Website builders are tools that typically allow the construction of websites without manual code editing. They fall into two categories: *

Online In computer technology and telecommunications, online indicates a state of connectivity, and offline indicates a disconnected state. In modern terminology, this usually refers to an Internet connection, but (especially when expressed as "on lin ...

proprietary tools provided by

web hosting service A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that hosts websites for clients, i.e. it offers the facilities required for them to create and maintain a site and makes it accessible on the World Wide Web. Companies providing web h ...

companies. These are typically intended for service

user Ancient Egyptian roles * User (ancient Egyptian official), an ancient Egyptian nomarch (governor) of the Eighth Dynasty * Useramen, an ancient Egyptian vizier also called "User" Other uses * User (computing), a person (or software) using an ...

s to build their own

website A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, educatio ...

. Some services allow the site owner to use alternative tools (

commercial Commercial may refer to: * (adjective for) commerce, a system of voluntary exchange of products and services ** (adjective for) trade, the trading of something of economic value such as goods, services, information or money * a dose of advertising ...

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

) — the more complex of these may also be described as

content management system A content management system (CMS) is computer software used to manage the creation and modification of digital content ( content management).''Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy''. Ann Rockley, Pamela Kostur, Steve Manning. New ...

s. *

Application software Application software is any computer program that is intended for end-user use not operating, administering or programming the computer. An application (app, application program, software application) is any program that can be categorized as ...

that runs on a personal computing device used to create and edit the pages of a web site and then publish these pages on any

host A host is a person responsible for guests at an event or for providing hospitality during it. Host may also refer to: Places * Host, Pennsylvania, a village in Berks County * Host Island, in the Wilhelm Archipelago, Antarctica People * ...

. (These are often considered to be " website design software", rather than "website builders".)

History

The first website, manually written in

HTML Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets ( ...

, was created on August 6, 1991. Over time, software was created to help design web pages. For example,

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

released FrontPage in November 1995. By 1998, Dreamweaver had been established as the industry leader; however, some have criticized the quality of the code produced by such software as being overblown and reliant on HTML tables. As the industry moved towards

W3C The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working together in ...

standards, Dreamweaver and others were criticized for not being compliant. Compliance has improved over time, but many professionals still prefer to write optimized markup by hand. Open source tools were typically developed to the standards and made fewer exceptions for the then-dominant Internet Explorer's deviations from the standards. The

started Amaya in 1996 to showcase Web technologies in a fully featured Web client. This was to provide a framework that integrated many W3C technologies in a single, consistent environment. Amaya started as an HTML and CSS editor and now supports

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...

XHTML Extensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) is part of the family of XML markup languages which mirrors or extends versions of the widely used HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the language in which Web pages are formulated. While HTML, pr ...

MathML Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) is a pair of mathematical markup languages, an application of XML for describing mathematical notations and capturing both its structure and content. Its aim is to natively integrate mathematical formulae ...

, and SVG.

GeoCities GeoCities, later Yahoo! GeoCities, was a web hosting service that allowed users to create and publish websites for free and to browse user-created websites by their theme or interest, active from 1994 to 2009. GeoCities was started in November 1 ...

was one of the first more modern site builders that didn't require any technical skills. Five years after its launch in 1994

Yahoo! Yahoo (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web portal that provides the search engine Yahoo Search and related services including My Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, y!entertainment, yahoo!life, and its a ...

purchased it for $3.6 billion. After becoming obsolescent, it was shut down in April 2009.

References

{{Navbox , name = Website_builders , title = Website builders , state = autocollapse , listclass = hlist , group1 = Concepts , list1 =

Content management system A content management system (CMS) is computer software used to manage the creation and modification of digital content ( content management).''Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy''. Ann Rockley, Pamela Kostur, Steve Manning. New ...

· Website builder ·

Web hosting service A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that hosts websites for clients, i.e. it offers the facilities required for them to create and maintain a site and makes it accessible on the World Wide Web. Companies providing web h ...

Low-code development platform A low-code development platform (LCDP) provides a development environment used to create application software, generally through a graphical user interface (as opposed to only writing code, though some coding is possible and may be required). A l ...

