WiX Toolset 4.0.1320.0 is free to download from our software library. The following versions: 4.0, 3.9 and 3.8 are the most frequently downloaded ones by the program users. The following versions: 4.0, 3.9 and 3.8 are the most frequently downloaded ones by the program users. Wix Stores (which begins at $17.99 per month) is the e-commerce arm of Wix, a PCMag Editor's Choice web hosting service.With Wix Stores, you're able to build a fully functional e-commerce site. You are referring to the hack Jack describes at the bottom of his article. Well, creating a new html page is simple. Open a text editor and save the file as.html, i.e. You change the file extension from.txt to.html and that's all.
I just read this article How To Create a Professional-Looking Flash Website For FreeHow To Create A Professional-Looking Flash Website For FreeHow To Create A Professional-Looking Flash Website For FreeRead More. It says to create a html document and inside the body tags imbed the code.
I am totally new to all of this. I have just bought a domain name in the last week. Can anyone tell me how I do the above? Thanks!
You are referring to the hack Jack describes at the bottom of his article.
Well, creating a new html page is simple. Open a text editor and save the file as .html, i.e. you change the file extension from .txt to .html and that's all.
The body tags are just tags that tell the browser where the main part of the website begins. You type to open the main part and you type to close that part.
What Jack means with copying the code between the body tags is that you open a page you created on Wix - either you look at the source code in your browser or you can view the code in Wix - then you copy the code situated between the body tags and copy it into your own html document.
Your own html document in turn can be uploaded to wherever your website is hosted. The idea is to get away from Wix, but still take your work with you.
Hi Tina, thanks a million for the help! I'm a total newbie to all this...so forgive my next question if its got a really obvious answer! ...where do i look on the wix page to view the code? (I've got notepad++ to edit the code in)
and also, when i put the code in and upload it to where my site is hosted - will people will be able to view all pages i've made? i.e. not just the home page.
Many thanks again for the help!!
Meg,
I'm not familiar with Wix, so I can't tell you where to look right now. If nobody gets back to you on this I might have an answer for you later.
As for your second question, if you have other pages than the index.html and those other pages are linked to from the index.html, you might have to update these links to point to your domain. In any case, you should test the website yourself once you uploaded it. Generally, people should be able to view all pages you uploaded, i.e. all pages you created.
- Pros
Extremely intuitive site-building interface. Loads of site gadgets. Free site option. Hundreds of templates for specific businesses and other uses. Good mobile-site-building tools. Rich web-store features. Excellent Support.
- Cons
No built-in statistics feature. Sites don't use responsive design in the strict sense.
- Bottom Line
Wix is the easiest and fullest-featured website builder around, and you can use it to create your own highly customized site for free.
If you want to get a website online with a minimum of effort and a maximum of creative latitude, look no further than Wix. Its interface is the most intuitive, slick, and powerful of the growing group of website-building services we've tested. It offers standout features such as online storage for your site assets, cool video backgrounds, animations for titles, and mobile apps. A free account option, a gallery of third-party widgets for your site, and strong blogging and commerce features round out this Editors' Choice website builder. As if that weren't enough, the new Wix Code feature lets novices and programmers alike build dynamic web applications.
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Getting Started With Wix
The only thing Wix requires for you to get started is an email address. If you want a site with a custom URL, no Wix promotions, a custom favicon, and a web store, you must upgrade to a paid account. These range from the $5-per-month Connect Domain account, which merely lets you use a site address you already own, to the full $25-per-month VIP plan, which includes a shopping cart, 20GB of storage, domain name, unlimited bandwidth, professional site review, and priority support. For a full rundown of account types, see Wix's premium account grid.
That pricing is reasonable compared with Duda, whose paid plans start at $14.25 per month, and Squarespace and Weebly, which both start at $8 per month. Their top business plans are $22.50, $40, and $25 per month, respectively.
After creating an account, you choose whether you want Wix to automatically create a site for you using ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence) or to use a site template. More in ADI in a bit. Wix users can choose from 15 top levels, each with several subcategories to choose from. For instance, there's a Restaurant choice with subcategories for bar, café, catering, and more. For my first Wix test site, I used Photography > Travel Photographer. Clicking a big Go button opens a generous choice of templates. There are 15 beautiful template options just for that narrow field, including those for landscape, street, and portrait photographers.
In all, Wix offers hundreds of template choices, more than Squarespace or Weebly. The vast majority of these are free, though some require a subscription at the eCommerce level ($17 per month). Each template preview helpfully shows you how your site will look on a smartphone screen, too.
Web Design in Wix
After you've chosen a template and started editing your site, you're treated to a one-minute introductory video. Templates are modern and attractive, many pinning your navigation to the top as the site viewer scrolls down. Five round buttons that expand when you hover the mouse over them let you add elements, change the background, access the App Market (from which you get third-party site widgets), see your uploads, and start blogging. You can easily hide these controls if you need to edit the area under them.
