8 breakpoints. In addition there were frustrations with workarounds on blogs, ecomms, etc; I just wanted my clients to have a simple all-in-one solution.

When I heard Muse was being discontinued, it was almost like the right time to walk away – just look after the clients we had and not offer web design anymore (I found WordPress not good enough either). And that’s when I saw the MuseThemes team advertise their brand new product. I decided to give it a go which was great because to play around it’s completely free! I loved it instantly and saw huge benefits for our clients and the speed in which we could work. It changed everything for us – I now feel so proud and confident with what I offer now and I believe in the product so much.

Jo Beth Floral Design - Built in Without Code

What is your favorite feature of Without Code?

The ease of use is just unreal! The thought that has gone into the UI and UX, you can tell the team is considering the designer and making the workflow as easy as possible. The templates are such high quality and beautifully designed too. But of all the many upsides of the builder, the single most impressive thing is the amazing support team at Without Code. When there is an issue, you know they care and it is handled quickly; no more waiting days for responses while my clients get frustrated! I can confidently tell my customers that I offer the best and most up to date service, as I know behind the scenes improvements are being made all the time. I feel like I have a whole development team to back me up!

Issy & Bella Floral Design - Built in Without Code

What is some advice you would give a designer new to web design and Without Code?

This is the absolute best web building product on the market in my opinion. The help videos, documentation and team will make your experience so enjoyable. I would, however, suggest that anyone going into web design looks into and becomes interested in the basic code and structure of website design. In addition, that you become well-read on essential elements such as DNS, email hosting, etc, so you can confidently offer your clients the best service possible and use Without Code to it’s full potential.

- Lucy Ledger, Lucy Ledger Art Studio

Customer Feature – Barbara Ingram, The Paramount Group

Sat, 18 Jan 2020 09:40:48 GMT

Long-time supporter, Barbara Ingram, joined the Without Code Pro community right when we launched. She gave us a peek inside her successful web design business and some fantastic advice for anyone hoping to get started.

Tell us about your business and how you started as a web designer

I am the Creative Director for a Marketing Company that my husband, Bob Ingram owns, in Satellite Beach, FL. I have a BFA degree in Graphic Design from Boston University and started my career in print design, opening a commercial printing company in Brunswick, Georgia in 1993. We gradually made the change over to digital printing, then to web design around 2011. Because I started as a print designer, making the switch to web design was easiest using Adobe Muse.

Bob is a computer science engineer and uses his skills for SEO and Google AdWords management, while I manage the web development and print design. Together, with a marketing strategist, social media expert and blog writers, we have a well-rounded marketing agency.

What are your favorite resources/tools that you use the most in your business?

Within the past few years, we have expanded our web design and development to include WordPress, and we are Certified Shopify Set-up Experts for e-commerce sites. Our agency is a Badged Google Partner, so Google's tools and requirements are integral to our web design; it's critical that we are able to include Google products like Analytics and Tag Manager in whatever platform we use.

We still use Adobe's Creative Suite for logo design and print design. MuseThemes was an integral part of our agency's success while we were using Adobe Muse, so when we heard that they were creating an interface for a similar platform (after Adobe's announcement to cease support of Muse), we were all in.

Darby McCloskey Architect – built in Without Code

Tell us about your experience at Without Code, and your transition from Adobe Muse to Without Code

Steve Harris and his team have consistently proven to us over the years, to be a cutting-edge company, always looking for ways to improve, and providing unparalleled support to their clients. I have bid on some jobs just knowing that I have that safety net and support of the MuseThemes/Without Code team. There was no question that our agency would be onboard with the new Without Code website builder; it had everything we are looking for. Part of what made the transition so seamless were the tutorial videos and the Without Code team's in-depth knowledge of Adobe Muse. Steve Harris thinks of everything when creating these videos; they are clear, concise and have all the information we need. It was also an asset to have a separate collection of tutorial videos geared toward end-user instructions , to give to our clients for training.

What is your favorite feature of Without Code?

My favorite feature is definitely it's responsive ability. The break points in Muse were becoming unbearable and we had a lot of issues on live sites. Without Code’s ability to create responsive versions is fantastic and we are also able to edit them individually as needed. That feature has taken hours off of our development time and led to fewer complaints from our clients.

What is some advice you would give a designer new to web design and Without Code?

Without Code is a great place to start because of the support you will get. That is the single most important thing to our agency. As a new designer, you will find Without Code a very easy-to-learn and use platform, which works for a variety of industries/clients. I can’t think of one time that I’ve needed a feature that it was unable to accommodate. We are thrilled that the Adobe Muse hole was filled with a product that is more reliable and frankly, easier to use.

Something else that our agency finds critical is the optimization and load speed of our sites. Many designers don't understand or take into account what happens to the site after it goes live. Without Code has excellent SEO tools with the ability to integrate Google Analytics, write custom page titles and meta descriptions, and optimizes the pages better than anything else we use. So, if we have a client with an image-heavy site, we always go to Without Code for its optimization and ability to create fast load-times for mobile pages. These are things that matter to Google and affect organic rankings.

– Barbara Ingram, The Paramount Group

Member Update - November 2018

Fri, 17 Jan 2020 09:40:07 GMT

As 2018 draws to a close, it’s time to sit down and look at what’s been added to your Without Code membership in the last few months and share our priorities for the year ahead.

We’re very excited about what’s coming, and we have big plans to develop new resources (and even all new businesses) designed to help you be even more successful as a designer or business owner. Hang on for a long post, we’ve got plenty to share.

Please note that plans and priorities are subject to change.

Opening Thoughts

2018 was a pivotal year for designers in the Muse space and digital resource companies like MuseThemes. The sudden and unexpected Muse end of life announcement forced us all to reinvent ourselves, and while very stressful at times, I suspect we’ll all look back on it as the start of something amazing. When you’re forced to rebuild your business from scratch, it gives you the opportunity to improve on all of your weak areas and narrow your focus on the exact product and market that you love.

Without Code is an exciting and refreshing business – the platform is incredibly powerful and stable, we can offer faster and higher quality support to our users, and the overall feedback from our market has been extremely positive. I’m proud to see amazing sites published daily, and not only do those sites look great, but they perform at a very high level. Users are consistently reporting increased traffic, better search rankings and happy clients after moving to the platform.

With that said, we need your help in sharing these results with the industry. The website builder market is highly competitive, and we’re up against some big players. We would be forever grateful if you shared your positive experience in your daily browsing – Facebook reviews and community groups, online forums or anywhere that you designers hang out!

Thanks once again for your support so far, and we look forward to a long partnership with you in the future.

2019 Core Site Reorganization

Since our initial site launch in April 2018, all of our focus has been on developing new platform features and widgets, and as a result our core site feels neglected. To improve our speed and ability to roll out updates to the site, we’re going to split up our core site and account dashboard (aka. “the app”) into two separate systems. This change will improve the speed of the Without Code site itself and give us more flexibility to enhance the interface design of our account and site dashboard.

While no change in core functionality is planned, you may notice that links to the account dashboard are directed to a subdomain (e.g. app.wocode.com). We’re planning a full dashboard redesign early next year, and the core site will be rebuilt from the ground up using Architect! Nothing beats the SEO, site optimization and rapid design capabilities of our own builder!

Enterprise Plan

In our early planning for Without Code, we mapped out an “Enterprise” feature list, which offered additional tools and white label resources to designers and agencies building multiple sites for clients. Pricing for enterprise plans has not yet been finalized.

