This is truly superb, and those who do not yet know of wix, better rush over there and get started right now! This is an online flash site creator that lets you build either from scratch, or by modifying a very large collection of freely available templates. The entire setup is intuitive – no need to code, no actionscript anywhere in evidence – all you do is drag and drop components, add text, images, clip art, and off you go!
Furthermore, the wix people let you publish your efforts for free under their own domain. Should you wish for your own site, and/or various other goodies such as google analytics then they have a very reasonable plan for you to upgrade as well. In the free version wix puts very small ads underneath your page and the upgrade eliminates those also. However, no sweat with regards to the ads anyway – they did not bother me in the slightest, they are that well placed and unobtrusive.
I created the 3 pages above (please click thumbnails to access) with wix. The first 2 were created through modifying pre-existent templates, the third one I did from scratch. All the images I used come from the wix library, which is surprisingly well stocked with really nice images and clip art. The first one I made took a few hours since I was also snooping around in the library, trying out all kinds of things. The two others happened in less that an hour each! That is how easy and user friendly this is!
I am wondering whether wix might not be used for educational purposes also. As in teaching a web design course which totally eliminates the irksome need to learn the underlying code of a flash site.
http://www.wix.com/