Elements you can add include everything we've become used to on webpages. All the usual options for text, media, social media widgets, buttons, shapes, and so on are available, and you can find anything not in Wix's default selection in its App Market. You can also embed HTML and Flash code. You can easily add SoundCloud and Spotify playlists to treat your site visitors' ears, too.
Editing the template design is dead simple. Just click on any element, and you see resizing handles and dragging buttons. You have a lot more freedom to place objects where you want them than in Weebly or Squarespace. Double-click on text, and you can edit and format it. As you move objects around, guides appear when they're in line with other objects, to help with alignment.
A toolbar on the right offers tools for sizing and arranging objects, including exact pixel sizes for objects, size matching, alignment, and overlap options. If you select than one object, you can move them together around the page. Any object can be animated on load, with effects like Bounce-In, Glide-In, and Spin-In. Nifty!
One thing about the Wix site-building interface that really impresses me is that it uses right-click context menus. Other builders like Squarespace and Weebly do nothing with right clicks, so right-clicking just brings up your browser options, which don't help with site building. Wix lets you change images or edit text that the mouse is over when you right-click.
You can customize page design to your heart's content, including the number of columns, their sizes, and their alignment. But unlike Squarespace and Weebly, Wix doesn't let you change the original template you chose at the outset. You can easily add new pages and drag them around to change site navigation hierarchy. Pages can be password-protected or require membership sign-up or sign-in.
The main account administrative interface is clearer than Weebly's, too, with a full page listing your sites. Click into one and the site dashboard appears with a side rail of site option buttons. You also see a feed of site activity, and there are buttons for common tasks.
One disappointment is the lack of included site-traffic reporting—a particular strength of Duda. However, you can use the Web-Stats app for free or set up a separate Google Analytics account (which requires a paid account level) for this functionality. Web-Stats is pretty informative, telling you where visits came from and what display, computer, and browsers visitors used—even for free users. Another option for paid sites is to add Facebook Pixel reporting.
Wix Artificial Design Intelligence
I tried using the Wix ADI to build a test local business website. It dramatically simplifies site building, it's fun, and it offers lots of hand-holding. You start by answering a few basic questions about the site's purpose, features, location, and title. It then searches the web for content related to your business or activity. You can optionally add social accounts such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. After this you pick a style, have ADI create a color pallette based on your logo, and click Create My Site.
It can take some time to complete its automatic designing. It tells you what it's doing through the process, like adding menus and optimizing your mobile site. I tested using a local bagel shop's info, and ADI created a site that looks better than the place's actual site! I was also impressed when building a site for an artist friend, who was actually wowed by how good the automatic design was. After ADI builds the initial site, you customize things like boilerplate text and sales items. If you aren't interested in designing your own site, Wix ADI is definitely worth a shot.
Working With Photos and Videos
Wix has a big advantage over Weebly and Squarespace when it comes to photos: It lets you reuse images you've already uploaded by saving them in online folders for you. The other services make you re-upload photos if you want to use them in another place on your site.
Wix also lets you add images from other online sources such as Flickr and Facebook. Ditto for videos. You can use video in places where the others only let you use photos, such as the main theme background. The service also provides lots of stock images and videos to use on your site. Much of this content is free, but you can also purchase stock images from BigStock, at reasonable rates.
You get full photo editing and enhancement capabilities with the integrated Aviary editor. And it's really easy to add a link to an image, either external or to a page in your site. You can also add a border, and animation such as a fade in, and choose among resizing behaviors such as autocrop, center, stretch, and fit.
You can set videos to auto-play on page load and to repeatedly loop, and as mentioned you can add a video as your background image.
Making Money With Wix
Wix offers rich e-commerce capabilities. The Store element from the main toolbar adds a Shop page with a product gallery pre-populated with sample products you replace with your own. You'll need an eCommerce premium plan to actually receive payments. The web store can have multiple pages of its own, including, by default, a product page, shopping cart, and thank you page. There's a detailed product-editing panel, and you can group products by collections, and offer coupons. Credit card processing options include Stripe and Square, and you can accept PayPal and snail-mailed cash. You can enter shipping and tax rules, but the built-in store doesn't help you actually figure these things out, say, with UPS or FedEx integration.
Selling digital downloads requires a paid third-party app from POWr or Sellfy. You can, however, sell music with no transaction fee through Wix's own Music app. There's even an app, Snapcard, that lets you accept Bitcoin payments. For marketing your goods, a Wix mail-blast app called ShoutOut lets you send up to 5,000 emails per month. Third-party integrations for email marketing are available from MPZMail, CakeMail, and V.I. Plus.
Blogging Tools
Adding a blog to your site is easy as clicking on the Blog entry on the main site element toolbar. You can design your blog page layout just as with any other site page, or choose a single entry style or one with no header. Subscriptions and comments are options for your readers. You can tag posts, and even display a tag cloud, RSS button, Facebook comments, and Disqus comments.