We’re close to rolling out our initial Enterprise offering, and I’m excited to share some of the highlights:

Enterprise includes all current VIP features – CMS users, premium themes, etc.
Receive discounted per site hosting fees – we’re proposing $75 per year, or $7.50 per month, allowing you to make more money on the sites you build.
One free personal or agency hosted site. This is our thank you for adopting the platform and moving your client sites on board.
White labeled theme gallery – host a gallery of our templates for your clients to review and choose from.
White label sales materials – unbranded and pre-designed fact sheets, sales resources and case studies we develop to help you land new customers.
Live chat support offering and private enterprise member channel. Get faster help when you need it, and share information with designers building lots of Without Code sites.
Several new products and features that are currently under development.

Our main objective with the Enterprise offering is to upgrade support and personalization for users who build high volumes of client sites. We are aiming to roll out this new offering in January 2019.

We welcome your feedback – feel free to comment below or send feedback and requests to info@wocode.com .

DNS Changes – New A-Records

We recently implemented a major DNS change that allows you to use A-Records (IP Addresses) to hook up your domains to Without Code. This new method will simplify the domain connection process across a wide variety of domain registrars. It also ensures your site works on naked (non-www) domains, with and without SSL certificates installed. Lastly, there may be a small SEO bump by utilizing the new method due to an update we’ve made to canonical tags.

In order to take advantage of this new domain linking process, you’ll need to remove your existing 301 redirects and add two new A-Records to your DNS settings. Check out our full setup guide for more details. This change is not urgent, and the old method for linking up domains will still continue to work going forward.

Ecommerce 100 Product Plan – Price Increase

Due to a price change through an outside vendor, the pricing on our 100 product tier ecommerce plan is increasing effective immediately. Ecommerce sites with up to 100 products will now be priced at $190 per year, or $18 when paid monthly. This change will only impact new ecommerce subscriptions – existing subscriptions will continue at their original sign up price.

Ecommerce 2500 products plans will stay at their current price of $360 per year (or $32 monthly). We plan to explore a variety of alternative ecommerce providers in order to broaden your options for selling online.

Google PageSpeed Updates

On Monday November 12, Google released a major update to its PageSpeed testing tool, which measures the optimization and efficiency of your website. The tool now uses a new analysis engine called Lighthouse, which focuses more heavily on the real-world performance of a site (time measurements) instead of technical implementations and code tweaks.

This is part of Google’s commitment to always improving the web, and they have raised their standards significantly for sites to achieve a high PageSpeed score. After this release, Without Code users reported their mobile site PageSpeed scores dropped by 20-30 points (desktop sites are mainly unaffected). It’s important to note that your sites will not see a drop in Search Engine Rankings because of this change, they just won’t score as high when reviewed by Google’s testing tool.

Now that we can review and assess the factors that are impacting this score, changes are being implemented into the builder immediately to boost scores back up, and better align with the new testing criteria. You can expect to see performance improvements implemented over the coming weeks and months that will bump those testing scores back up to where we like to see them. This is a top priority for the team.

Read the full Google announcement here:

https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2018/11/pagespeed-insights-now-powered-by.html

Engineer CMS

Our Widget Creation system “Engineer” is a project we started almost two years ago for Adobe Muse. While still a live project on our development list, we quickly realized that the Without Code platform is so much more capable than Muse and the need for Engineer was significantly diminished.

After discussion internally and with customers, we decided the project should take a back seat to other more pressing development work, such as responding to customer requested functionality and the implementation of new features on the site building platform. Changes to the web design landscape surrounding GDPR also made us revisit some of the core data storage features of Engineer, and we decided to hold it back until we had better clarity on how it fit within the Without Code brand.

We built a great tool and intend to one day capitalize on that work, but not at the expense of our core business and other more pressing opportunities. We’re currently exploring ways to reduce the complexity of the tool and make it available as a value-added service within your Without Code membership as soon as possible. Stay tuned for more information.

Upcoming Projects and Releases

New Widgets – our usual variety of beautiful widgets that add powerful features. Coming soon are Infiniscroll, Full Height Rows, Text / Image Combo Slider, Animated Page Transitions, Disable Right Click and a MembershipWorks integration.
Freelancer Theme – a general purpose theme designed for agency or portfolio sites.
Individual “Persona” Theme – a theme designed to showcase an individual or online resume.
Customer Survey – another MuseThemes tradition, keep an eye out for our year end customer survey arriving in your email within a few weeks. As usual since it’s the holiday season, we are making a donation to a children’s charity focused on giving gifts to kids in need, and we will donate an additional $1 for every completed survey.
Core Platform Improvements – a variety of core platform improvements are currently under development, such as a complete blog redesign, dynamic page creation system, client commenting and more connected data features.

July / Aug / Sept / Oct Recap

A breakdown of new products and benefits added to your WOC membership in the last four months:

New Widgets:

Before and After Slider
Facebook Feed
Countdown Clock
Animations
Carousel
SuperHero Slider
Vimeo Video Gallery
Tockify Calendar
Tabbed Panel
YouTube Video Gallery
AddThis Social Tools
Facebook Photo Albums

New Themes:

OMNI
WireFrame – Blanche
Winery landing page
Musician
Church
Electrician

Site and Builder Updates:

Template Chooser
Gradient Picker
Sections: new FAQs category
Sell on Instagram
21 new fonts
Enhanced shadow controls
Inner Rows
Connected Data
Navigation Content editor

Thanks again for being a member and supporter of Without Code!

Cheers,

Steve Harris

Ecommerce Store Upgrades

Thu, 16 Jan 2020 09:39:56 GMT

Our Ecommerce Store has received several valuable enhancements. These upgrades will improve the shopping experience of your store visitors by offering them a smoother, sleeker and more attractive experience on every device.

Here's an overview of the enhancements available right now :

Enhanced single product page
Improved mobile experience
Control of breadcrumbs style
Enhanced cart and checkout page

Single Product Pages

Multiple layouts are now available for individual product pages. In addition, new customization options allow you to change text location, thumbnail image layout and ratio.

Your Store Looks Better – On Any Device

When visiting your store on a mobile device, the mobile version now allows visitors to swipe between images (rather than click) for a smoother, slicker, more convenient shopping experience.

Mobile:

Desktop:

Multiple Breadcrumb Styles

You can now enable breadcrumbs on store pages, and set their style as you like. This makes it easy for customers to see exactly where they are in the store.

Cart and Checkout Customizations

The checkout process is now more clear, attractive and user friendly thanks to several new cart and checkout customization capabilities.

And Much, Much More...

The highlights shown here are just the beginning. Take a look around the new and improved ecommerce store to find even more new features, such as additional store details, control of the sign-in link style, and more. We believe these enhancements will be a great way to add a fresh new look and improve functionality for your store visitors.

All Enhancements Are Available Right Now!

To take advantage of the new store capabilities, simply upgrade you existing stores. Changes may occur after updating it, so please review before publishing. Don't worry, we will auto-create a backup version of the site when you click update.

Customer Feature – Bernie Chiaravalle, BVC Web Design

Wed, 15 Jan 2020 09:39:42 GMT

Without Code VIP member, Bernie Chiaravalle of BVC Web Design , shared his web design experience and advice for other designers with us, along with some of his unique sites built in Architect.

Tell us about your business and how you started as a web designer

I started taking interest in web design nearly 20 years ago when a friend of mine needed a website and the price quote he got was outrageous. So I took a stab at it and was hired to maintain his site, which I still do to this day.

Gradually word spread and I picked up a large roster of clients, many of whom are Grammy Award winning artists.

Michael McDonald – built in Without Code

What are your favorite resources/tools that you use the most in your business?

In addition to Architect, I mostly use the Adobe CC Suite. I primarily use Photoshop, Illustrator, Audition (for audio), Dreamweaver and Muse (while it’s still with us). I also have Fireworks 6 by Adobe which was the last version and is still a great editor for graphics.