, group2 = Popular website builders , list2 = Wix.com · Squarespace ·

Weebly Weebly, a subsidiary of Block, Inc., is an American web hosting and web development company based in San Francisco, California. Founded in 2006 by David Rusenko, Chris Fanini, and Dan Veltri, the company offers WYSIWYG website creation service ...

· WordPress.com ·

Shopify Shopify Inc., stylized as ''shopify'', headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, operates an e-commerce platform for retail point-of-sale systems that offers payments, marketing, shipping, inventory management, transaction management, and customer eng ...

Webflow Webflow, Inc. is an American company, based in San Francisco, that provides software as a service for website building and hosting. Their online visual editor platform allows users to design, build, and launch websites similar to Metaconex or Wix ...

· Jimdo ·

Duda The Hungary, Hungarian duda (also known as ''tömlősíp'' and ''bőrduda'') is the traditional bagpipe of Hungary. It is an example of a group of bagpipes called Medio-Carparthian bagpipes. Accounts are conflicting regarding the exact form of ...

GoDaddy GoDaddy Inc. is an American publicly traded Internet Domain name registry, domain registry, Domain name registrar, domain registrar and web hosting company headquartered in Tempe, Arizona, and incorporated in Delaware. GoDaddy is the world's fif ...

Google Sites Google Sites is a structured wiki and web page creation tool included as part of the free, web-based Google Docs Editors suite offered by Google. The service includes Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Drawings, Google For ...

, group3 = Open-source website builders , list3 =

WordPress WordPress (WP, or WordPress.org) is a web content management system. It was originally created as a tool to publish blogs but has evolved to support publishing other web content, including more traditional websites, electronic mailing list, ma ...

Joomla Joomla (), also styled Joomla! (with an exclamation mark) and sometimes abbreviated as J!, is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) for publishing web content on websites. Web content applications include discussion forums, p ...

Drupal Drupal () is a free and open-source web content management system (CMS) written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. Drupal provides an open-source back-end framework for at least 14% of the top 10,000 websites worldwide ...

· Grav ·

Ghost In folklore, a ghost is the soul or Spirit (supernatural entity), spirit of a dead Human, person or non-human animal that is believed by some people to be able to appear to the living. In ghostlore, descriptions of ghosts vary widely, from a ...

Hugo (software) Hugo is a static site generator written in Go. Steve Francia originally created Hugo as an open source project in 2013. Since v0.14 in 2015, Hugo has continued development under the lead of Bjørn Erik Pedersen with other contributors. Hugo is l ...

, group4 = E-commerce platforms , list4 =

· Wix.com · BigCommerce · WooCommerce ·

Magento Magento is an open-source e-commerce platform written in PHP. Magento source code is distributed under the Open Software License. Magento was acquired by Adobe Inc in May 2018 for $1.68 billion. More than 150,000 online stores have been cre ...

· PrestaShop · OpenCart · , group5 = Related topics , list5 =

Website wireframe A website wireframe, also known as a page schematic or screen blueprint, is a visual guide that represents the skeletal framework of a website. The term wireframe is taken from other fields that use a skeletal framework to represent 3-dimension ...

Landing page In online marketing, a landing page, sometimes known as a "lead capture page", "single property page", "static page", "squeeze page" or a "destination page", is a single web page that appears in response to clicking on a search engine optimized s ...

User experience design User experience design (UX design, UXD, UED, or XD), upon which is the centralized requirements for "User Experience Design Research" (also known as UX Design Research), defines the experience a user would go through when interacting with a compa ...

Search engine optimization Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of Web traffic, website traffic to a website or a web page from web search engine, search engines. SEO targets unpaid search traffic (usually referred to as ...

· Online presence management ·

Responsive web design Responsive web design (RWD) or responsive design is an approach to web design that aims to make web pages render well on a variety of devices and window or screen sizes from minimum to maximum display size to ensure usability and satisfactio ...

Web development software Web design Web development Web programming

History

See also

References