Wix has a separate, simple blog-posting interface, as opposed to Weebly, which just uses the same webpage interface for blogging. In Wix, you can add photos, galleries, video, and of course text, all formatted to taste. You can schedule any post for later publication and designate it as Featured if you like. In all, it's a rich blogging tool with everything you need.
Mobile Sites
Wix sites aren't responsive in the strictest sense (meaning you can resize a browser to see its contents squeeze to fit a smaller size), but that shouldn't worry site creators: Wix produces mobile versions of your sites that pass Google's test for mobile-friendliness. Tap the smartphone icon at the top of the site editor, and you can switch to mobile editing view.
By default, my site had the 'Make your site mobile friendly' option checked, and because of this, I really didn't have to do anything to make it work well on phones. But Wix gives you the option of editing the mobile view if you're not happy with what it produces automatically. In particular, you can hide elements that you don't want to show up on mobile screens. You can also add a Mobile Action Bar so that visitors can email or call you with a tap of a finger.
On the other side of mobile, Wix now offers apps that let you interact with site visitors and edit store items like products and prices. You can also upload photos from your smartphone, but you can't actually create and edit sites from the app, as you can with Weebly and Jimdo's apps.
Wix Code
Wix Code allows site builders—even those with no programming experience—to add features to their websites that in the past would have required familiarity with database development. The feature is still labeled as beta, but is available in all Wix accounts. Wix Code consists of five tools—Databases, Dynamic Pages, External APIs, Forms, and Managed JavaScript.
Databases, Dynamic Pages, and Forms require no formal knowledge of coding. The use of these prefab databases is similar to filling in a spreadsheet. Custom forms and user input controls are useful for collecting information from site viewers. A food site could let users submit recipes, for example.
Data-driven Dynamic Pages sound like they're for developers, and indeed, using these capabilities increases difficulty of site design quite a bit. But really it just means that your site pages are built on the fly depending on entries in a table. A college course page designed in Wix can display different pages for each course, all using the same template. Duda's InSite feature, which lets you send different content to viewers depending on criteria like time of day, date, location, and number of previous visits, offers similar dynamic customization. The Duda feature is simpler to use, but it's not as powerful as Wix Code is.
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Wix also includes new API and JavaScript features that let actual web developers use Wix to design sites and then go under the hood to extend functionality. They can do this via a fully managed JavaScript development environment and by calling external APIs to leverage web services and augment site behavior.
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When I first tapped the Wix Code menu, a panel appeared with an explanatory video and links to resources to get going with the feature. It does indeed add complexity to the site-building interface, adding Backend and Database entries to your Site Structure sidebar. From those, you can add modules and collections, respectively. The latter are similar to spreadsheets in which you add specific types of data, such as images or text.
A wizard helps you fill in the info necessary to create a usable collection, to enable things like dynamic pages, forms, or member-generated content. You can either add dynamic content to a page, dynamically created pages, or index pages drawing from the database. Though all of this is indeed powerful, it moves Wix away from the easy site builder category to being a developer tool. Those who prefer to keep things simple don't ever have to turn on these developer tools. I managed to create dynamic pages with an index to a few of my reviews, and while there are a few hoops to jump through, it wasn't impossible, though database-driven pages on my test site loaded slower than I'd like.
Wix Support
Since Wix is one of the more intuitive site builders around, there's a good chance you won't need to contact the support team. The Wix editor displays a question mark at top right that gets you to its well-stocked Help Center. If that doesn't get you the answer to your problem by submitting a support ticket or requesting a phone call back (Monday to Friday from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pacific Standard Time). That service is, impressively, even available to free accounts. WordPress.com, on the other hand, only offers its free users access to a knowledgebase.
When you first contact support, a chat bot gets your site info and takes you through logical steps to remedy your problem. When you get to a point where the text robot can no longer help you, you see a Contact Us area, with two options: Submit a ticket, and Talk to a Support Agent. Of course I chose the latter. You enter your phone number (I used my Skype In number rather than my real number) and a description of the problem. I made my initial request at 4:36 p.m., and I received a callback at 4:39.
Customer service representative Maurico talked me through the fairly easy process of changing my CNAME record on the domain provider's management page to match what Wix uses. Even though I acted slow and bumbling, Mauricio stayed with me and we accomplished the transfer successfully. Wix is to be congratulated for its combination of thorough online support and real human support.
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Wix Has All the Tricks
For ease of site building and breadth of options, you can't beat Wix. If the ability to export site code and a need for true responsive design are priorities for you, you may want to go with Weebly or Squarespace instead. But Wix offers the most when it comes to building your site the way you want it.
The optional new Wix Code feature, while adding a degree of difficulty, also enables more powerful, modern, dynamic site creation. All that, plus online storage of your media, a large third-party gallery of site additions, and a clear, well-thought-out interface keep Wix a PCMag Editors' Choice for online website builders, alongside with the also-excellent Duda.
For tips on getting started building your site, make sure to read our primer, How to Build a Website.
Bottom Line: Wix is the easiest and fullest-featured website builder around, and you can use it to create your own highly customized site for free.