Emmy Lou Harris – built in Without Code

Tell us about your experience at Without Code, and your transition from Adobe Muse to Without Code

I still use Muse on certain sites because they were built there. But when I received the news that Adobe was no longer going to update Muse I had to look elsewhere. I looked at a lot of options but none of them appealed to me…least of all WordPress! I had been a big fan of Muse Themes and their widgets and templates; so I was relieved to hear they were going to release Without Code. I found it feel very familiar right away and similar to Muse in certain ways, but I’ve found it actually has it’s own merit and think it’s even better than Muse in many ways. And the site performance is far better than Muse on the web.

Juni Fisher – built in Without Code

What is your favorite feature of Without Code?

Ease of use. And the very good content management for my clients; that was one thing Muse really lacked. I also love the feature where you can drop in pre-designed sections for your pages.

Christopher Cross – built in Without Code

What is some advice you would give a designer new to web design and Without Code?

I would highly recommend Without Code to someone starting out as opposed to WordPress. I’ve been doing web design for 20 years now and I still get confused with WordPress now and then. Without Code makes it simple, but efficient and has great resources for tutorials, and the starting templates are amazing.

Lisa Patton – built in Without Code

– Bernie Chiaravalle, BVC Web Design

Without Code Website Rebuild - Behind the Scenes

Tue, 14 Jan 2020 09:39:33 GMT

You've probably noticed by now that our website and customer dashboard has been completely redesigned! It was re-built from the ground up to improve performance and lay the foundation for future awesome.

This was a massive project for our team, and I wanted to share some insight into why this change was made and how it benefits our users. I'll also include some important tips you should follow when relaunching any established website.

A Fresh Start

Our first iteration of the Without Code website was built entirely on WordPress. Unfortunately, due to the complexity of our site and database requirements we couldn't build the site on our own platform. We chose WordPress for its usual selling point – it had established plugins that we could integrate quickly. We thought it would save us time...

Well, it didn't. In fact, it cost us major time and effort to clean up slow / bulky code, patch holes and design all of our pages from scratch. We even tried starting with a popular theme, but ended up ditching it because it was so bloated with junk.

Making a simple site update was cumbersome, and every feature I wanted to integrate required a plugin from a developer that I didn't know or trust. We even moved hosting providers twice because our WordPress admin / database was so painfully slow. All this and I’ve got an entire in-house development team at my disposal!

In the end I just wanted what our members had – a quick “visual” page builder, lean / optimized code, snappy load times and no ongoing maintenance or security concerns (a worry-free solution). I was jealous of our own customers!

Never Again WordPress

As a new business we needed our website to be nimble, allowing us to pivot quickly, build new pages fast and regularly tweak content to better communicate with customers. WordPress had become a barrier for our business.

So, we decided to rebuild the entire site on Without Code and split out our app / database components into a completely different location. That explains why you're now seeing app . wocode . com in the browser for our customer dashboard.

And after a long, late and at times, stressful night during the first week of the new year, we successfully swapped the site.

We’re already seeing benefits from the relaunch. Our SEO has improved, and search rankings increased (within days). Our entire team is now able to pop into our site using the CMS and make updates or fix a broken link easily. And most importantly, both the core site and app / dashboard are much faster, with a measured improvement of over 800x!

Without Code: Now Built on Without Code!

I'm proud to say our site is now built and hosted on the same platform and network as our customers. If you're encountering an issue, we're going to encounter it too. If we develop a cool feature for our own site, we can make it available to our members too. We’re in this together!

During the rebuild I also kept track of any techniques (and hacks) I used or discovered that I can share in tutorial videos.

I'm aware it might seem silly to celebrate using your own product, however, I think people overestimate how many companies live and breathe their own products every single day. It's easy to become disconnected from your own platform (and eventually the needs of the market) because you've become a business owner, no longer a user.

Redesigned Customer Dashboard

We took this split-up situation as an opportunity to redesign our customer dashboard and follow modern interface design techniques. Our old dashboard displayed an excel-like table full of numbers and text; other than a nickname, it was hard to tell which site was which.

The new dashboard uses individual "cards" for each site, combining commonly used options into a pop-up modal. Unpublished and published sites are now grouped together for logical separation and designers can upload a custom thumbnail image for each site, making it quick / easy to identify the site you want to edit.

The dashboard also works harder behind the scenes to pre-load sites and assets, which improves the launch speed of the editor and avoids any caching issues or cookie timeouts.

Lastly, this new dashboard gives us a foundation that we can constantly tweak and improve on. We're already working on the next iteration, which we hope will include the ability to sort sites, group / create folders, and search within your account. None of this would have been possible on our old setup.

Relaunching a Website – Important Tips

As exciting as this rebuild was for our team, we did have concerns about losing search rankings. When your website is already established and performing well in search, a complete rebuild can result in a ranking drop if not approached carefully.

Here's how we gracefully transitioned the site and maintained our high rankings:

Install a Keyword Monitoring Tool

A few weeks before our relaunch I installed a tool we used heavily at MuseThemes called SEMRush .

This software will monitor your search rankings for any keyword you specify, and alert you of any major changes. It also runs audits on your site looking for issues, such as broken links or missing pages.

By installing this tool ahead of time, I had a good base of data to compare against after the relaunch. It would be easy to see if our rankings had dropped, and SEMRush would even give us some explanation as to where we messed up.

SEMRush is a premium paid service, however, there are a variety of similar options out there ( check out this post for some ideas ).

Use Identical Page URLs (if possible)

If Google has already indexed and ranked a page on your old site, it's ideal to ensure the new version of that page exists at the exact same URL. Since you can easily modify the URL of any page in our editor (within the Page Settings option), I recommend making a big list of all the URLs on your old site and matching them carefully to the appropriate pages on your new site.

Our editor even allows you to generate deep URLS (links in subfolders), so it's rare you won't be able to match up your old site URLs exactly.

Set-up URL Redirects

If you absolutely can't use the same page URL, you need to tell Google where the new page is going to live. Officially called a "301 redirect," it's used when the page has permanently moved.

For the wocode . com site, we needed to redirect most of our documentation links to the new domain ( app . wocode . com ). Our redirects look like this:

Now if a user or search engine follows the old page URL, they are automatically redirected to the new location. Perfect!

Integrate Portable Systems

Our original site contained tons of blog comments that sadly, we had to leave behind. The commenting system originally used was built into WordPress and can't be moved to a new platform.

This left me thinking about the importance of integrating features in a portable way. For example, we are now using Disqus to power our blog comments. Any comment posted will now live on the Disqus side, and we can take them with us and embed them anywhere we need in the future.

While third party products and embeds are often a last resort, sometimes they pay off in the long run when it comes time to make a change. Lesson learned!

Resist the Urge to Change Everything

As we redesigned the site, it was tempting to go big and rewrite all of the text and headlines. But this is risky because you're already changing so much, including the format of the site (the code) and potentially even the page URLs. In my opinion, it's better to keep some of your old content intact, just in case that content is a major driver of your search rankings.

After the relaunch, you can begin to freshen up your content and monitor your rankings throughout the process. Google doesn't mind major changes, but you need to make it easy for her to remember who you were originally...

These are the main steps we took during our relaunch, and our keyword monitoring shows no drop in any of our key rankings. In fact, our new site is performing better on Google than ever before, and I attribute this to the extensive SEO and code optimization built directly into the platform.

Thanks for nothing WordPress – good riddance!

I hope you enjoy the new site and dashboard. Let's make 2019 an epic year and build tons of lightning fast / headache-free sites together.

Cheers!

Steve Harris

Going from Muse to Without Code – Ashton Bingham

Mon, 13 Jan 2020 09:39:10 GMT

A long-time MuseThemes member and the voice behind many of our training videos, Ashton Bingham transitioned from Muse to Without Code this year.

Can you tell us about your work and how you got into the web design world?

