I want to set up a Website and start a blog, too, but I don’t really have the time to devote to building a site and some of the ready-made templates just look so boring. Plus I’ve heard about some really shady Web-hosting situations. Any suggestions?
–Anonymous, Via the Internet
One is a company called Squarespace (www.squarespace.com), which provides a complete, easy-to-integrate Web presence for those folks who just don’t have the time, energy, or money to launch and run a Website. A similar site is Weebly (www.weebly.com), which offers an easy drag-and-drop site-building experience. You sign up, then drag items from a list onto your page–couldn’t be easier. Besides, sometimes all you need is a page or two of content–little more than a blog, less than a full-blown site.
Both sites are easy to use, but I’d have to say Squarespace edges out Weebly in a number of areas, most notably in the back-office offerings and the design templates (although, to be fair, Weebly is a free service, so you get what you pay for). Additionally, Squarespace provides written and video tutorials to help customers through the process.
Squarespace pricing starts at $7 a month (Basic), which gives you 0.5GB storage and a bandwidth diet of 6GB a month. You can opt for Pro ($12 a month), which gives you 1GB storage, 8GB bandwidth, and additional features such as domain mapping and URL shortcuts.