I originally began doing web design to fulfill a self-need actually. I’m an actor and performer at heart, and upon my move to Los Angeles to pursue a career in the entertainment industry, I found myself in desperate need of many different forms of marketing tools. Much like video editing, where I learned by ‘just doing’ when I was 10 years old, I needed a website for myself and began exploring options. Muse was a great tool for me at the time; I was able to market my services to people in a similar situation as me: people with little to no web design skills, people that needed a portfolio website of some kind, and people that had small budgets.

Over a few years’ time, word spread, as it does, and I became a go-to guy in my various friend groups, work environments, acting classes, etc, and I was slowly beginning to build a side income stream working from home, which was exactly what I needed.

How did you feel once you saw the Muse End of Life announcement?

It was a shock to the system for sure. Although, maybe less than it could have been given the timing. As 2017 was coming to a close, I had significantly dialed down the web design aspect of my business, mostly due to Muse’s limitations. It seemed that over the final couple years of Muse’s life the more functionality-rich it became, the more bug-ridden it became as well. The competition of options in the industry were just becoming too big, and I had enough work in other aspects of my life that the profit margin was making less sense for me. It got to a point where if I were going to charge enough for it to make sense for me, I would have to deliver a much more sophisticated end product. And with Muse coming to an end, that was becoming less feasible.

Mark McGowan – built in Without Code

What were your initial thoughts when you started using Without Code?

The first time I used Without Code, it felt very different than anything I was used to; most notably, how content is arranged on the page. I had known nothing except the Muse way of page structure, which is basically, place it where you want. In Without Code, the content is controlled by its placement in rows and columns. At first, I was a bit worried that this would limit me and that I wouldn’t have as much control over a page’s layout or structure; but this fear was quickly put to rest.

Once I really started to get to know the platform, I realized that this row and column format was actually miles better than this old way I was used to. This meant no more spending endless hours trying to figure out fickle little bugs and annoying placement quirks in Muse preview. The rows and columns offered a very seamless way of controlling the content throughout every screen size, and even better, converted to mobile layouts in a cinch. In fact, after a week or so of using Without Code, I had to go back to Muse to update an old project, and was blown away by how out of place the whole thing felt. An update I needed to process in Muse took about 45 minutes – something I could have done in Without Code in 10 minutes. This was the impetus for the next wave of my web design business.

What are the most surprising features of Without Code?

Number one, as mentioned, is the page structure: the rows and columns and how they store content. What initially seemed like something that would limit me, actually became something that freed me.
Second, is the functionality offered. My horizons were immediately expanded with everything that Without Code included that I would not have been able to accomplish with Muse in a million years: CMS, user-targeted personalized features, ecommerce, bug-free pages. It was glorious, and inspired me to completely revamp my business model.
Next, is the speed and efficiency. With the many templates offered and the seamless structure of the page layouts, I was able to create things in Without Code in mere minutes that would normally have taken hours in Muse. The mobile integration also speeds up the process immensely; content is automatically formatted across all devices without the need to build the site three times, like in Muse. I was able to mock up sites for clients in a third of the time than I could with Muse.
Another impressive feature is how user-friendly it is in regards to customization. There was clearly lots of thought put into how a web designer thinks. When it comes to adding sections, adding content, adding pages , there are many tools and pre-designed elements allowing you to quickly add beautifully designed sections to your website without having to begin anything from scratch.
Finally, the power of the editor and the preview functions. I had been very much used to the Muse way of things where my editing canvas was only minimally accurate when reflecting my site’s appearance. In Architect, there are many sophisticated elements that are displayed right there in the editor and in preview. And accessing the preview is instant; no more waiting for Muse to load the preview and export to a browser. One simple instant click, and I am able to view my website just as the user would.

Idaho Lighting Solutions – built in Without Code

In your opinion how does Without Code compare to Muse?

In my opinion, there is no comparison. With Muse, I was trying to build a two-story house with a hammer and some wood. With Without Code, I have cranes, tractors, and a team of people helping me. I have completely migrated my web design business to Without Code under my new business model, and am no longer offering my clients my “Muse” way of doing things. Without Code is my new secret weapon, and I’m already flying with it.

Do you have any advice for web designers who find themselves lost since the Muse End of Life?

Bottom line, I’d say you owe it to yourself to give it a chance. Whatever work, knowledge, and skill you’ve acquired from your time with Muse will not go to waste here. Without Code will just give you a MUCH more sophisticated and powerful place to use those skills. Don’t be intimidated by the builder feeling different; you will overcome the newness in a matter of hours, and I can promise you that the change is for the better.

Julian Gavilanes – built in Without Code

Shape Dividers – Free Download Pack and Tutorial

Sun, 12 Jan 2020 09:39:03 GMT

Shape dividers are a great way to add interest to the transition between sections or rows on a page. Our free set of shape dividers offers a variety of options, perfect for adding a subtle sense elegance to a site, or using in themed projects such as educational sites for children.

Download the free Shape Divider graphic pack

Follow our tutorial below to learn how to use shape dividers in Without Code’s Architect site builder, as well as how to edit the graphics in illustration or photo editing software.

Using Shape Dividers Between Rows

Add a new row by hovering over an existing row, then click Row.
Select Add > Row above:New Paragraph

Enter Row Design and enable Full bleed row:

Clear the row spacing by going to the Spacing tab, then clicking “Reset all spacing”.

Add a new background image: Style tab > Background > Image > Add new image.
Select the divider you wish to use and add the image as the row background.

Changing Divider Color

In many cases, you may find that the shape divider color needs to be updated to match a row background above or below. To do this, you will need illustration software such as Adobe Illustrator, or a photo editor such as Adobe Photoshop.

In illustration software such as Illustrator, open a shape divider. Each shape divider comes with a bottom and top version.
Select the graphic element, and change the color.

Some dividers may have multiple elements to be changed:

Note that the color used should match the color of the Architect row background in which you are placing the shape divider next to.
Export the graphic. Ensure that the background area is transparent. Architect accepts .png and .svg image files.

Using Dividers with Image-Based Page Backgrounds

If you wish to use a shape divider over an image background, you will need to set an image for the page background:

Go to Design > Site background > Background per page.
Click the Image tab, select the desired page from the dropdown, then select an image for the page background.

As you add rows to your page layout, you may alternate between having transparent row backgrounds and color row backgrounds. Transparent rows will reveal the background image as you scroll down the page.
Shape dividers can be placed in new rows at the bottom or top of any row with a solid background.

Once again, it is important to match the color of the shape divider with the row it is next to.
Additionally, if you wish to use a shape divider at the bottom of a hero, rather than using transparent rows throughout the page, simply apply solid background colors to all rows below the hero.

Enjoy this free shape divider pack!

Thanks,

Brandon Wallace

Customer Feature – Tracy Foster Pyke, Tafgraphics Design Studio, Inc.

Sat, 11 Jan 2020 09:38:55 GMT

Without Code VIP member, Tracy Foster Pyke, Senior Designer & Illustrator, President, and Owner of Tafgraphics Design Studio, Inc , told us about her impressive creative career and how she’s using Without Code to create a variety of client sites.

Tell us about your business and how you started as a web designer

Tafgraphics Design Studio has been in business since 2004 and have a proven 14 year record as a design studio with a vast tool chest of experience to pull from. Our business is focused on Designing a Difference™ for business clients and we do this through what I like to call the Branding 360° Effect™. Our experience as artists and business consultants is what makes this approach work; you don’t learn branding, illustration, website design, graphic design, affiliate marketing, digital marketing, and the advertising industry overnight. You have to learn how to make brand attitude happen every day and that is why we use the Branding 360° Effect™.

We started as website designers in response to our clients’ desires to take their business from concept all the way through to e-commerce sites. I looked for years for programs that would allow my technical skill and my design skill to come together. I graduated from college in 1992 before computers were being used to design the way they are today. Because of that, I had to teach myself completely from scratch. Initially I used Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and a tool called Sitegrinder to write the HTML/CSS code. I then found Livesite and Adobe Muse which have been my go to programs for years…that is until now.

What are your favorite resources / tools you use the most in your business?

The Adobe Creative Suite, Animax Live, Snagit, Wrike, Evernote, Cashboard, YouTube and, of course, Without Code.

Tell us about your experience at Without Code, and your transition from Adobe Muse to Without Code?

For about a month after the Adobe announcement I felt like I was literally holding my breath. Websites are a huge part of what we do. I have some technical coding skill, but my partner/husband does not. What were we going to do? I looked at programs like Webflow and Bootstrap…also some plugins that would allow us to build for WordPress, but none of them felt right for our base of clients.

We were early adopters of Muse Themes and as soon as we heard about Without Code, we knew that we would be early adopters of that too. The combination of technical skill, design freedom and end-user usability completely sold us on the program. Without Code was well-priced and didn’t ask us to move our clients’ domain management to them! That was huge by itself.

We moved into the program easily and it has been even easier for our clients to figure out with just a small walk-through of capabilities.

We already have 27 websites moved over and created in Without Code since the beta launch!

AdminBooks – built in Without Code

Hillview DPM – built in Without Code

What is your favorite feature of Without Code?

The preview site feature!!! It is so nice to be able to adjust the Desktop, Tablet and Phone sides with a click of the button and then share a client preview easily from our dashboard.

The drag and drop features of the widgets along with the continuous addition of new widgets is great! I also love the ease of use with the e-commerce portion of the site. I adore the Backup, SEO and URL redirect features in the settings area, as well as the pop-ups with personalization rules!

What is some advice you would give a designer new to web design and Without Code?

This is a powerful website design tool. As such, you have to follow HTML design rules when you are transitioning from your design program to Architect. Think columns and rows folks. There are tricks that you can use with spacing and such….and you will find the joy of discovering them as you use this elegant program!

– Tracy Foster Pyke, Tafgraphics Design Studio, Inc.

Without Code - 10 New Features You May Have Missed

Fri, 10 Jan 2020 09:38:42 GMT

In just six short months since launching Without Code we’ve introduced a huge quantity of new themes and widgets, in addition to powerful functionality updates to our core website builder, Architect. These updates are typically shared through our newsletter and social channels, but occasionally there are smaller features or changes to the interface that aren’t as widely promoted. As busy designers, it’s your job to keep designing beautiful sites for happy clients – we’ll look after keeping you informed and up to date on the latest and greatest!

This feature round-up takes a look at both the major and lesser known improvements we’ve made in recent months to Architect. We believe these additions help to make designing websites in Architect faster and more powerful than ever before. Here we go!

1. Inner Rows

One of the biggest structural changes to the Architect builder to date, this feature allows you to create “rows inside rows,” which opens the door to creating highly complex layouts with a wide variety of design opportunities. Additionally, we’ve built five beautiful new sections with a variety of layouts featuring Inner Rows.

To Use: Open any row’s context menu, then Add > Inner Row. To use the new sections, hover over the “plus” icon at the bottom of a row until it says “Add Section.”

2. Add Widgets Inline / Clear Padding

We’re always aiming to improve the user interface in our builder, and ensure the options you need are easy to find and use. You can now add widgets more accurately by taking advantage of the improved context menus in the builder – no drag and drop required! We’ve also added a “clear padding” option directly to context menus to simplify the process of removing excess spacing.

To Use: Right click (or command click) on any widget or column, and select “Add Widget Below”. Select from a commonly used widgets list, or select “More Widgets” to view the full list. The widget will be placed immediately below the element you clicked on. The “Clear Padding” option is also available directly in the new context menu.

3. Custom Navigation Links

Freedom to place custom built nav menus wherever you like is now here. The Navigation Content Editor uses “Custom links,” which allow you to choose exactly what links you want to display in a navigation menu. Select as many pages, anchors or external links as you like (or as few as you like). Custom built navigation menus can be placed anywhere on a page; this allows for things like sub-level navigation in sidebars, single pages, or unique footer navigation.

To Use: Drop the Navigation Links widget on a page, and select “Custom links.”

4. Premade FAQ Sections

Do you use the Sections feature in Architect? If not, you may be missing out on a great tool for speeding up build times and boosting style on your site. We’ve added a new category to Sections, loaded with several gorgeous pre-styled FAQ’s. Featuring our new Accordion widget, these sections provide great ways to present content-rich information such as Q&A’s, services and events.

To Use: Hover over over the “plus” icon at the bottom of a row until it says “Add Section.” Select the FAQs category in Section Mode.

5. Connected Data

An experimental and exciting new feature, Connected Data helps to improve consistency across your site and improve your build times. Content entered into your Content Library – such as business info, text, logos and images – can be connected to widgets using the widget’s context menu. All widgets containing data connected to the Content Library will be updated site-wide any time Content Library data is updated. For example, if your client changes their logo, a simple update in the Content Library will update all instances of the logo throughout the site with widgets utilizing Connected Data.

We plan to expand on this feature to allow users to change site themes while retaining their existing content. Stay tuned for more!

To Use: Create a “Content Collection” within your content library, such as a selection of images for a specific gallery, then use the “Connect to data” command in the context menu of supported widgets.

6. Color Gradients

Gradients are a great way to add a splash of color and interest to your site! Vivid, contrasting color gradients can draw attention to buttons, or create atmosphere in backgrounds. Customization options allow you to set the colors you like, control gradient direction, and choose color percentages; you can even apply gradients to image overlays!

To Use: After opening the color picker on a supported element such as a button or row background, click the gradient color style.

7. New Shadow Controls

We’ve built in some powerful new controls that allow for fine tuned control over element shadows. Subtle use of shadows enhance page designs, and provide a realistic 3D appearance. Customization options allow for control over color, opacity, inner/outer shadow and position.

To Use: Open a widget’s menu, then: Design section > Style tab > Shadow (you may need to click “More design options” if you do not see the Shadow option initially).

8. 21 New Fonts

We’ve added 21 great new fonts to the library, guaranteed to load quickly and display perfectly. The new fonts range from sophisticated to creative to fun, and bring our total available font count to 160! And before you ask, the ability to integrate a custom font of your choosing is definitely on our list for future developments.

To Use: Simply click the font selector in any widget. Be sure to set your fonts globally first to speed up your build time: Design > Global Text.

9. Sell on Instagram

Showcase your products in front of millions of potential new customers shopping for new products on Instagram using this new ecommerce feature. Mobile shoppers across 44 countries around the world can shop your products and link directly to your store – an easy way to boost sales, increase traffic, and upsell client sites! Available in 100 product stores (and up).

To enable this feature, your customers must have a product catalog on their Facebook page, since that’s where Instagram goes to grab the product feed.

To Use: Open your store page, then: open the main store widget (Store Design) > Manage Store> Click or hover over “All Sales Channels” (megaphone icon) > Sell on Instagram.

10. New Templates & Landing Pages

If you weren’t looking, you may have missed one of many new templates and landing pages now available in Architect. In our template chooser, look out for our latest themes: Church, Musician, Architect, Workspace, Gardener, Personal Coach, Tattoo Studio, as well as two new Blank options.

We’ve also added three new landing pages to your theme selection. These smart and focused templates are designed to convert site visitors into customers as quickly as possible, and help collect signups, increase reservations, attract shoppers and more. Single page sites allow designers the ability to present only what’s necessary, making a clear impression on users of the site.

To Use: At wocode.com, navigate to Website Builder > Templates > Single Page.

Member Update - Summer 2018

Thu, 09 Jan 2020 09:38:32 GMT

We’re excited to carry on a MuseThemes tradition here at Without Code: Member Updates!

As a customer and supporter of Without Code, it’s important to us that you are kept in the loop on our upcoming priorities and given an opportunity to provide feedback. Your success is our success, and our goal will always be to provide the products and tools you need to achieve your business or web design goals. Our product development plan is based on your feedback and requests.

Now that our site and platform is live and we have started our weekly product release cycle, it’s time to sit down and look at what’s been added to your membership in the last few months, and what we’re focused on for the future.

If there is something specific that you would like us to address in these posts, please let us know in the comments below.

Opening Thoughts

Phew, what a crazy year 2018 has been! From the painful news that Muse was no longer being developed to the excitement of launching our new site and platform, it’s certainly been a rollercoaster for our team and users. We’ve been working on Architect and Engineer for a long time, however the Muse end of life significantly accelerated our plans and lit a fire under us to get our users working with the new platform as quickly as possible.

Delivering Architect so quickly meant we had to make some tough decisions when it came to priorities. Our goal with the V1 release was to give you the essentials you needed to build a great website. Now that we’ve done that, it’s time for us to start refining the product and adding powerful new features, themes, and sections.

I’d also like to take a moment to express our sincere appreciation for your continued support and business. Choosing a new web design platform is a difficult decision, and we appreciate that so many of our MuseThemes users have put their faith in us and joined us on this new journey. We don’t take this lightly, and the whole team is honored, motivated, and excited that we can continue to work together.

Long Term Vision / Goal

We have a grand vision for Without Code, and it extends much further than just our initial launch of Architect. Our goal is to become a resource and community for web designers working on many different platforms, and offer a variety of tools, training, and assets that add value to web designers and agencies of any size.

Architect was a clear first step for us, giving Muse users an alternative and fresh platform for their immediate design needs. Following Architect, our focus is to deliver our content management tool / widget builder called “Engineer,” which will allow designers working on any platform to embed a simple widget and manage that content through a cloud-based interface. Looking beyond Engineer, we intend to open the door to other more specialized platforms, such as Shopify. Our entire MuseThemes site was built around the Shopify platform, and we’ve always been impressed with its power and flexibility.

Our expansion into other products and services will be slow and strategic. As a small team, we need to be careful to allocate our internal resources appropriately. As our business grows and revenue stabilizes, we can begin investing heavily in new focus areas while continuing to maintain a high level of service on our existing products. Exciting times ahead!

Notable Stats

The response to Without Code and Architect has been extremely positive. Here’s a few notable stats and interesting observations:

Since our launch in late May, new Without Code members have built almost 4,000 websites (with up to 50 new sites built per day).
Many of these users published a finished site the same day that they joined, which tells us that the Architect product is intuitive to use and much faster than working in Adobe Muse.
There are a significant number of large sites built on the platform – 50+ pages – all of which are running extremely fast and maintaining high PageSpeed rankings. This is very different from Muse, where large sites often resulted in performance issues.
One of the most powerful features of Architect is the ability to create multi-language websites, and as a result we’re seeing a large volume of international users.
Without Code now ranks #1 for many Google searches related to “Building Websites Without Code.” We attribute this quick success to having a good volume of traffic, several links back from MuseThemes (which has a high page authority), and our domain / business name containing those keywords.

Considering we launched less than three months ago, we’re very encouraged by these stats and see a bright future ahead.

MuseThemes Releases

Understandably, we receive notes almost daily asking why we continue to release new products for Adobe Muse even though Adobe is no longer developing new features. I wanted to shed some light on this, and clarify exactly why we’re still supporting MT:

Muse Longevity – while many users have transitioned to new platforms, there are still thousands of designers who intend to continue using Muse for several more years. Considering websites our team built using Muse in 2011 still work fine, there’s a good possibility that a site built in 2018 will still function perfectly for 5-10 more years. Muse may not be the right tool for your business going forward, but it still hits the mark for many designers around the world and we’re still seeing new MuseThemes membership signups every day.
Costs / Cash Flow – Without Code is a startup, which means lumpy revenue and inconsistent cash flow. Continuing to run MuseThemes helps us finance Without Code development, until we build a larger member base and revenue stabilizes.
Products Under Development – we had many themes and widgets currently in development when the Muse EOL announcement happened, and there is no reason to hold back releasing these great products to our members.

With that said, we certainly won’t build new Muse products forever. There will come a point where the Muse market has officially moved on to other platforms, and we’re not seeing a return on the investment spent building for Muse. I suspect it will become very obvious when it’s time to reallocate our resources away from MuseThemes, however, this could still be many years away.

April / May / June Recap

A breakdown of new products and benefits added to your WOC membership in the last three months:

Complete WOCode . com site build.
Architect Version 1 release.
10 New Widgets – Custom Typography, Audio Player, FAQ Accordion, Back to Top Button, SEO Pack, Instagram Feed, Dynamic Copyright, Table Connect, Ecwid, and Text Animations.
13 New Themes, including five of our most popular MuseThemes templates.
A variety of core platform improvements, such as sub-user permissions, custom sub-user invite emails, ecommerce plan improvements and many more.
Many behind the scenes performance improvements and upgrades.

Upcoming Projects and Priorities

Please note that upcoming priorities are subject to change.

Widget Releases – we have an extensive list of weekly widget releases planned, including animations, social sharing, navigation menus, video players, and image sliders / galleries.
Theme Chooser / Filtering – a new theme selection system that allows you to sort, filter, and preview our large selection themes by various categories. The new theme picker makes it easier for you to select an appropriate theme to start your site, as well as shows off our extensive design library to potential customers.
Customer Site Showcase – a gallery of real world websites created by our members that help to demonstrate the capabilities of the Architect website builder. We also want to inspire our members by sharing stories and tips from other successful designers through interviews and blog posts.
White Label Training / Documentation – a series of unbranded training videos and written documentation that you can pass along to your clients in order to simplify the onboarding process. Training topics include how to login to the CMS system, making / publishing site updates, and sales material outlining the technical benefits of our platform and hosting.
Engineer CMS – we’re in the final stages of expanding our Engineer CMS system to work with a variety of platforms (it was originally built for use in Muse) and hope to start a closed beta in August 2018. The first widget built for Engineer will be a filterable media gallery.

Thanks again for being a member and supporter of Without Code!

Cheers,

Steve Harris

Major New Feature – Inner Rows

Wed, 08 Jan 2020 09:38:27 GMT

The Architect website builder uses a very common grid structure to lay out sites, creating rows and columns to split up content. This system made it extremely easy to create simple layouts, however, users often needed the ability to split rows / columns up into smaller groups to create more complex arrangements.

We’ve just released a powerful and exciting new feature in the Architect website builder called Inner Rows.

The Inner Rows feature allows you to create “rows inside rows,” which opens the door to creating highly complex layouts with a wide variety of design opportunities. Creating additional rows inside of columns also opens the door to layouts with more than four columns, which was our previous limitation.

This feature is one of the biggest structural changes to the Architect builder to date, and we’re very excited to see what kind of interesting and unique layouts our users create.

How to Use Inner Rows

Inner rows can be added to any existing row by right clicking on a row element, and selecting “add inner row.” Two options may be presented when you add an inner row:

If you’re adding the Inner Row to a row with only one column, it will place the new inner row at the bottom of the existing row and include two columns within. You can then add more columns to that row as needed.
If you’re adding the Inner Row to a row with multiple columns, you’ll need to specify which column you would like to add it to by selecting the appropriate column from the context menu.
You can divide an Inner Row into (up to) four columns, and include any widget or element item you want in the new row.

While it sounds complex in writing, the Inner Row feature is very simple to use with a little bit of exploration in the site builder. The option is now live in your Without Code account, so have fun experimenting with this exciting new level of design freedom.

Inner Row Layout Examples

To get you excited about the design possibilities and simplify the process of learning this new feature, we’ve created five beautiful new custom sections that use inner rows. These sections are now available under the “ Sections ” area within Architect and within the categories listed below:

Section 1 – Hero example using side by side buttons. Available in the “Intro” sections category.

Section 2 – About example using overlapping spacing. Available in the “About” sections category.

Section 3 – Hero example using an irregular box layout for additional navigation. Available in the “Intro” sections category.

Section 4 – Testimonials section using small photos beside a grid layout. Available in the “Testimonials” sections category.

Section 5 – Contact us block with map and social icons. Available in the “Contact Us” sections category.

MuseThemes Member Discounts

Tue, 07 Jan 2020 09:38:09 GMT

As a current or former member of MuseThemes.com, you are eligible for a discount on your first hosted site on Without Code! In addition, you will receive full ongoing access to MuseThemes as long as your Without Code site is active. We’re excited to reward our members who have supported us as far back as 2011. The following post contains information on how to take advantage of your discount, and the process for using both sites.

Get Access to BOTH Without Code and MuseThemes

You will receive access to MuseThemes (full download privileges) when you publish your first site with Without Code. To take advantage of this offer, use the "Click here to request your discount" button below to access the request form.

What Does a Without Code Website Include?

See the list below to learn the benefits of publishing a site on Without Code:

Hosting is always included
100+ Premium Themes
Exclusive Widget Library
Client Editing System (CMS)
Priority Email / Chat Support
Site Comments / Feedback System
Team Collaboration / Invites
White label editor

What is my discount as a MuseThemes member?

MuseThemes members will receive a 10% discount off of your first website. The discount code is redeemable on a standard site, and applies to the annual fee (not eligible for monthly plans).

How do I take advantage of my discount?

If you haven’t yet received your individual discount code, please use the following form to send our Customer Support Team a request. We will need your original MuseThemes account email address to look up your discount level.

How do I access MuseThemes.com?

Without Code is a completely separate business from MuseThemes. In order to keep our two sites in sync, we require that members use the same email address for both MuseThemes and Without Code. If you’re unable to use the same email (e.g. company email address vs. personal) please send us a note to discuss alternatives.

Users with current MuseThemes accounts:

Once you have created a Without Code account using the same email as your MuseThemes account, our two systems will communicate daily to ensure ongoing access to MuseThemes is granted. Since billing is now managed by Without Code, after you have published your first site, we recommend that you cancel your MuseThemes billing subscription prior to your next renewal by following the instructions here.

Users without current MuseThemes accounts:

If you do not have a current MuseThemes account, you will need to sign up for a free MuseThemes account here. Full download access to MuseThemes products will be granted once you publish your first site and use the form on this page to notify our team.

Customer Feature – Graham Busby, beHIVE Design

Mon, 06 Jan 2020 09:38:01 GMT

Without Code VIP member, Graham Busby of beHiveDesign , gave us the inside scoop on his professional journey, how he has used Architect and other web tools, and his advice for burgeoning web designers.

Tell us about your business and how you started as a web designer

My background is primarily in graphic design. I studied this at university from 05-09 and was fortunate enough to be offered a job at a graphic design company in Manchester, UK where I worked for 7 years.

In 2016 (after months of deliberation and discussions with the family), I decided to start up beHIVE Design, mainly for a new challenge. Initially the plan was to base the business on more graphic design for print based clients, but with the way business has gone, plus the introduction of Without Code, I have moved firmly into full time web design.

We focus on start-ups, helping new companies start from scratch by creating the brand, stationery, website, giving them an online presence, adding them to google and setting up social media profiles.

The Club House – built in Without Code.

What are your favorite resources / tools you use the most in your business?

Adobe illustrator, Photoshop, Without Code.

Kerry’s Driver Training – built in Without Code.

Tell us about your experience at Without Code (WOC), and your transition from Adobe Muse to Without Code

One of the reasons I made the decision to start beHIVE Design in 2016 was because I’d just been introduced to Adobe Muse. As a designer and not a coder, Muse gave the tools to create websites without needing the code; the first site I ever built was my company website in 2016.

It was a steep learning curve starting a new business while learning Muse. I owe much of the success to MuseThemes for the tools, themes and widgets they provided to produce great looking websites. In the first year and half we built 7 websites – all in Muse.

When the Muse announcement was made, it was a huge shock personally; all the websites I’d produced over the first year of business were built in Muse, so it forced me to reevaluate the long term plan for the business. I was fortunate enough to be in a widget testing group for MuseThemes, so when the Muse announcement came Steve sent us a reassurance/teaser message to hold tight as they were working on something big. A couple of weeks later we were given access to the beta test of Without Code’s Architect. I think my initial reaction was: “game-changer.” To go from Adobe Muse to WOC felt like a huge leap forward – both in performance and website creation efficiency.

Not long after, maybe a week after initial access to the beta, I had an urgent ecommerce website to build. The WOC team was kind enough to allow me access to set up a profile and begin creating the site….this is what sold me completely on WOC. Within 4 hours I had the site 90% complete with a blog, ecommerce store, and 6 pages. Most importantly, it looked good.

Since the launch of WOC, my business has gotten stronger and I credit that to WOC. Being able to complete websites quicker has allowed me to promote them more, which has led to more work. In the 3 months since I’ve started using WOC, beHIVE Design has launched 9 websites live, with another 8 in production (compared to 7 from the previous 12 months).

Safal Fest – built in Without Code

What is your favorite feature of Without Code?

Ease of use. And the very good content management for my clients; that was one thing Muse really lacked. I also love the feature where you can drop in pre-designed sections for your pages.

Adapt Ideations – built in Without Code

What is your favorite feature of Without Code?

The built-in store, blog feature, rapid hosting, easy SEO, speed of use, image gallery linking to free stock images, UI, and CMS. Most of these weren’t available in Muse, so we can now offer these to potential clients.

Above all is the speed. A website in Muse could take 2 weeks to complete and would be littered with bugs. Not to mention the additional time required adapting it to each breakpoint and making any changes. WOC gives you the ability to complete a website with SEO, optimised images, and high performance in 3-4 days; that increase in productivity definitely is high up on the list.

MT.Kailasa – built in Without Code

What is some advice you would give a designer new to web design and Without Code?

2 years ago I had minimal knowledge and experience in web design, now we have approximately 20 websites on our books. My advice would be to learn and study about building websites the right way. Work hard, be open to suggestions and give the best possible service to each client.

– Graham Busby, beHIVE Design

Worry-Free Hosting – Overview and Tech Details

Sun, 05 Jan 2020 09:37:43 GMT

Finding and committing to a hosting service for your new website can be a big decision. Similar to purchasing the perfect home for your family, there are many aspects to consider before taking the leap and moving in.

This guide will explain some important aspects you need to explore before selecting a host, and an overview of our Worry-Free Hosting service that is built directly in to the Architect Website Builder.

Worry-Free Hosting – Key Tech Specs

Every site published through Architect includes the Worry-Free Hosting service.
Hosting is based on the Amazon Cloud with 99.999% uptime.
Free SSL certificate included with every site (HTTPS).
Use any custom domain on an Architect site (using a CNAME record).
No ongoing maintenance or patching required for security.
Publish sites using instant one-click publishing – no FTP required.
Access all of your client sites from a single dashboard.
Unlimited bandwidth with no page restrictions.
Energy sourced from 70% renewable sources.

What is Website Hosting?

Every site on the web lives on a hosting server, which can exist anywhere in the world. Think of your host as the home your website lives in.

You can find that home using the address, which is known as a domain (www.yourdomain.com). Domains can be purchased separate from your hosting and can be individually pointed to any hosting server on the web.

Before you commit to a hosting service, you need to evaluate aspects such as speed, stability, security, and cost. With the announcement that Google will prioritize fast and secure sites in its ranking results, the decision of where to host can ultimately impact the overall success of your website and business.

Site Speed

Users hate slow websites and typically leave them immediately. Slow hosting servers are one of the primary causes of slow-loading sites and can have a very negative impact on your Google rankings. Hosts typically offer various plan levels for sites with low or high levels of traffic, which is known as bandwidth. The higher your bandwidth needs, the more expensive and important a quality host will be.

Without Code’s website builder, Architect, includes one-click publishing to our Worry-Free Hosting service, which is based on Amazon’s Cloud Hosting. Amazon offers one of the largest and most stable hosting platforms on the planet and is used by many of the world’s biggest websites.

When your site is published from Architect, it’s instantly optimized and uploaded to the hosting service. Optimized sites are lightning fast, and typically rank at the upper limit for Google’s PageSpeed test. This test is used to grade the speed of a website, and the higher the grade, the more likely your site is to rank highly on Google searches.

Content Delivery Network (CDN)

If your website contains images or media – commonly known as “assets” on the web – they must be loaded from your hosting server the first time a user visits the site. The geographic location of your hosting server can have a big impact on the load speed of an asset. If your visitor is based in Asia and the website assets are being loaded from a US-based server, they may experience a lag in their load.

Architect hosting includes something known as a Global CDN (Content Delivery Network), which means that website assets are loaded from a server that is geographically close to the visitor. Global CDN’s are typically quite expensive to set up (hundreds of dollars a month for big sites), but can have a significant impact on website load speed.

Every Architect site hosted with us automatically uses a Global CDN.

Stability

There’s nothing worse for a business than having your website unavailable for users. This situation – commonly known as “downtime” – occurs when the website hosting server goes offline, and your site temporarily disappears from the web.

Amazon Cloud Hosted sites have a 99.999% uptime, with built-in redundancy to avoid any downtime. Should Amazon experience a server outage, visitors to your site will be automatically routed to other duplicate servers, ensuring an uninterrupted customer experience.

As a result, Architect Worry-Free Hosted sites are extremely stable and always available when your customers need it.

Security

If you’ve ever encountered a site on the web that displayed a “warning” when loaded in the browser, it probably has security issues. There’s nothing more damaging to your online reputation than having your site hacked and populated with inappropriate content.

Having your site “hacked” refers to a broad list of potential security issues. It’s less often the cause of a single direct hacker trying to modify your site, and more commonly the result of automated computer programs scanning the web looking for sites that have holes in their security.

For example, WordPress is a very popular content management system that often struggles with security issues. The use of extensive 3rd party plugins can open up WordPress to security exploits. As a result, it’s very important to stay on top of frequent updates for both the WordPress core system and any plugins used. That’s a big job, and it requires constant oversight and some technical expertise.

Architect Worry-Free Hosting has built in security controls, and never requires an update on your end. It’s completely hands off!

Free SSL Certificates Included

If you want your site to rank highly on Google, you need to follow their recommendations for security. In 2017, Google announced they would give preference to secure sites, meaning sites loaded as HTTPS instead of HTTP.

Converting to HTTPS means you need something called an SSL Certificate applied to your site. SSL Certificates are sold on an individual basis, and typically cost $50 – 150 per year depending on your needs. They also require some technical setup to properly install on a site; an incorrect setup could negatively impact your Google rankings.

Architect Worry-Free Hosted sites include a free SSL certificate with each site published. This is a huge cost savings for designers, and by conforming to Google’s recommended security practices you could see a big positive impact on your search rankings.

Hosting Cost

When evaluating hosting service costs, you need to ensure you’re comparing apples to apples. There are a huge variety of hosting services available, all with differing bandwidth limitations, hardware specs (e.g. RAM and CPU speed), and other bonus perks. It’s dizzying!

A shared hosting service may cost as low as $10 per month, vs. a dedicated server which would start at $200 per month.

Hosting can easily become a profit center for a web design business or freelancer. Most service providers mark-up on the hosting costs and bill them back to the client. This creates an additional revenue stream that isn’t tied to your time and recurs on a constant basis. It can help smooth out your cash flow and provide some stable, regular revenue.

By including value-added services like client editing (i.e. CMS), as well as more powerful features like ecommerce, your monthly client contract should increase accordingly.

Architect Costs

Architect Worry-Free Hosting is included with each site published, and costs $11 per month or $99 when paid annually. This is far less than many other hosted platforms and is not subject to any bandwidth or page restrictions. With the inclusion of free SSL certificates, our global CDN and a full content management system (for VIP members), your clients are getting huge value for an amazing price; this leaves you lots of room to markup and make more money!

The monthly or annual price above also includes access to the website builder itself. While you typically pay a separate price for both your application (e.g. Adobe Muse) and then hosting on top, Architect’s application and hosting fee is a single cost. You can access all of your hosted sites from a single dashboard, making it quick to jump in and out.

Sustainability

The technology industry uses a lot of energy, and it’s worth exploring how the energy required to power your hosting servers is generated. Each site hosted on our service (using the Amazon Cloud) follows Amazon’s sustainability practices and is powered in an environmentally-friendly way.

Click here to read about Amazon’s commitment to renewable energy and sustainability:

https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/sustainability/

Conclusion

As you can see, selecting a host is a decision that involves many different factors based on your individual site needs. Users feel comfortable visiting sites that are fast, stable, and make them feel safe. No matter where you decide to host, just be sure you’re giving your site visitors a beautiful web browsing experience and keep them coming back for more.

Thanks,

Steve Harris

Without Code - Builder Updates for GDPR Compliance

Sat, 04 Jan 2020 09:37:31 GMT

The General Data Protection Regulation takes effect on May 25, 2018, and many online businesses who have customers within the EU need to make changes to their site and data collection practices.

Here’s a quick overview of changes made to the Architect site creator that help you comply with the new GDPR rules.

New Privacy Page / Updated Cookie Bar

All websites should have a clear policy on what data they collect, how it’s used, and the steps taken to protect it. This information is commonly displayed on a privacy page.

Within the Architect editor, there is a new option under Settings > Privacy to enable a unique privacy page. The existing cookie notification bar has also been updated to allow you to point a link to your privacy page.

Adobe illustrator, Photoshop, Without Code.

Form Improvements – Opt-in and Free Text Fields

Contact forms now have the added option of an “opt-in” checkbox, meaning that a user must agree to submit their information to you when utilizing the form. The opt-in message can be fully customized and linked to your privacy page.

Simple text fields can now be added to contact forms (called “free text” within the editor), which can be used for privacy information or simple notes to explain how to use the form.

View / Delete Form Responses

All contact form responses can now be viewed from the “content” panel within the site builder as well as in the unbranded dashboard (on SiteModify ).

This feature allows for easy deletion of form entries to comply with a user’s request to have their personal information removed from your system. Please note that form entry deletion cannot be undone. The form response manager also provides site owners with a simple place to manage all form entries.

Web Design Blog - Without Code | Website Builder

New Blog Updates: Multiple Post Layouts, AI Drafts, and More

Use Multiple Layouts in the Same Blog

Draft Blog Posts with AI

Duplicate Blog Layouts in One Click

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Hosting Prices Are Changing on January 15, 2026

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Fill Your Entire Site with Copy from One Doc

Update Existing Pages Without Rewriting

Start New Sites with All Your Copy Ready

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�� Mix, Match, and Make It Yours

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Introducing Editor 2.0 – A Powerful, Advanced Alternative with Greater Design Control

The power of Flex mode, site-wide

Going beyond Flex

Features in Editor 2.0

���� Fully Flex-Based Layout

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���� More Than Four Columns

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���� Design Per Breakpoint

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Spring Feature Roundup 2025 – Site Builder Updates Crafted for Maximum Impact

Change your site’s default language anytime

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Extract a site-wide color theme from any logo

Audit internal links to improve SEO and site value

�� Fully Flex-Based Layout

�� Responsive by Default

�� More Than Four Columns

�� Fixed and Pinned Elements

�� Design Per Breakpoint

�� Mega Menu

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